The Librarians and the Lost Lamp

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Stone grumbled. “Give me a break.”

  Baird glanced at him. “Something wrong?”

  “Everything’s wrong,” he griped. “They call this an Arabian palace? Look at it: it’s a mishmash of styles and designs from over six hundred years of Islamic art and architecture, and from all over the Middle East. They’re jumbling early second-dynasty Umayyad motifs with late Abbasid refinements, thrown together completely at random.” He pointed indignantly at a decorative tile banner curving above a nearby archway. “See, those are fourteenth-century Persian arabesques, but the intertwined calligraphy is early Arabic script—ninth-century gliding Kufic, to be exact—and complete gibberish to boot.” He shook his head in dismay. “Unbelievable.”

  “Lighten up, mate,” Ezekiel said. “It’s a playground, not a museum.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Stone said irritably. “But they could at least try to be a bit more authentic when it comes to the decor and architecture. Would it have killed them to hire somebody who actually knew something about classical Islamic art and design?”

  Ezekiel chuckled at how worked up Stone was getting about the phony Arabian trappings of the casino. It was funny how seriously he took his beloved art history jibber-jabber sometimes. “Kind of think you’re missing the point here, mate.”

  “We’re Librarians,” Stone insisted. “We’re supposed to care about this stuff.” He looked to the third member of their trio, who had kept quiet up until now. “Back me up on this here, Cassie … Cassie?”

  Concern crept into his voice, displacing exasperation, as Cassandra was found to be transfixed by the overpowering sights and sounds of the casino floor, staring wide eyed at the garish spectacle. Her eyes were unfocused, her head swaying atop her slender neck. Her breathing quickened until she was almost hyperventilating.

  “Patterns,” she murmured under her breath, so that Ezekiel had to strain to hear her over the general clamor. “Patterns and probabilities. Too many probabilities … calculating odds, counting cards, double or nothing, let it ride. Einstein said that God did not shoot dice with the universe, but quantum theory begs to differ. Progressive slots build to exponentially bigger jackpots. Roulette wheels keep on spinning; the odds against correctly betting on a single number are thirty-five to one, but American wheels have a single zero and European-style wheels have two. Two of a kind, two pairs, too many games, too many ways to win or lose.…”

  “Oh, crap.” Ezekiel recognized the symptoms. “She’s in meltdown mode.”

  Along with her brain tumor, Cassandra suffered from synesthesia, a condition that often caused her senses and synapses to get scrambled when she took in too much stimuli at once. She saw numbers as colors, smelled mathematics, and heard science like music in her ears. Auditory and visual hallucinations impinged on her senses, which were cross-wired to her photographic memory. At such times, she could get lost in her own rapid-fire calculations and streams of thought, resulting in a cerebral chain reaction that put her more or less out of commission. This hadn’t happened in a while, however, and Ezekiel had thought she’d gotten the problem under control … until now.

  “It’s the sensory overload,” Stone diagnosed. “All this glitz and gaming. She can’t process it all.”

  Makes sense, Ezekiel thought. Casinos were supposed to be over-the-top and disorienting, the better to part you from your hard-earned cash. No wonder Cassandra’s blowing a fuse.

  “Can you talk her down?” Baird asked Stone urgently. “You’ve done it before.”

  “I’ll give it my best shot.” He took Cassandra gently by the shoulders and maneuvered himself so he blocked her view of the gaming floor. “Cassie? Cassandra? Listen to me. Just look at me and tune everything else out. You hear me?”

  She blinked, as if she was trying to concentrate on what Stone was saying, but some sort of mental static was getting in the way.

  “I’m trying, but…” She teetered unsteadily. Her eyes spun in their sockets, trying to take it all in along with whatever mathematical magic was going on in her brain. “Percentages, possibilities, profits and losses…”

  “Never mind that. Just let it go. You can do it. I know you can.”

