Inside Straight

Daniel Abraham Jonathan Hive

All the best stories start “This one time we were really drunk, and…”

“Seriously,” Jonathan said, “is there nothing going on in the whole fucking world besides this show?”

“Probably,” Gardener said as she leaned down to get another beer from the cooler on the coffee table, “but who really cares?”

The Discard Pile was getting more and more crowded with each passing week. With every new addition, Jonathan was more and more grateful he’d lost early and gotten his pick of bedrooms. Earlier this week, Spades had won their challenge, foiling Detroit Steel and his gang of bogus bank robbers, but Golden Boy and henchmen had handled the Diamonds. The Hearts had yet to face their own rogue ace, but the evening’s entertainment was watching the daily footage of Clubs getting their collective clock cleaned by the Aryan poster boy, Lohengrin. The studio was even providing the pizza.

It wasn’t a formal party, just a bunch of failures drinking cheap beer and talking smack about people who’d already done better than they had, and getting filmed so that every shitty thing they said could be used as a voiceover for the home audience.

“Here it comes,” King Cobalt said, pointing at the big plasma screen. “Watch this part.”

It was the same fake bank that Detroit Steel had failed to rob the day before, or one so much like it as to make no difference.

Lohengrin stood in the entrance in glowing white armor. The sword in his hand looked cheesy by comparison. The studio had made him use some kind of special effects prop instead of the actual force sword he could conjure from nothing.

“Hey,” the Maharajah said, “Lohengrin. Can that really cut through anything?”

“Ja,” the blond, brawny ace said from the far end of the couch. “Steel, stone. Anything.”

“You want another beer?” Simoon asked him.

Jonathan watched their guest of honor waver between his love of beer and his disgust at the American interpretation of the word. He held up a hand to decline.

“Would you guys watch?” King Cobalt said, frowning under his mask.

On the screen, the preacher, Holy Roller, had become a near-perfect sphere, barreling down toward the bank like a huge Baptist bowling ball. The Lohengrin on the screen struck a heroic pose and brought his sword to bear.

The impact was intense. Lohengrin was blown back through the door into the bank—they’d already seen the footage from the interior cameras—and Holy Roller bore a stripe down his midsection that showed where the sword would have cleaved him nearly in half had it been real. With a visible sigh, the enormous ace played dead. And then a moment later, Lohengrin appeared again, unbloodied and unbowed. The Discard Pile cheered. Lohengrin grinned and ran a hand though his hair. “It was a very strong blow,” he said, as if apologizing for his victory. “The priest is a formidable opponent.”

On the screen, Toad Man and Stuntman were circling around to attack Lohengrin from both sides. They’d all seen this from a different angle before, too.

“Look!” King Cobalt said. “Here it comes!”

The doorbell rang.

“Pizza’s here!” Diver shouted. “Who’s got the money?”

Jonathan caught a glimpse of Fortune trotting up from the back of the house, digging for his wallet.

“Don’t forget to tip him,” Spasm yelled. Fortune nodded. Jonathan didn’t think anyone else caught the little flash of anger in the kid’s eyes. Jonathan sose and picked his way across the crowded floor and through the cameras trained on the Discards. He caught up with Fortune in the atrium, signing a voucher. A stack of pizza boxes sat on the side table.

“Want a hand with that?” Jonathan asked.

“Sure,” Fortune said. “Thanks.”

The kitchen was as wide as a cafeteria. There was room to lay out all the boxes, lids open, and cheap paper plates besides. The fluorescent lights buzzed; Jonathan had heard two of the sound guys bitching about it.

“How’s he taking it?” Jonathan asked.

“Who?” Fortune asked.

“The new Ku Klux Klan spokesmodel,” Jonathan said. “Rustbelt.”

Fortune hesitated. “Not so well,” he said.

“You think he really did it?”

“Stuntman said he did,” Fortune said. “So it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Reality television,” Jonathan said, like he was saying “jumbo shrimp.”

A shriek and a peal of laughter came from the front room. Then King Cobalt’s voice saying “Watch this part.” Jonathan dropped a slice of pepperoni onto a plate and handed it to Fortune.

