Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven Read online

  He took out a tablet and absently swiped its screen for a couple of minutes. A tap on my table made me check my hand, then the flop. Once again, my cards were useless. I folded, eager to get back to what my electric rock star was doing. I just couldn’t look away, and there was no perky waitress around to blame. I was the curious and interested one.

  He stilled, slowly putting his tablet down as he looked up and around the room. He seemed to stare at something, and I followed his gaze to the top left corner of the ceiling. I caught a glimpse of something dark slipping into the vent… a long, thick black tail.

  What the…

  I figured it could be an oversized rat. But since when do rats scamper across the ceiling?

  The hint of a bad feeling poked at my stomach, and I exhaled sharply. Maybe I’d imagined it.

  I checked the booth, and… he was gone. Whoever he was, he was weird. Devastatingly handsome, but weird. I looked up at the vent again, but there was nothing there to arouse any suspicion.

  “Miss?” The dealer’s voice dragged me back into reality. He was talking to the cucumber chick, who pursed her lips, then briefly glanced at her mate. He was pretending to look at his cards, resting his chin in his hand, index finger tapping the tip of his nose. I’d learned by now that it was a signal for a good hand.

  “I’ll put in twenty,” the young woman replied, smirking as she pushed blue chips to the center of the table.

  A large figure appeared to my right. I would’ve been startled, had I not recognized Malcolm’s pale blue eyes and round, bald head. He was big and soft on the outside, kind of like the Michelin man stuffed into an Armani suit, but a damn brute if ever crossed.

  It’s showtime.

  They’d probably seen enough through the cameras to confirm my suspicions, if they’d decided to send the big guy, directly. A wave of fear and panic hit me like a bucket of ice water—hard bucket included in the toss. The cucumbers were broiling, as Malcolm glowered at them. Their faces were pale, beads of sweat blooming on their temples. I had never felt anyone switch from giddy to petrified in just ten seconds.

  “You two.” Malcolm nodded at the couple, still separated by the three gamblers. “I need you to stand up and slowly step away from the table.”

  Malcolm never ordered anyone to do anything. He used his calm voice to simply tell people what they had to do, without a fuss. Nobody dared challenge him. What he said was going to happen… well, it always happened. With no exception. He told you to stand up, you sprang to your feet. No questions asked. This time, however, it didn’t seem to immediately stick.

  “Is… Is there something wrong, sir?” the cucumber guy asked, his voice a little pitchy, as the girl slowly stood up, gripping the edge of the table as if to stop herself from collapsing.

  Their world was crashing down on them, and it hurt like hell. My stomach tightened itself into a knot, and my blood went on the race of the century through my veins. I broke into a sweat as my heart skipped a couple of beats. Of course, the legal implications were damning. If caught cheating, players were taken to a back room, where the police would later find them. What happened from the moment they left the table until the police officers got there, however, varied from one establishment to another.

  Malcolm was big and scary as hell, and this couple seemed to have been through the motions before—otherwise, they wouldn’t be so terrified. What they didn’t know was that Malcolm only employed legal methods of detention. No one walked out with bruises or broken bones unless they assaulted someone, and security were forced to defend themselves.

  “I’m not going to ask you again,” Malcolm replied. He hadn’t even brought backup with him. To be fair, there were two guards stationed by the main entrance, anyway. There was nowhere to run.

  The guy stood and chuckled nervously.

  “Seriously, what’s going on here? What did we do?” he asked, while the girl pressed her lips tight together.

  “I think you know exactly what’s going on,” Malcolm replied dryly.

  The three gamblers stared at each other, then scowled at the couple. The old-timer was particularly pissed off. I could tell from how badly I wanted to shove my fist in the young guy’s face, as he continued to laugh it off.

  “No, I don’t! I’m just here playing my game. I’m not bothering anyone!” he insisted.

  “You really don’t want to do this here, buddy.” Malcolm was unfazed and nodded at the bouncers from the main entrance. They both walked over and flanked the couple. “We’re going to go into the back room now.”

