Games Creatures Play

  “I think so. I worked a half shift on Sunday, and it seemed normal.”

  “Are things better today, or worse?”

  A pan or something clattered onto the floor in the snack bar, and this time it was Belle who ran for the bathroom crying.

  “Worse,” Jake said, which I’d already figured out.

  “Then we don’t know if it’s at its peak yet.”

  “So it could get worse?”

  I nodded.

  “Know what? I think I feel a bad bout of the flu coming on.” He reached over and put his hand on my forehead. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve got a fever, too.”

  I pushed his hand away. “Stop that. I’m not leaving.”

  “Elspeth, you said you can’t get rid of the curse. What’s the point of sticking around?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but at least I can keep an eye on people and make sure they don’t get hurt.”

  “Let Amar do it. That’s why he gets the big bucks.”

  “He’s as affected by the curse as anybody, Jake.”

  “And it’s not getting to you?”

  “It’s making me a little crazy, but at least I know what’s happening. The thing is, I feel kind of responsible. Being a witch and all.” That wasn’t the whole truth, and the smell of my lie wafted across the counter, at least for me. “Besides, I don’t want the cops to shut the place down. It’s the noisiest job in town.” The only place close was the movie house, but the new manager liked showing deep, meaningful films without a single explosion or shootout. “But it’s different for you, having to deal with all this as a werewolf. I don’t blame you for wanting to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Are you saying you don’t think I can control my wolf?” he said ominously, and stepped way inside my personal bubble. “Like I’m some kind of animal?” He stepped even closer, and I backed up against the counter as far as I could go. “Like I’m a monster?”

  “No, no, you’re good, you’re cool, you’re—”

  “Psych!” He grinned as toothily as any wolf.

  “You son of a bitch!” I said, shoving him back.

  “Damn straight. And if you can take it, I can take it.”

  “Okay, then. We’ve got this covered.”

  We traded fist bumps, but he wasn’t fooling me any more than I was fooling him. The league championship started in less than an hour, which meant that eight four-bowler teams would be arriving any minute, along with their families and friends. So we were about to have seventy to a hundred people in the Castle, all of whose emotions were going to be mangled and magnified by the curse.

  It would have been nice if we could have relied on Amar, since he was the boss, but apparently the curse had intensified his laziness. Jake said he’d barely left his office all day. As for Rayleigh and Belle, they’d spent most of the week’s shifts in tears, so we weren’t expecting much support there, either.

  “At least it’s the Thursday night league,” I said. Thursday’s teams played for fun—they didn’t take the game or themselves seriously. “They won’t be too bad.” If Aunt Hester had foreseen me saying that, she must have laughed her ass off.

  Trouble started right after the teams and their supporters started showing up. First off, the Bowling Banshees and the Good Vibrations nearly came to blows over which team was going to bowl on lane one, even though it was no better than lane two or any other lane. We used a coin toss to decide that one, but only after each team inspected my quarter to make sure it wasn’t double-headed.

  Then the Sonic Boomers started screaming because their best bowler hadn’t shown up, so our clock had to be wrong, even though every cell phone in the Castle showed the same time. When the guy finally arrived two minutes after the official start time, the other team captains wanted him disqualified. I got Amar out of his office long enough to wave around a copy of the league’s rules that stated a player could be up to fifteen minutes late without penalty. That quieted everybody down for a few minutes.

  The spectators were just as contentious. One woman tried to butt in line at the snack bar and ended up with soda “accidentally” spilled on her brand-new shoes. She couldn’t decide who to hit up for a replacement pair—the woman who’d poured the soda or the Castle for not having tighter lids on our drinks. By that time the curse was getting to me enough that I had to resist the impulse to tell her that she should count herself lucky to have an excuse to throw the ugly things away.

  Finally the serious bowling began, only fifteen minutes later than planned, which Jake and I considered a triumph under the circumstances. The format was simple. Each team would play three strings, and the team with the highest combined score won. All eight teams would start Game One at the same time, but as each team finished, it could move on to Game Two, and then Game Three. Each team had a judge to keep an eye out for foot faults, lob line penalties, deliberate fouls, and so on. Since the league wasn’t usually that competitive—the prize was a six-pack of beer per player—they hadn’t hired pro judges. Instead, they were using volunteers from another league, which was supposed to keep them objective. The system would have worked great any other night. As it was, fights with the judges began almost immediately.

  Not only did the players argue with their own judges every time they were called out, but they tried to rat out the other teams for supposedly witnessed rule breaking ranging from delivering the ball before the pinsetter had completed its cycle to violating right-of-way. Of course the judges were just as messed up by the curse as the players were—one of them insisted he had authority to ban a player from candlepin bowling for life.

  It was a nightmare, and several times Jake and I were on the verge of pulling the fire alarm and clearing the place out. Only the knowledge that we’d lose our jobs kept us from it. Instead we kept fighting emotional fires as they ignited.