“Thanks,” Fortune said, “but I can’t. It’s for contestants.”

“Did you tip the delivery guy?”

Fortune stared at him.

“So, why can’t I tip you?” Jonathan asked. “Come on, this is all bullshit anyway. Have some food.”

With a half smile and something between a cough and a laugh, Fortune accepted the plate.

There had to be a way, Jonathan thought, to bring the subject up that was more graceful than So, did you track down that magic amulet yet?

“So. Did you track down that magic amulet yet?” Jonathan said, wincing.

Fortune looked uncomfortable. Before he could come up with a polite evasion, Lohengrin appeared in the doorway, a little shamefaced.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Is there any other beer?”

“Sorry,” Fortune said. “That’s all the studio got.”

“We are the losers, after all,” Jonathan said.

The German ace’s expression fell. Jonathan suddenly remembered Fortune and Curveball safely out of range of the cameras, and the plan, such as it was, sprang into Jonathan’s head full-formed. Which was to say actually, about half-formed, but that was enough to start with.

“I bet our man Fortune here knows some good bars, though. Right?” Jonathan said.

“Um,” Fortune replied.

“Do you?” Lohengrin asked, his face a mask of longing.

“Well…”

“Come on,” Jonathan said. “We’ll sneak out the back.”

Lohengrin’s smile was brilliant. Fortune hesitated for a long moment. He certainly wouldn’t have done it for Jonathan, but Lohengrin was a guest of the show, the kind of guy that Berman and Peregrine wanted to keep happy.

“I’ll buy the first round,” Jonathan said. Lohengrin’s eyes seemed to shine.

From the front room, Spasm yelled, “Hey! Where’s Captain Cruller? Chop chop, man. We’re hungry out here.”

“Okay,” Fortune said. “Let’s go.”

Here was the thing: writing a book meant finding something to write about. Sitting on the couch while Spasm talked about how he could have done better and King Cobalt shushed everyone was not the stuff of high drama. John Fortune—the guy who used to be an ace, whose father died, who wanted nothing more in the world than to regain his status and honor—was. But Fortune was also reticent and private and trying hard to make the best of his situation. And, in all fairness, if they’d been calling Jonathan by names like Captain Cruller and Fetchit the Wonder Gopher, he’d have been keeping a low profile, too.

What Jonathan needed was friendship. Shared confidences. The details of Fortune’s situation that would make the whole thing spring to life when he wrote it up. It was the perfect counterpoint to the aces on the show—if there was just a way to get the man to relax and open up.

A way like, say, lots of alcohol. And a few other people to open up and tell stories on themselves first.

What the hell? It worked for the guys who sold videos of girls exposing themselves.

“So,” Jonathan went on, “there I was, in the girl’s locker room, nothing but a towel on. And Christy had this huge can of bug spray and this look in her eyes like she was just daring me to try and get away.”

Lohengrin chortled and gestured to the waitress.

“That can’t have gone well,” Fortune said.

“Yeah, we pretty much broke up after that,” Jonathan said.

“I had einen lover when I was at school,” Lohengrin said. “She was beautiful. Like a goddess. But she had another boy she was with as well. He tried to hurt me one night. With a knife. I had my armor, of course, but because of how he attacked, I had nothing else. I had to try to calm him while he keeps stabbing at me.”

Lohengrin made sad little stabbing motions and shook his head.

“Why didn’t you use your sword?” Jonathan asked.

Lohengrin shrugged. “I felt pity for him. He was just a normal boy and I was …”

Lohengrin gestured at himself. It should have been a statement of conceit: I was the mighty Lohengrin against whom no mere nat could hope to compete. But something about the guy made it seem okay. Lohengrin was an ace. It made a difference.

“I didn’t ever really date,” Fortune said. “My mom was always afraid that something might happen to me, turn my wild card. She had private investigators follow me. I had bodyguards to make sure nothing ever happened to me.”

“Wow,” Jonathan said, mixing sarcasm and sympathy in his tone, “and the girls didn’t go for that?”

