Games Creatures Play

  “Can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the rippling Stars and Stripes. Manfred had an eerie prickling on his arms. He was now absolutely sure that the blonde could read his mind.

  “. . . laaaaand of the freeeee . . . and the home of—the brave!” There was hooting and hollering and clapping at the anthem’s end. Manfred felt a thrill of patriotism, something that had never made his hair stand on end before. The announcer yelled, “Play ball!”

  All psychics learn to be sharp observers, because observation helps to fill in when the gift fails. Manfred could see that his companion reacted physically, viscerally, to the announcer’s cue. Her eyes widened, her muscles tensed, her eyes went from player to player . . . he could see the ghost of her former commitment to the game hovering over her head. She wanted to play, even now.

  She still looked plenty fit and strong for a woman her age, which he revised upward. He was sure she was in her late twenties.

  “Well,” she said absently, “I stand up all day, most days, and I do a hell of a lot of gardening . . . but I can see thirty coming up in my headlights.” She didn’t even bother to look at him; she was scoping out the Mudbugs’ first batter, a lanky girl with her hair pulled back in a long braid. The batter put on her batting glove and helmet with a look of determination. She began to swing the bat back and forth to ensure that her muscles were loose. She looked confident and trim in her gold and green.

  “You might at least try to pretend you can’t hear me,” Manfred whispered.

  “Oh, sorry.” She sighed. “I don’t often meet someone who won’t have an issue with it. It’s a real pleasure to say what I’m thinking.”

  He considered how difficult it would be to disguise the fact that you knew the private thoughts of everyone around you, every hour of every day. “Hard times,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I’m used to it. Did you come here to meet me? You think that’s why Miss Xylda told you to come? What are we supposed to do?”

  She was so guileless that she made Manfred feel old beyond his years.

  “I think we’re supposed to see what happens,” he said, almost at random.

  “Easy enough,” she said. The top of the inning was clearly a time spent feeling out the other team. The Falcons’ pitcher (“She’s our number two pitcher,” Blondie whispered) got two outs, after a lot of work, and though the third batter hit the ball, the right fielder got it to first in time.

  The bottom of the first was nerve-racking, if Blondie’s reactions were anything to go by. The Mudbugs’ pitcher had gotten one out. The next Lady Falcon had made first base, then made second by the sacrifice of the third batter in the lineup. The Falcon runner turned to look around the field, and Manfred saw that her jersey read Allen. She was a skinny girl with curly dark hair, but she was fast and she was alert.

  “Georgia Allen, junior,” the blonde said.

  The next Falcon batter at the plate (Washington) was a broad-shouldered girl with her hair gathered at the nape of her neck.

  “Hit it out of the park, Candice!” screamed her teammate from the dugout. Three rows down from Manfred and the blonde, a very broad woman said, “You hit that ball, Candice!” in a firm voice that implied this was a reasonable command.

  Candice Washington’s dark face was set in adamant lines. She stood with her feet planted in the batter’s box like a statue. The lanky Mudbug pitcher looked nervous for a moment, but then she pinched her lips together, began her windup, and threw a good pitch right at Candice. Because he was intent on the ball, Manfred spotted the moment when it jinked sideways just a little, just a fraction, so Candice’s mighty swing smacked it on the bottom instead of squarely in the middle.

  “Heads up!” screamed several voices simultaneously. People looked up to spot the ball, and a few covered their heads with their hands. The foul went flying into the visitor stands, to be caught by a boy who seemed to have brought a mitt just for such an event.

  “A foul can crack your skull, it hits you just right,” Blondie told him. “Did you see that?” She didn’t mean the boy’s catch.

  “Foul ball,” called the umpire, a thin woman with brittle auburn-dyed hair. “Ah . . . foul ball,” she added in a puzzled voice. She was clearly reviewing the pitch in her head. The ump looked as startled as Manfred felt.

  “There’s foul play afoot,” Manfred’s companion said, so darkly that Manfred had to stifle a laugh.