  “Nah, man, I’m not going to no back room.” The guy shook his head, trying hilariously hard to keep his cool. I noticed a yellowish glimmer in his brown eyes but couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, exactly. It could just be reflections from the overhead chandeliers.

  Fear clamped on my throat and stiffened my muscles. He didn’t want to disappear into that back room. I thought I could maybe soothe him a little, tell him that nobody was going to hurt him back there, but that would mean revealing my identity as a casino employee. If I outed myself now, other players would learn about me, and my job would be compromised. So, I kept my mouth shut and tried to ride it all out.

  “Relax, buddy,” Malcolm retorted, rolling his eyes. “No one’s getting kneecapped tonight. This is a legally compliant establishment, not a mobster movie.”

  The two security guards politely, yet firmly, nudged them away from their chairs and escorted the couple away as they both voiced their protests.

  “Wait! My money! What about my money?” the guy cried out.

  “You’ll get your buy-in back, but all your winnings will be returned to the house, since you’ve been cheating your ass off,” Malcolm shot back.

  It wasn’t over, though. The crippling fear didn’t leave me. The farther the couple got from me, the lower the intensity of their emotions was supposed to be. That was always the case. No exception. My unique ability was subject to physical distance.

  And yet, I was still terrified. I realized then that I wasn’t experiencing the couple’s feelings anymore. It was someone else. I glanced around the casino, catching glimpses of curious customers as they watched the couple getting escorted to the other side of the room.

  The three gamblers left at my table were just… upset. They felt like idiots, and, by extension, so did I. But no one here was afraid. The games we’d played were going to be annulled, and they were going to get their money back. Those were the house rules, where cheaters were involved. At the end of the night, they were going to walk away as the winners, so to speak. Of course, we all knew they were just going to gamble their money away at another table an hour later, but still. It felt like a second chance for them.

  Malcolm offered a warm smile to the remaining gamblers. “You’re free to put your money into another game.”

  That’s how a casino works, after all. They make their money from other people’s vices. It wasn’t Malcolm’s place to preach or to judge. Our key responsibility was to drive revenue.

  So, it was obvious that the fear making me tremble didn’t belong to the gamblers. I made brief eye contact with the dealer, who looked away, and it hit me. It was him.

  The dealer was absently shuffling a deck of cards, but his fear seeped through me. He was involved with the cucumbers. There was a whiff of familiarity that I hadn’t caught from him earlier because I’d been too focused on the couple. But how? The couple had only seemed to coordinate with each other during the games, so how had the dealer helped?

  A thought crossed my mind, and I opened my clutch and took out a pair of small, yellow-lens glasses. I looked through them at his deck of cards and exhaled. They were marked. The yellowish glimmers in the cucumber guy’s eyes weren’t a chandelier reflection. They were contact lenses, crafted from a material that worked like my special glasses.

  I quickly took my glasses off, chuckling. “I thought I could see better with my glasses, but the light really isn’t helping,” I murmured,
flashing a smile to the other players.

  I then gave Malcolm a discreet nudge and nodded at the dealer, who was nervously eyeing us both at this point. He’d caught on. He’d realized what I’d done. The guy was a new employee—otherwise, he never would’ve used marked cards on my shift. No one had warned him, either. Good.

  “You,” Malcolm said to the dealer. “We need to talk.”

  “A-About what?” he replied, his voice barely audible. His enclosed position at the specially designed table made me feel trapped. The dealer could have no access to people near the table during the games, to avoid foul play. Hence, he was basically plopped in the middle of it. To get out of there fast, he’d have to jump over the table and crawl to the edge.

  He didn’t give Malcolm a chance to explain, as he did exactly what I’d expected, and sprang on top of the table. It was time for more… drastic measures.

  I held my breath, and thousands of cards burst out from the shelves beneath the table.