“That is hard,” Lohengrin said. The waitress arrived, sweeping the empty bottles from their table and putting down fresh ones like she’d trained for Cirque de Soleil.

“I don’t know,” Fortune said. “It was just my life. It was the way things were. And then when the card did turn, and I thought it was an ace…”

Jonathan clapped Fortune’s shoulder. The pathos of the guy’s life was amazing. Or possibly Jonathan was drunk enough to be getting sentimental.

“Did you ever get your mom to tell you about the amulet?” Jonathan asked.

“What amulet?” Lohengrin asked, as if Jonathan had coached the guy. Now Fortune had to tell the story, and in doing so remind himself of the hope that Simoon had brought him. The powers of Ra, whatever they were. A fate, a destiny. Something better than running trivial errands in the cocaine economy of Hollywood.

“You must find this thing!” Lohengrin said when Fortune had finished.

“I can’t,” Fortune said. “Mom doesn’t know where it is. Or at least that’s what she says.”

“You don’t believe her?” Jonathan asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s true. Or maybe she’s just so in the habit of protecting me from things that… you know, it’s just what she does. Maybe she has it in her safe or something, and just doesn’t want to risk it.”

“And what about you?” Jonathan asked. “Would you risk it?”

Fortune looked sour. There were the beginnings of tears in his eyes. How desolate it must be, Jonathan thought. How empty. To have been an ace, to have been important. Fortune was carrying not only his father’s death but also the dragging weight of being no one in particular. It was the saddest thing Jonathan had ever seen.

Okay, he was definitely getting maudlin now.

“I can open safes,” Lohengrin said.

Jonathan and Fortune both stared at him.

“Any safe. Just like this,” Lohengrin said and snapped his fingers.

“Aren’t Berman and your mom wining and dining the new guest ace? Noel whatsisname?” Jonathan asked. “The stage magician guy they brought over from England?”

“She’s… yeah, she’s out. How did you know that?”

“Heard someone talking about it,” Jonathan said, not mentioning that he had been a wasp at the time.

“I thought the magic was his ace power,” Lohengrin said.

“No, he’s just a stage magician,” Fortune said. “He’s got the wild card, but that’s just his shtick. Or anyway, that’s what he says.”

“But—”

“The point is,” Jonathan broke in, “her house. Is there anyone there?”

“No. My dad.… my step-dad, I mean. Josh. He’s out of town all month. But—”

“It’s perfect,” Jonathan said. “Come on. Let’s go take a look!”

“Guys,” Fortune said. “Look, I really appreciate that you want to help out, but… but…”

“You must find your destiny,” Lohengrin intoned, his hand on Fortune’s shoulder. “If God has need of you, and this is the path your honor demands, you must go. You cannot do less. And I will aid you, if I can.”

It should have sounded cheesy, but the fucker really pulled that Arthurian shit off. Jonathan felt genuinely moved.

“Yeah. What he said,” Jonathan said. “Let’s get the check.”

Through one set of noncompound eyes, Peregrine’s house looked more impressive. The Beverly Hills address matched with the mission-style architecture and the Spanish tile roof. The lawn was lush and green. He half expected to see Marilyn Monroe slink out of the house with a martini glass in her hand. Which was, he supposed, exactly the effect the architect was shooting for.

Jonathan pulled the car carefully into the driveway, stopping well before the garage door. That was the trick of driving intoxicated; allow lots of room for error.

“It is beautiful,” Lohengrin said, leaning forward until his forehead almost touched the windshield. Maybe the crazed German bastard was a sentimental drunk too. It was endearing. Jonathan tried to turn off the engine and discovered he already had.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Fortune said from the back seat.

Jonathan found the button.

All four doors unlocked simultaneously. The sound was like a prison door slamming closed. Jonathan grinned and got out of the car. The others followed him. Lohengrin was humming something martial as they went up the sculpted concrete path to the door. Fortune started behind them both, but hurried to catch up, as if he wanted to protect the house from them.

“This is just… okay, be careful in here, okay? This is my mom’s house. I don’t want you to—”

“John,” Jonathan said. “We aren’t high school kids sneaking into the liquor cabinet and downloading porn. We’re grown men searching for a pariicuiar answer to a specific question.”