  “You must read a lot of mysteries,” he said. “And by the way, good play on words.”

  “I do read mysteries, and thanks. Now let’s hush, here’s the next pitch.” This time, the blonde wasn’t looking at the batter, but at the crowd. Manfred watched the opposing team’s players; in fact, he tried to watch everyone in that dugout.

  Candice watched the ball with her eyes squinted almost shut in grim resolve. Whether by calculation or intuition, she caught the ball square on the bat. The fluorescent yellow orb soared into the outfield. Georgia Allen took off from second like a scalded cheetah, while Candice Washington made it to first before the ball was retrieved by the left fielder. Allen scored, and made a great effort to look nonchalant as she took off her batting helmet. The Lady Falcon fans did a lot of yelling and stomping, and there was a lot of hugging in the dugout.

  The next Bon Temps batter in the lineup, a sophomore named Vivian Vavasour, was not as aggressive. Vavasour struck out; whether that was achieved by fair means or foul, Manfred couldn’t discern.

  “Do you have any ideas?” he said, as quietly as he could and still be heard in the noisy crowd, while the Lady Falcons took the field.

  “Well, I doubt it’s anyone from Bon Temps,” she said dryly. “I was looking at the moms from Toussaint, but I didn’t spot any of them doing something witchy.”

  “What about the assistant coach, Fleming?” Manfred said. “The man in the purple polo shirt, right inside the dugout.”

  “Why’d you pick him?”

  “His fingers were moving funny,” Manfred said.

  But the man, who was in his fifties, balding, and heavy, didn’t do anything odd during the top of the second inning. If he was jinxing the Lady Falcon batters by altering the pitches, he wasn’t helping the Lady Mudbug hitters.

  The Lady Falcon pitcher struggled but held the Lady Mudbugs at bay. During the bottom of the inning, Jacqueline Prescott (sixth in the Falcon batting order) did something wholly unexpected. The girl, tall and bony and brunette, was obviously nervous . . . so she swung at a ball she absolutely should not have tried to hit. Hit it she did, leaning forward and sideways to do so, while there was an audible chorus of “Oh, no!” from the Falcon stands. The ball thudded to the ground just behind the shortstop and the second baseman, both of whom scrambled for the ball without calling it. In the resulting collision, Jacqueline made it to first. She looked astonished when she realized she was safe. “Yeah, she ought to be surprised,” muttered Blondie. Even the Lady Falcons’ Coach Zanelli shook her head in amazement, before clapping.

  “He looks pissed,” murmured the blonde. Following her gaze, Manfred saw that the Lady Mudbugs’ assistant coach did indeed look angry.

  “He didn’t allow for the wild card,” the blonde said with some satisfaction.

  “I think he’ll try harder now; he’s mad,” Manfred said.

  And sure enough, the coach’s fingers moved with every succeeding pitch. Jacqueline stole second base, but the next three batters fell by the wayside, and the Lady Falcons took the field at the top of the third with the score still one-nothing. Manfred kept his eyes on the coach, but Fleming appeared to be doing regular coach stuff. He called the batting lineup and kept the team stats. Apparently, the burly man wasn’t going to aid his own team, just hinder the opposing one by making Mudbug pitches do unpredictable things.

  “He seems to have a code,” Manfred said dryly.

  “Yeah,” the blonde sai
d. “His code is screwing with the challenger. I got to have a word with that asshole.”

  Manfred could feel the anger rising from her like steam, especially after the Mudbugs scored four runs in the top of the third. The Lady Falcon pitcher had clearly lost her momentum, and a different pitcher was warming up.

  At the coaches’ request, the pitcher’s circle was leveled out by means of a device dragged by the Gator, which created a short break. The announcer took advantage of the lull to say, “Be sure and visit the refreshment stand! The Softball Moms have fixed popcorn, cold soda, hot chocolate, candy bars, and homemade cupcakes. Hot dogs are going on the grill! Go get yourself a chili dog! All proceeds go to support softball. And now, since we’ve got an unexpected break, instead of waiting until after the game, we’ll take this moment to ask players from the past to take the field.”