  The dealer fell backward, dazed and confused by the flurry of playing cards swarming all around him, like crazed birds in a horror movie. He yelped and cursed as they fluttered frenetically around him, swatting him over the face, defying the laws of physics.

  Gasps erupted from around the table and the rest of the room as the cards scattered in the air.

  Malcolm lunged after the dealer, but he rolled over the table, pushing the other players away as he made a run for the main doors. There was no security on that side, and he could easily escape. The two guards were busy with the cheaters, and the others were farther back in the room, with not enough time to reach us.

  “I don’t think so,” I muttered and set my sights on one of the empty chairs at the last blackjack table by the exit.

  When I said I wasn’t like most people, I wasn’t kidding. Empathy wasn’t my only unique… skill. Telekinesis, over which I had better control, was the second one—though I’d yet to understand its extent, and it often depended on my anger to perform properly. Straight-up weirdo.

  It felt as if I had these invisible tendrils extending from my fingers, and I had to focus them on an object in order for me to take hold of and then move it.

  The dealer had made me angry enough to focus and take control of that chair, twenty feet away from me. It slid across the room and tripped the guy. He stumbled and landed flat on his face, with a painfully heavy thud. I had a feeling he’d at least sprained something in the process.

  Atta girl!

  I was still working on improving my telekinetic ability, but I’d managed to move an object to a predetermined location without a fuss. Compared to my earliest attempts when it first began to manifest, around the age of seven, I dared to call it progress.

  Malcolm ran over to the dealer and pushed his knee into his back, prompting him to cry out from the pain. Two other bouncers rushed in from the bar and got the dealer up on his feet.

  “Take him to the back room, too,” Malcolm barked, annoyed whenever he was forced to get athletic in his Armani suit. “We’re pressing charges!”

  They both nodded and dragged him away. They passed by me, and there it was again: the sheer terror. This guy had been in prison before. He clearly didn’t want to go back, but hey, you commit crimes, you pay the price.

  Malcolm got up as I collected what was left of my poker chips and bid my farewell to the other three players. Two waitresses and a new dealer quickly took over, inviting the players to resume their seats and offering plenty of drinks on the house. It was the least the casino could do, after one of its crooked dealers had shoved three of its clients away from the table.

  “How did you do that?” Malcolm reached my side as I walked over to the cashier.

  “Do what?”

  It was time to come up with good excuses for my inhuman abilities. Fortunately, I had an entire arsenal of perfectly reasonable explanations. Malcolm was very fond of me, but he was also very curious. This wasn’t the first time he’d caught a whiff. My “intuition” had been a subject of his fascination from the day he’d hired me.

  “The cards, Harley,” he replied, slightly irritated. “How did you do that?”

  “Dude.” I chuckled. “I rigged the drawers. It’s an old-school carnival trick. I knew he was dirty.”

  Malcolm frowned. “How did you know that? How did you spot him?”

  Ugh, digging deeper.

  Malcolm had worked as a police officer for ten years before switching to private security. His detective skills had yet to simmer down.

  “I noticed some signs, Malcolm. Nothing special, trust me,” I said. “People are… well, they’re people. Their emotions betray them, and you, my friend, are a very intimidating presence. You made the guy nervous; I could tell before we opened the doors tonight. So, I employed some good ol’ mechanical tricks with the drawers, in case he tried to make a run for it. Which he obviously did.”

  “And the couple? How did you spot them this time?”

  “It’s my job, Malcolm. I’m not telling you my secrets.” I giggled. “It’s how I earn my keep.”

  He smirked. “And the chair?”

  He’d saved the best for last. I let out a long, tortured sigh as I returned the chips to the cashier with a friendly wink. She smiled briefly and handed over a receipt, which I slipped into Malcolm’s chest pocket.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I replied dryly. “Not my fault that boy has two left legs and can’t even run without tripping over random objects.”