Fortune hesitated.

“We will do you no dishonor,” Lohengrin intoned. “I swear it.”

That was apparently the trick, because Fortune took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped in. While he disarmed the alarm system, Jonathan took in the house. A black stone fountain burbled to itself in the entryway. The decor in the main rooms was chic and clean, with high ceilings and open spaces. He could almost see Peregrine rising from the couch and stretching out her wings. A glass wall led out to the deck he’d seen before, through other eyes.

“Come on,” Fortune said, heading down a hallway to their left. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jonathan walked after him. The art that hung tastefully from the wall was beautiful, one piece commenting subtly on the next. The air smelled like his grandmother’s house in Virginia, the air conditioning doing something arcane that reminded him of cucumbers. The architecture itself made him think of television sets—everything a little too spacious and a little too clean, and everything, everything, in place. Jonathan tried to imagine what it would have been like growing up in a world like this, a climate-controlled childhood. And nothing anywhere that referenced Peregrine’s past as sex symbol and lover of the half-black, half-Asian pimp-turned-ace-turned-monk-turned-martyr Fortunato.

Lohengrin paused in the entryway, swaying slightly. His brow was furrowed in intense concentration.

“What’s up, big guy?” Jonathan asked.

“John’s powers. His old powers,” Lohengrin said. “He almost destroys the world, ja?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “Time magazine did a whole thing on it. Bunch of people thought he was the messiah or the antichrist, or whatever. If Fortunato hadn’t come in, it would have been ugly.”

“Ja,” the German agreed. “And we are helping to get his powers back?”

Jonathan blinked. “But,” he said. “That stuff. Back at the bar. His destiny…”

Lohengrin nodded in agreement but still frowning. “I may have been wrong,” he said.

“Huh,” Jonathan said. And then, “Hey, Fortune?”

Peregrine’s bedroom. Extra-wide king-size-plus bed with raw silk sheets, a skylight on runners that could open to let someone in or out if they could fly, tasteful bedside table and lamp with the latest issue of Variety open to an article about American Hero. But no John Fortune.

“Fortune?”

“In here. Dressing room.”

It was like a walk-in closet the size of an apartment. Dresses, coats, shoes, suits, sweats, a dresser devoted to undergarments. And a table with a jewelry case that would shame some department stores, complete with vanity mirror where John Fortune was sitting, hands flat on the table, jaw set, eyes focused and determined. He looked like the world’s most desperate drag queen getting ready to suit up.

A steel safe door two feet square gazed out from the wall at shoulder height like high-security Dadaist art.

“Fortune?” Jonathan said. “Hey, the Lone Grin here had a point that might be worth just kicking—”

“All her jewelry is in there,” he said, nodding at the safe. “Necklaces, amulets, beads. Whatever.”

“Yeah, but… you see, we were wondering if maybe getting back your powers… I mean the last time you had ’em—”

“I know what happened. I was there.”

“All we meant was, the stakes are a little—”

“You just thought of that now?”

Lohengrin raised a hand like a kid in school. “It was me,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t really think of it.”

“Well, I did,” Fortune said. “It’s okay. I’m good with it.”

“That’s great,” Jonathan said, “but I’m not sure—”

“Step off, okay!” Fortune shouted. “You are the one who wanted to try this, right? I didn’t ask you to poke into my life. You took that on yourself. You’re the one who came up with the bright idea of hauling me up here and digging up this amulet. I’m just Captain Cruller, the guy who used to be famous for letting his own father fucking die! You hold up a chance for me to get that back, and then you want to talk about it? If you ladies are getting cold feet, go stick ’em in something hot!”

Fortune’s face flushed red, and his breath sounded like a bull’s.

“You are right,” Lohengrin said. “I gave my word to help in this. I will not fail you.”

“Um, hello?” Jonathan said. “What about maybe destroying the world?”

“I have given my word,” Lohengrin repeated. “Honor demands I do this.”

“Honor demands what? How fucking drunk are you?”