  Manfred’s companion rose and clambered down the bleachers, greeting people as she went. She stepped out onto the field with eleven other women ranging in age from sixty-five to nineteen. There was a lot more hugging and back-patting. With a sort of proprietary smugness, Manfred decided his blonde was the prettiest woman on the field, if not the most popular. The other women either embraced her with special vehemence or avoided her.

  After all this bonhomie, the women quickly lined up in age order to be introduced. When she came to Manfred’s blonde, the announcer said, “And we all remember the three-years-in-a-row All-Conference, All-State player, Sookie Stackhouse, one of the best right fielders in the history of Bon Temps!”

  Sookie Stackhouse (What a name, thought Manfred) smiled and waved like all the others. The people who cheered the loudest were the girls in the dugout.

  “She helps coach the team when she can get a few hours off,” said the older woman sitting past the spot where Sookie Stackhouse had been.

  “Sookie told me something about that,” he said agreeably, to prime the pump.

  The older woman nodded. She was heavy and plain, but Manfred could see the polished goodness in her. “My son is her brother’s best friend,” she said, as if her exact connection to Manfred’s new buddy were important. “They don’t come no better than Sookie. No matter what people say.” She gave his eyebrow piercings a cold flick of her eyes, as if to imply he might be one of those gossipers.

  Manfred would have been fascinated to know exactly what people had been saying, but he didn’t dare to ask.

  Sookie did a lot of networking on her way back to her seat, including a brief stop in the booth to have a friendly chat with the announcer, who seemed glad to see her. As the current Lady Falcons took the field, the Gator and its rake having done their job, she clambered back up the risers, giving the woman on her right a cheerful greeting and a half-hug. She turned to tell Manfred, “His name is Deke Fleming, in case you didn’t hear it at the beginning. He’s the assistant coach, and he doesn’t usually travel with the girls’ team. He’s usually with the boys. The Lady Mudbugs’ regular assistant was sick, so Fleming came along. The boys’ team has won the state championship in its division the past two years.”

  “Let me guess, he became the assistant coach two years ago.”

  She nodded. “So he’s a witch,” she whispered.

  “Not a warlock, or sorcerer?” Manfred asked.

  She gave him a raised-eyebrow look that said clearly, Don’t you know anything?

  “No, he’s a witch,” she said flatly. But she kept her voice very low. This was a woman used to telling secrets. “I pure-D can’t stand people who use their special powers to gain unfair advantage,” she added in the same low voice.

  “So you think you have to do something about it,” Manfred said, not really asking a question.

  “Course I do. You don’t feel that way?”

  He shrugged. “This is a small softball tournament between small schools in a poor state. You sure it makes a difference?”

  She had a visible struggle with her temper. “Of course it makes a difference,” she said between her teeth. “Using magic always makes a difference. The person it’s used on changes. The person who uses it changes. There’s always a price to pay.”

  “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “I do. You see the Lady Falcon pitcher? The one who just warmed up?” While the Mudbug pitcher finished the third inning—three up, three down—the Falcon girl kept moving, throwing ceaselessly to a member of her team. Olive skinned and raven haired, she had the look of a warrior: tall, broad, sturdy. The announcer had called her Ashley Stark. He nodded.

  “Bethany—Coach Zanelli—was trying to save Ashley for the next game. So she put her second pitcher in this game, which was supposed to be easy to win. Ashley is being scouted by LSU and by Louisiana Tech. Her family doesn’t have diddly-squat. If she’s signed by either one of those schools, she can go to college without having a huge debt to pay off.”

  “Maybe the other team has someone in the same position,” Manfred argued, simply to see how Sookie would respond.

  “If there is such a girl, she has to earn it fair and square,” Sookie said vehemently. “Everyone’s got to stand on her own merits. With this assistant coach, the boys’ team will never get that chance. Today, neither do the girls. The Lady Mudbugs have a reputation for crumpling early. Our girls were sure to win.” Sookie glared across the field at Fleming. She said, “There should be no magic in softball.”