  After a while we fell into a routine. I stayed at the counter and used my Affinity to listen for trouble. It was pretty slow there anyway, since most league players had their own shoes. The only problem was the one woman who kept asking for shoes that were smaller than her actual feet, and then complained that all our shoes were mismarked. Even without the smell of her lie, I could see that she wore at least an 8. But she swore her feet were tiny, and tried every pair of 6s we had before starting in on the 7s.

  Once she’d squeezed into a 7½, I could concentrate listening in on everything happening in the building. Not everywhere at once, of course—that would have driven me insane. Instead I focused on one corner of the room at a time, or the snack bar, or the bathrooms, and so forth. It’s hard to describe to anybody who doesn’t have my Affinity—which is anybody else in the world—and the closest I could get when explaining it to Jake is that I was running a virtual cursor all over, and clicking on spots to listen in.

  Jake stayed out on the floor, and whenever I heard something looming, I used my Affinity to tell him, making it sound as if I were right next to him but so that nobody else heard me. He said it was weird as hell to hear my voice coming out of nowhere, but it worked.

  Once Jake knew where to go, he’d do his best to defuse the situation using his supernatural strength or that air of menace werewolves are so good at projecting. Once I think he growled.

  I took care of any problems I could from a distance. When I saw a kid about to push another kid down, I pulled a sound snippet out of my memory to scare him—my old math teacher’s voice saying, “Sit down immediately!” It worked on them just as well as it had on me back in the day.

  I don’t think we’d have survived if every crisis had needed intervention. Several of the upsets I overheard were pretty bad, but weren’t likely to turn violent. One guy broke up with his girlfriend over the phone—if she’d been in the building, he’d have been in danger, but she was in Connecticut. An older man was convinced that somebody was out to steal his brand-new set of Epco bowling balls, but he
didn’t threaten anybody. He just kept his balls zipped up securely in his bag, watched the bag like a hawk, and used the Castle’s balls, which probably didn’t help his game any. One girl had a boyfriend with commitment issues, and apparently the curse was reinforcing her fear that she was doing something wrong. She spent the whole night asking her friends for advice, and from the things those women told her, either they were being extra bitchy because of the curse or they were the worst friends ever.

  By nine, all but the last two teams had finished bowling—the Wilhelm Screamers and Jan’s Grapenuts had had so many arguments with the judges and each other that they were just finishing their second strings. Though I was starting to think we’d make it through the night relatively unscathed, I hadn’t given up my arcane eavesdropping, and I let my focus float toward the back of the house while Jake played guard dog up front.

  The party rooms were locked tight, Amar was holed up in his office with a six-pack he thought we didn’t know about, and for the first time in a while, nobody was crying in the ladies’ room. I switched my attention to the men’s room in time to hear a conversation already in progress.

  “That bastard Foley cheated! That was a clear foot foul in the third box of the first string and everybody knows it!”

  “She doesn’t love me anymore—I can tell something is wrong. I spent months saving for this ring, and another month waiting for the engraving, but there’s no reason to give it to her now.”

  Okay, it wasn’t really a conversation. More like dual monologues, one from a sore loser and one from a total loser.

  Griper: “He knew just what he’d done, too. Did you see him laughing?”

  Whiner: “If I propose and she turns me down, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve never loved anybody the way I love her.”

  Griper: “I wanted to wipe that smirk right off of his face, but I can wait. He’ll be the last bowler tonight, and I’ve got it all planned.”

  Whiner: “How can I live without her?”

  Griper: “I know damned well Foley rigged the game—there’s no way some kid who just started bowling last year could be that good. You can bet that his last box will be a strike. That’s all right. As soon as he makes that strike, it’s payback time. With everybody looking at him, nobody’s going to notice the gun. One shot and he’s history.”

  There was a kind of gasp, and I guess Whiner finally realized what the other guy was talking about. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, you wouldn’t really shoot him, would you?”

  Griper laughed. “Of course I’m kidding. I don’t even have a gun.”

  A horrid stench crept across the counter. Griper had been lying. Both times. He hadn’t been kidding, and he damned well did have a gun. And I didn’t recognize the voice.

  I rushed out from behind the counter, ignoring the woman who wanted to complain about having the wrong size shoes again, but before I could get to the bathroom, Amar grabbed me by the arm.

  “How many times do I have to tell you kids that there are no personal phone calls allowed on the job?”

  “What?” Was my mother calling with a fresh lecture, or had it taken him that long to find out about the call I’d made hours before?

  “Your crazy aunt has called me six times, and said she wouldn’t let up until I gave you this message. Do I look like a secretary?” He shoved a scribbled note at me. “One more call from her, and I’ll fire your ass. You hear me? Now get back to the counter and do your job!” He stomped back to his office and the waiting beer.

  Without stopping to read the message, I ran to the hall outside the men’s room, hoping to get a look at the guy with the gun. But nobody came out, and when I listened in, I realized nobody was inside. The murderer-to-be was mixing with the other people in the Castle, and I had no way to track him.