But Lohengrin had already put out his hand. The blade that appeared in it glowed with a soft, pure light. The German turned to the safe and with a flick of his wrist carved a hole in the steel door and part of the surrounding wall. John Fortune yelped and sprang forward.

“What the fuck!” he shouted.

“I opened the safe,” Lohengrin said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Is what we came for, nein?”

“You broke the safe,” Fortune yelled. “You didn’t tell me you were going to break it.”

“But…” Lohengrin began. Fortune turned his back to them both, reaching into the darkness of the safe. The rant was going on under his breath. Jonathan caught the words “very clever” and “dickhead.”

He was starting to think John Fortune might not be a sentimental drunk.

Lohengrin started to pace, his wide, teutonic brow furrowed. Jonathan tried very hard to think, but there was still enough booze in his bloodstream to make things muzzy at the edges. There had been a plan when he’d started this, and he was pretty sure that this hadn’t been how it had gone.

“Fuck,” Fortune said.

“Didn’t work?”

“It’s not here,” Fortune said. “These… they aren’t…”

His voice wasn’t angry anymore. More sad. Fortune hung his head, and Jonathan put a hand on the guy’s shoulder.

“So here’s the thing,” Jonathan said. “I’m a real asshole sometimes. I didn’t mean to—”

“I am asshole too,” Lohengrin said, putting his hand on Fortune’s other shoulder. Jonathan caught their reflection in the vanity mirror. With Fortune’s head low and the pair of them flanking the guy, it looked like an old print he’d seen of Lancelot and Merlin supporting King Arthur.

Nice detail, he thought. He filed it away for when he wrote the book. Fortune’s head came back up.

“I know where it is,” he said. Before Jonathan could think through what the words really meant, Fortune was gone. Jonathan and Lohengrin fouled each other trying to get out of the dressing room door, so Fortune got to Peregrine’s study well before them.

It was another beautiful room—soft light, teak furniture, soft carpet. One wall was dedicated to images and mementos of the life of one of the world’s more glamorous wild cards. Magazine covers, newspaper clippings, plaques with her name and the appreciation of President Barnett and Senator Hartmann. Three Emmy awards. A People’s Choice award. Trophies and plaques detailing her charity work and other random appreciations. Pictures of her floating above the New York skyline, flying past the Eiffel Tower. Standing, wings spread and eyebrows raised, before the pyramids. Jonathan was struck by how young she looked back then. 1987. He’d been six years old.

Fortune sat on the corner of the wide, low, wooden desk. A simple loop of leather cord hung from his hand, a red bauble at its end. In the dim light, the setting looked brass. Jonathan and Lohengrin both stopped dead.

“Fortune,” Jonathan said, and licked his lips. “You should maybe put that down. You know, just for a second.”

Fortune looked up. He was smiling. He shook his head. If they hadn’t been drunk, Jonathan and Lohengrin might have found the right words to talk him back. They might have had the presence of mind to leap forward and snatch the thing from his hand. If they hadn’t been drunk, they wouldn’t have been there in the first place. John Fortune tossed the amulet in the air, caught it, and dropped the cord around his neck. The red stone bauble struck his chest with a low, heavy sound, and then hung there, innocuously.

Jonathan Hive stared at the thing as it shifted slightly against Fortune’s shirt. After a moment, he remembered to breathe. Fortune laughed ruefully, touching the amulet with his fingertips. “Nothing,” he said. “Just another fairy tale that didn’t come true.”

“Look, Fortune. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

John Fortune started screaming. Lohengrin’s mystic armor appeared, a white luminous medieval knight. Jonathan hopped back a step and then forward again. The brass setting lay on the floor, two hollow half-rounds, like a walnut shell with the nut missing. The stone was gone. Fortune was ripping off his shirt, shrieking like a girl.

“What!” Jonathan shouted. “What is it?”

“It’s inside of me! Holy shit! Get it out!”

A lump moved under Fortune’s dusky skin, something forcing its way through him, up his chest, over his collarbone.

“Lohengrin!” Jonathan screamed. “Knife! The big knife! The sword! Get your sword! Cut it out!”