  Xylda, did you make me drive all the way to Louisiana to make sure Ashley Stark goes to college? Have I got the answer right, now?

  “How the hell do I know why your gran brought you here? My gran seems to remind me of stuff all the time, and it’s always to my good. Maybe Miss Xylda just wants you to do the right thing.”

  “One girl’s scholarship?” Manfred felt doubtful, and he didn’t try to conceal it. “That just seems weird. Why would Xylda care?”

  She gave him a hard look. “Well, don’t do anything if you don’t want to,” she said crisply. “And if Miss Xylda wouldn’t care about Ashley, then sadly I think the worse of her. Excuse me. I got to say something to this jerk of a coach.” She rose and began making her way down the bleachers again. But people stopped her to talk to her, and a Softball Mom with a clipboard stopped her to go over a schedule, and the fourth inning raced by while Sookie made her way to the Mudbug dugout.

  Manfred watched her progress. He was troubled. Xylda—and even his own, more distant, mother—always had a course of action. Part of Xylda’s game was making him guess until he got it correctly. He just couldn’t figure out what Xylda could possibly want here. Manfred felt he was losing the game. He didn’t know the goal he should be trying to reach. And he didn’t know the stakes.

  Deke Fleming was standing behind the Mudbug dugout going over papers on a clipboard while the Mudbug head coach watched the field. By now it was the bottom of the fifth, and the Lady Mudbugs were sticking with the same pitcher, though her form was suffering. All the girls on the field were encouraging her, their voices a shrill chorus. “Way to pitch, Heather . . . You can do it, Heather . . . Show ’em what you got . . . You’re doing great . . .”

  Manfred was amazed all over again at the concept of working in tandem. Being a psychic was an essentially solitary profession.

  The assistant coach looked up from his clipboard as Sookie approached; he smiled since he’d seen her on the field in the little recognition ceremony. The smile faded utterly as she leaned close to him and began to talk. The anger in her straight spine was clear to anyone who happened to look their way, and there were some troubled glances exchanged between a few adults.

  After a moment, Deke Fleming actually stepped backward, looking both furious and guilty. Then he caught himself. His back stiffened. (Manfred thought, It’s like watching a pantomime.) Sookie’s finger came up and she shook it in Fleming’s face before spinning on her heel and stalking back to the Bon Temps stands. One of the T
oussaint moms called out, “Sore loser!” as Sookie walked by, which triggered some anxious laughter. But the umpire, naturally busy at her job of watching the game, wasn’t looking happy, either.

  “What’s the matter, Sookie?” asked the older woman who’d talked to Manfred earlier, after Sookie had plopped down on the bleacher with an angry thud. “Why’d you go lay into him?”

  “Maxine, I think he’s . . .” she began, and then called herself to order. “I was sure he was playing his roster out of order, and his pitcher is crow-hopping. It makes me so mad! He told me that the ump had already given the pitcher a warning, and that he had just turned in the roster changes to the umpire and the announcer.”

  “Hmmm,” said the older woman. “Well . . . did you check?”

  “Yes, he just did turn ’em in,” she said, as though she were chewing glass. “And I see he’s going to switch pitchers, so no more crow-hopping.”

  Manfred had no idea what that meant, and Sookie didn’t look as though she wanted to explain the game, so he kept silent.

  But when Deke Fleming looked up at Sookie in the stands, Manfred watched her tap the area by her eye and then point at the coach, very surreptitiously. Fleming got the point, though. He flushed and looked as though he would have enjoyed something painful happening to her.

  The inning was three up and three down for both pitchers, but the tide was beginning to turn for the Lady Falcons, at least psychologically. Not only did the Falcons have Ashley Stark, their star, on the mound, but after the Lady Mudbugs changed their pitcher, the Lady Falcon batters began to relax. Without Coach Fleming’s making the pitches go wild, the Falcons were able to hit, and in the bottom of the sixth the bases were loaded.