  “The chair slid and—” He stopped himself, then took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He was frustrated. We’d been doing the same dance for three months now, since I’d started working here. I caught the cheaters. Sometimes I had to employ my unorthodox methods to stop them from fleeing. Then I had to explain the unexplainable. We’d both then shrug, I’d get paid, and we’d part ways until my next shift.

  The casino didn’t like drilling for information. As long as the cheaters were caught, and I got my bonuses, we were all happy. But Malcolm’s detective intuition made it hard for him to let go.

  “So, what’s my bonus for tonight?” I grinned, eager to change the subject to what really interested me.

  “Five percent, as usual.” Malcolm shook his head, giving me the half-smile that labeled me as “incorrigible.”

  “Oh, that’s…” I quickly did the math in my head and reached three zeroes, in the upper half of a decimal. “Hell, yes! I get to give my Daisy a new paintjob. Maybe a new exhaust, too!”

  After a life spent with a handful of personal belongings stashed in a black garbage bag as I was carted off from one foster family to another, I’d recently acquired a car—a raucous, black 1967 Ford Mustang in need of improvements and lots of love. I’d named her Daisy, and she was my first purchase as a responsible adult. She was also the birthday present I gave myself upon turning nineteen. Naturally, I was eager to invest a little bit of cash in her upkeep, whenever I got the chance, since the casino job paid pretty well. Most of the bonuses went right into my future college fund. But I did spoil myself and Daisy once in a while. Regardless of what others said, adulting was fun.

  Malcolm smiled softly. “I’ve got a good mechanic I can recommend, if you’re interested.”

  I was filled with affection, a gentle warmth I’d always imagined felt like fatherly love. I’d only felt it once before, with Mr. Smith, from my last foster family—the only decent home I was put in. Malcolm was, indeed, very fond of me. I thought of a warm breakfast on the kitchen table whenever he looked at me that way, reminding me of Mr. Smith’s maple syrup pancakes and freshly squeezed orange juice.

  “That would be great, thanks!” I beamed at him, then remembered the cucumbers. “Just so you know, the couple you guys lifted—they know each other. They didn’t think anyone would notice, but you know me. I think they’re quite seasoned, too. You might want the cops to check with Nevada casinos.”

  “G
ood point. Thank you, Harley.” Malcolm gave me an appreciative nod. “They’ll get banned, anyway, and we’ll put out a nationwide alert on their profiles. They didn’t show up in our system when they came in.”

  “Ah, yes, facial recognition cameras. I keep forgetting we have those,” I muttered, as I caught movement at the corner of my eye, then above us. Looking up, the flicker of a shadow in a corner by another vent made me still. I could’ve sworn I’d just seen that long black tail again…

  I must be tired.

  “They’ll get arrested, too,” Malcolm replied.

  I shrugged. “Hey, man, that’s what happens when you don’t keep your nose clean.”

  In retrospect, I could’ve ended up a lot worse, as a foster kid. We were the discarded souls that nobody wanted. Most of the kids in the system ended up in juvenile detention centers and, later on, prison.

  It wasn’t really their fault. Nobody chooses to be a criminal at the age of twelve. Your environment pushes you. The lack of involvement from the authorities when you signal abuse from one foster parent, then another—it makes you lose any semblance of hope. The system doesn’t believe you, and you grow up distrusting the system in return.

  Nobody listens to you. Nobody cares. You do what you can to get by. That’s how it usually goes down for us kids with black garbage bags.

  I did good for myself. I stayed out of serious trouble, despite my often-troublesome abilities. Of course, the other foster kids didn’t grow up with a note from their dad, telling them to “stay smart” and “stay safe.”

  As miserable as I was without parents to call my own, I still felt a little lucky to have had that handful of words to guide me.

  It was better than nothing.

  Chapter Three

  Shortly after the incident, my shift was over, but the night was far from coming to an end, with about a dozen customers left at the poker and blackjack tables. Only one of them was walking away with more money than he’d come in with. The others filled me with a sense of disappointment, and, at the same time, hope—the idea that they’d try again next time, and maybe beat the house.