  Ezekiel wasn’t sure about that. This was as bad as he’d seen Cassandra for some time. What if Stone couldn’t snap her out of it?

  Baird looked worried, too. “Maybe we should just get her away from here and come back later?”

  “No!” Cassandra blurted. “I can manage. You don’t need to coddle me. I just need a minute to get my thoughts under control.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Focus … focus … focusing … the Clipping Book, Dunphy, from the Annex to the chapel to the trailer to here…”

  Ezekiel rooted for her. Come on, Cassandra. Shake it off.

  It took more than a moment, but she somehow managed to pull herself together. Her eyes opened and she exhaled as she looked at her teammates instead of the bedazzling bedlam of the casino. She still looked a little shaky, but better than before.

  “Okay,” she said weakly. “I’m back.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Baird asked.

  “I think so,” she replied. “Sorry about that. I just didn’t expect it to be so … overwhelming.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Stone said. “You’re hardly the first person to lose their bearings in Vegas.” He snorted at the glorious excess surrounding them. “You know what they say: what happens in Ali Baba’s Palace stays in Ali Baba’s Palace.”

  “Unless it ends up on YouTube,” Ezekiel said to lighten the mood. “Not that Cassandra’s spell was terribly view-worthy.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

  As ever, Baird tried to get them back on mission. “Any thoughts on how to find Dunphy in this mob scene?”

  “We could just stake out his room,” Stone suggested, “and wait for him to show up.”

  Ezekiel couldn’t think of a more tedious prospect. The last thing he wanted to do in Vegas was camp out in a hotel corridor. Talk about a wasted opportunity, especially when he had a much better plan.

  “Forget that,” he said cheerfully. “I know just where to find him.”

  “And where is that?” Baird asked.

  “Not playing the slots or anything penny-ante, that’s for sure. He’s living his dream here, being a high roller at last. He’s going to go where the serious action is. High stakes, big players, lots of attention, the works.”

  “Which is?” Stone pressed him.

  “Just follow me.” Ezekiel set off across the floor of the casino, never doubting that the others would fall in behind him. He strode briskly through the invigorating chaos and commotion, enjoying himself thoroughly. “I know exactly where to find him … or I’m not Ezekiel Jones.”

  * * *

  Ezekiel’s instincts proved correct, as he led them unerringly toward a raucous, high-stakes craps game that seemed to be attracting a whole lot of attention. Squeezing through a mob of whooping spectators, Baird spotted Dunphy seated at the table, blowing on a pair of dice. She recognized him at once from the photo in the news clippings. Dunphy was better dressed now, and he had a slightly better haircut, but he still gave off the air of somebody who spent too much time in casinos. An obviously fake spray tan suggested that he didn’t get much sun in real life, and his designer clothes were already rumpled. He was a slight, scrawny fellow, with fuzzy red hair, googly eyes, and a weak chin, whose rather comical features were brightened by his beaming expression. He was obviously having the time of his life.

  Just as Jones predicted, Baird noted. I’ve got to give it to him: he knows his stuff, all right.

  A huge stack of chips rested in the chip slot in front of Dunphy, not far from a posted sign stipulating that the minimum bid at this table was a daunting twenty-five dollars. More chips were stacked on the green felt table, which was surrounded by a low padded wall. Giddy spectators cheered him on, while a skimpily clad server comped him to a free dr
ink. He tipped her a green chip, while fiddling with a penny that he kept rolling back and forth between the fingers of his free hand.

  “Let it ride!” the crowd chanted. “Let it ride!”

  Dunphy grinned, basking in the spotlight. “What the heck? It’s only money.”

  Tossing the dice with one hand, he bounced the dice off the far side of the pit. The audience and other players gasped in dismay as he crapped out by rolling a three. A dealer collected his previous winnings, but Dunphy shrugged off the loss. Wagering more chips, of recklessly large denominations, he rolled the bones again and came up with a winning seven. Cheers erupted as the dealer paid off.