“No!” Fortune cried, but whether he meant the thing crawling in his flesh or the plan to cut him open wasn’t clear.

The knight shifted his attention from Fortune clawing at his own flesh, to Jonathan’s trembling finger. The lump passed under Fortune’s jaw, and then up through his cheek. As Lohengrin stepped forward, the sword glowing into being in his hand, the thing reached John Fortune’s forehead. Something like a detonation filled the room: light and heat and a kind of shockwave that Jonathan felt in his bones though it didn’t blow back his hair or his clothes. The air smelled of dust and overheated stone.

“Mem Gott.”

Where John Fortune had been, a huge she-lion crouched, light streaming from her like a small sun. She bared her teeth at Lohengrin, who stepped back, his sword held at the guard before him. The lioness howled.

“What the fuck!“ Jonathan shouted.

The lioness turned to him, startled by his voice. When she opened her mouth, he saw the billowing flame in her throat. He barely had time to expand out, wasps exploding in all directions, before the blast of fire passed through the space where he had been.

The study descended into chaos. Lohengrin swung his sword, the tip cleaving pits of lathe and plaster out of the walls. Flames burst over him like water while the lioness leaped and roared. Jonathan, not sure whether to flee or try to save Lohengrin from Fortune, or maybe Fortune from Lohengrin, buzzed madly around the room.

The lioness leapt and snapped, growled and screamed. Jonathan split himself, rolling and dodging every time the lioness shot at him.

Fire, Jonathan thought as he fled out to the hallway, why does it always have to be fire?

Lohengrin staggered out, victim of a lucky swipe of the lioness’s huge paw. The lioness followed, pressing her advantage. The screams from the beast’s throat were terrible.

Lohengrin seemed to be fighting a defensive battle, keeping the lioness at bay and trusting to his armor for protection from the flames. The lioness had no such compunction. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl that would have made Jonathan certain that he was about to die if he’d been back in his human form.

With a howl, the lioness leapt past Lohengrin and into the main room. The open architecture served her. There was no way to block her path, and she was able to leap from one end of the room to the other, claws digging into the walls and floor.

“Stop!” Lohengrin shouted. “You must stop!”

Fuck that, Jonathan thought. Go! Let it go! But without the benefit of lungs or a throat, all he managed was a slightly louder buzzing.

An alarm blared. Jonathan felt a few of his wasps cook off and die. And then a few more. Either he was getting worse at dodging the lioness …

No, no—the house was on fire.

In the study, flames had taken the desk and the wall of awards. The hallway was also alight, tongues of blue-and-orange flame licking at the walls and ceiling. The lioness roared again, and flames belched out, breaking off Lohengrin’s armor and setting the curtains on fire.

Jonathan condensed back into human form at the front door. Another fire alarm went off, the high squeal like the house itself screaming in fear. The sound seemed to shock Lohengrin and the lioness both. Two heads—one armored the other leonine—turned toward Jonathan. He threw open the door. “Get out! Now! Out!”

For the first time, both the lioness and Lohengrin noticed the flames sheeting up the wall, the swaths of sword-slashed and burning furniture. To Jonathan’s profound relief, they bolted for the door.

The lioness paused on the lawn, her head shifting from Jonathan to Lohengrin and back.

“Ah. Good kitty?” Jonathan said. The lioness howled, turned, and sped away into the night. Lohengrin took two fast steps after her, and then stopped. The lioness was already half a block away, and still accelerating. Lohengrin’s sword and armor vanished.

Flames flickered inside the house. Smoke was billowing out of the movable skylight in Peregrine’s bedroom. Jonathan sat on the lawn. Lohengrin stepped over and squatted down beside him.

“The house,” Lohengrin said.

“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “We torched it.”

“Where are your clothes?” Lohengrin asked.

Jonathan sighed. “In the house,” he said.

“Und the key for the auto?”

“In the pocket,” Jonathan agreed. “With my wallet.”

In the distance, sirens were just starting to wail. Jonathan sucked his teeth, Lohengrin looked around, shamefaced.

“Well,” Jonathan said, “that could have gone better.”