  Jake showed up at my elbow. “What’s wrong?”

  “Come back to the counter.” Once we were there, I conjured a cone of silence to tell him what I’d heard.

  “That’s it,” he said. “We’ve got to get these people out of here now. I’m pulling the fire alarm.” He headed toward the nearest wall box.

  At that moment, I finally looked at the piece of paper in my hand. All it said was, “Check your texts.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and a second later, screamed “STOP!” for Jake alone. He shook his head as if his ears were ringing, which they probably were, and trotted back.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Aunt Hester sent this.” I showed him the message on my phone.

  Don’t pull the alarm. Fire alarm + Perturbatio = riot. Cops = same effect.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me! Now what do we do?”

  “I don’t know.” I just knew we had to do something fast. The Screamers and the Grapenuts were starting their final strings. “Look, we know Foley is the target. All we have to do is keep an eye on him. If we see anybody aim a gun at him, we get between them.”

  “Screw that. I’m not letting you jump in front of a bullet. I am taking you out of here right now!”

  He took my hand and started pulling me toward the front door. I yanked back as hard as I could, but I was no match for a determined werewolf.

  “Stop it, Jake! I have to fix this.”

  “Let ’em fix it themselves.”

  “No, I can’t let this happen! It’s my fault!”

  He stopped pulling me, though he didn’t let go of my hand. “What are you talking about?”

  “You said things started to go wrong on Monday, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s because Sunday night I did something I shouldn’t have. A bunch of guys were having a party at my dorm, and they were so loud even I couldn’t study with all the commotion, let alone sleep. And I had an exam first thing next morning. So I conjured up some sounds from a cop movie. Banging on the door, ‘Open up, this is the police!’ even a barking police dog.”

  “That’s awesome. I bet you scared the crap out of them.”

  “Not awesome. One of them was on academic probation or something, and he was afraid he’d get expelled, so he climbed out of the window and fell.”

  “Was he hurt?”

  “He sprained his ankle, but it could have been worse.” In her lecture, my mother had told me in detail how much worse it could have been. “So the curse is my fault.”

  “How do you figure that? There’s no way that guy could have known who did it. And why would he curse the Castle instead of going after you?”

  “You don’t understand. I know the guy didn’t curse us—he’s got no magic. It was the Law of Return.”

  He looked blank. Apparently werewolves live by different principles.

  I said, “The Law of Return says we should only send good energy into the world so that only good energy will return to us. It’s like the Golden Rule on steroids. Instead of just ‘Do unto others . . .’ it’s ‘Whatever you do unto others will turn around and bite you on the ass.’ When I played that prank, I let bad energy into the world, and the curse is bad energy coming back at me. In a karmic sense.”

  “I’m no witch, but according to my philosophy class last year, karma doesn’t usually run on such a tight schedule.”

  “I know it sounds crazy—”

  “Because it is.”

  “—but when I realized the curse started Monday, I asked Aunt Hester if the Law of Return had anything to do with what was going on, and she said, ‘Of course it does.’ That means it’s my fault, and if I don’t stop that guy, that murder will be on me, too. Now let go of me before I call for help. Really loudly.”

  “If I do, you’re going to try to protect that guy Foley, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  He made a face, but he released me. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  “Jake, you’re the best.”

  Though we’d never been anything but
buds, I hugged him and gave him a kiss. It was just a quick one, but I could tell from his reaction that he’d have been happy to let it last a little longer. Come to think of it, so would I, had it been a better time.

  Jan’s Grapenuts and the Wilhelm Screamers were playing on lanes nine and ten, so everybody in the Castle was clustered around them. Half of them could have had weapons drawn and I wouldn’t have known it. Will Foley, a tall man who was normally completely laid back, was pacing back and forth while waiting for his turn to deliver.

  “Any ideas other than throwing myself on top of Will Foley?” I said.

  “Maybe I could smell the gun oil or bullets or something,” Jake said.

  “Do you know what a gun smells like?”

  “Not really. For some reason the Pack doesn’t like guns. Keeping them within reach of a bunch of people who lose it every month seems like a bad idea.”

  “We’re not big on having them around either.” A couple of generations back there’d been a member of the Kith with an Affinity for guns. It hadn’t ended well.

  Unless any of the bowlers started more arguments with the judges or themselves, we had maybe half an hour to figure out who the bastard was and stop him from shooting Foley.

  Jake and I separated to make our way through the crowd, sniffing and listening respectively. Every few minutes I’d send him a message asking if he had anything, and each time he growled a negative. With people crammed so close together, and the game reaching its end, emotions were running high and the curse was at its most powerful. We had to stop twice to head off minor violence, which meant we had that much less time to spot the killer.

  The Grapenuts had finished their last string, and they were in the lead, but the Screamers could still take it if they bowled well. And assuming Foley didn’t get shot and default on the game.