  “Now that’s what I like to see!” Dunphy said.

  Playing boldly and betting all over the board, while soaking up the adulation and attention of the crowd, he swiftly built up his winnings to where they’d been before—and then some. Dice bounced across the table. Brightly colored chips piled up before being exchanged for even higher value chips.

  “Looks like his winning streak is still going strong,” Stone said, “more or less.”

  Baird was reluctant to jump to conclusions. “Could be he’s just on a roll. It happens.”

  “No, not like this,” Cassandra said, frowning. Her eyes lifted upward, studying her invisible calculations. “He’s not winning every throw, but he’s still beating the odds to a degree that is statistically impossible, even allowing for random chance. The house, at the very least, should have an edge of 1.4 percent, so that the longer he plays, the more he should lose, and that edge goes way up the more aggressively he plays. Gus is betting recklessly, challenging the odds on every throw, but he’s still winning like they’re slanted in his favor.”

  “Check out that lucky penny he keeps fiddling with,” Stone said. “Wanna bet that’s our magic talisman?”

  “Not necessarily,” Ezekiel said. “Might just be his personal good-luck charm. Lots of gamblers have them.”

  “Then why are we here?” Stone said. “Admit it, Jones. You were wrong about the horseshoe thing.” He held out an open palm. “Pay up, man.”

  “Not so fast, mate. I’m not conceding defeat until we’ve confirmed that coin is the real deal.”

  “What else could it be?” Stone said. “Get real.”

  Baird intervened. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m with Jones. We need to get an official ruling before we act on our assumptions.” She backed away from the craps table. “You three keep an eye on Dunphy—and that penny—while I consult with Jenkins. Maybe he can shed some light here.”

  Retreating from the frenetic clamor of the gaming floor, she sought out a (relatively) quiet corner in which to make a phone call. An outdoor courtyard, adjacent to the gaming floor, offered a portion of peace and privacy and she dialed up the Annex on her phone.

  “Colonel?” Jenkins answered immediately. “How may I assist you?”

  She quickly filled him in on their investigation to date. “So are we on the right track here? Is there really such a thing as a lucky penny?”

  “Absolutely. Pennies, silver dollars, doubloons, dinarii, drachmas, not to mention lucky socks, jewelry, and undergarments. Humanity has been using magic to try to manipulate the laws of probability since before we discovered fire, with profoundly mixed results. And the likelihood of such charms actually working has surely increased since wild magic was let back into the world.”

  Baird nodded to herself. Once upon a time, as she understood it, magic had been more or less confined to certain rare sites and relics, making it much less prevalent in modern times than in ages past, but then a diabolical secret society known as the Serpent Brotherhood had conspired to reactivate long-dormant ley lines and cause “wild” magic to flow unchecked back into the world at large, resulting in a huge uptick in magical activity and a lot more work for the Librarians. Maybe Dunphy’s lucky penny had been kick-started by that worldwide influx of loose magical energy as well?

  “Give it to me straight,” she said. “How serious is this?”

  “Well, I’d have to examine the coin personally to be certain,” Jenkins said. “But make no mistake, Colonel, tampering with Dame Fortune can have truly dire consequences, and not just for the foolhardy soul who is rash enough to attempt it. Our entire reality is based on probabilities, from the subatomic level to the odds of an asteroid not hitting our planet. Throw probability out the window, and you can potentially set off an avalanche of unlikely occurrences spreading far beyond the immediate orbit of Mr. Dunphy to affect all of Las Vegas and its environs, with catastrophic results.”

  “But that’s a worst-case scenario, right? What are the odds of things getting that bad?”

  “Weren’t you listening?” Jenkins said archly. “The odds don’t matter if chance itself is out of order. Even the most unlikely scenario can become likely if probability is taken out of the equation. Trust me on this, Colonel, Luck is anything but a lady. More like a two-faced trollop who will stab you in the back and break your heart when you least expect it.”

  “Er, you’re being metaphorical, right?” Baird asked.

  “Am I?” he asked, deadpan.

  8

  2016

  Cassandra winced as Dunphy rolled yet another seven. Just watching him beat the odds over and over, in defiance of anything resembling elementary statistics, made her head hurt. There had to be magic at work; it was the only explanation that made any sense.

  “Heads up, folks.” Baird rejoined the team at the craps table, which was still drawing a large crowd of raucous onlookers. “I just spoke with Jenkins. We need to get our hands on that penny so that he can verify that it’s our target.”

  “Leave it to me,” Ezekiel said, confidently casing the scene. “I don’t suppose anyone has a spare penny? I never bother with small change myself.”

  Stone fished a penny from his jeans. “Anything else you need?”

  “A distraction would be helpful,” Ezekiel conceded, “if not strictly required.”

  Stone glanced around the casino. “I could start a ruckus,” he suggested, maybe a bit too readily.

  “Slow down, cowboy,” Baird said. “I know how much you enjoy a good brawl, but let’s hold off on that option for the time being. I’d rather not bring hotel security down on us before we even know for sure what we’re dealing with.”

  “Spoilsport,” Stone muttered.

  “I’ve been called worse.” She turned toward Cassandra. “What about you, Red? You up to trying to break the house?”

  “I think so,” Cassandra said. “But not at this table. The odds aren’t playing by the rules here.” She massaged her temples. “It’s making my head spin.”

  “Fair enough,” Baird said. “Choose your game.”

  Turning away from the craps game, Cassandra surveyed the gaming floor. The dizzying mix of noise, lights, and gambling threatened to overwhelm her again, but she forced herself to focus on the task at hand, tuning out any and all distractions. Odds and angles flashed before eyes, swirling in space like luminous sigils, shifting and recalibrating along with her racing thoughts. She waved her hands as though conducting an orchestra, manipulating the hallucinatory symbols and equations as needed. Hypothetical roulette wheels spun in the air. Imaginary piles of chips rose and fell according to the relevant ratios and variables. Synesthesia scrambled her senses, so equations sang like melodies in her ears and numbers tasted like … doughnuts?

  “Games of chance, games of skill and chance, fifty-two cards in a deck, six sides on a die, six ways to roll a natural seven, eighty numbers on a keno card, but only twenty balls are drawn each game, two ones equal snake eyes, two sixes are called boxcars, the odds of rolling either are thirty-six to one.” She started speaking faster and faster, almost breathlessly. “Baccarat is the French pronunciation of the Italian word for zero, there are zero to thirty-six numbers on a standard American roulette wheel, an ace is worth ten points except when it’s only worth one.…”

  “Cassandra?”
Baird asked. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, only slightly fibbing. To keep her brain from running amuck, she wiped each possible game from view before analyzing the next one. Games of pure chance, like keno or slots, were impossible to outwit; poker was as much about bluffing and body language as math; roulette wheels made her dizzy, and baccarat was just weird, but …

  “Blackjack.” She dismissed the orbiting visuals with a swipe of her hand. “A smart player can reduce the house edge to less than one percent. With my brain, I can do even better … in theory.”

  “Good enough for me,” Baird said. “Get to it, girlfriend.”

  A high-stakes blackjack table was running not far from the crowd-pleasing action at the craps table. Taking a seat at the table, Cassandra gulped at the minimum bid. Hypothetical money was one thing. Actual cash, albeit transformed into shiny plastic chips, was something else again. It dawned on her that Jenkins had never really explained how the Library’s finances worked or what the limits of their expense accounts were.…

  Stone procured a wad of cash from an ATM. “You ever played this game before?”

  “Not in practice, but I think I’ve worked out a system.”

  He snorted. “You and everybody else at this table.”

  “But I’m not everybody else,” she reminded him.

  “No, you’re not.” He backed off to let her get to it. “Go to town, Cassie.”