The Serpent

  Ernie watched, her heart pounding, as Trey calmly stared up at the Virginia beast, whose face was now only inches above his. Slowly, he drew his deck from the back pocket of his jeans, but he kept his hand behind his back. Gabe was up in an instant, putting his arm out just in time to block Tarlae from charging the older woman who was threatening her lover.

  “Ginny,” said Minh, who looked more bored and irritated than concerned. “Cut it out. Everyone here respects you and Lawrence. And we have bigger battles to fight.”

  Virginia cocked her monstrous head in Minh’s direction. “I don’t like this Raccoon. He’s unpredictable. He shouldn’t be here.”

  Ernie wanted to clap her hands over her ears. Virginia’s voice could probably be heard up in the mountains—it was so loud. For a minute, all the Dealers argued while they pulled out their decks. The room started going shimmery, and the air warped with heat. The walls began to shake. Ernie’s mother’s prize antique—a hand-thrown fan vase—fell from the mantel and shattered on the floor at Trey’s feet. And that was the last straw.

  “Put your cards away, or get out of my house,” Ernie shouted at the top of her lungs. “Jeez! You people can’t talk for five minutes without getting in a fight with each other. Why the hell would I want you on my team? God.”

  For a moment, there was silence. Everyone, even the seething Virginia monster, seemed stunned by her outburst. But then Alvarez, sitting on the couch and calmly twirling his cane, said, “Virginia should do this trick in the battle. It’s more or less the best thing she has up those ridiculous sleeves.”

  And that was it. Virginia roared and lunged for Alvarez, who lifted his own meticulously tailored sleeve and set loose a black monkey with a funny white beard, who leapt at Virginia, growing three times larger as it flew through the air, its screech turning to a bellow. Ernie stumbled back to avoid getting clawed as Trey loosed his raccoon. The room filled with smoke.

  Cursing and coughing, Ernie shoved past Gabe and leapt onto the coffee table, already pulling her deck from her pocket. She knew the card she needed, and prayed it would work. Fumbling as the shouting continued, she pulled out the Amplify card that she’d used this morning and held it up, focusing on what she was about to say and mentally crossing her fingers. “This is my mother’s house,” she shouted at the top of her lungs. Her voice wasn’t nearly as loud as Virginia’s had been, but it did succeed in quieting the room down by the time she added, “Quit acting like idiots, and focus on what we’re here to do!”

  Gabe, whose hair was loose and tangled and whose face was, for some reason, smeared with grime, smiled at the sight of her on the table. “She’s right. We might be tied to our animals, but we can still act like civilized humans, aye?”

  Tarlae sniffed and invited her octopus, which had been perched on Minh’s head, back onto her arm. Minh good-naturedly tugged one of its tentacles as it slid onto his shoulder, and it responded by slapping him across the face. Alvarez muttered something as he used a card to fix a large char mark on his pant leg. Virginia was back to her lacy old-lady self and was now sitting on the couch, looking like she had no idea what Gabe was talking about. Trey stood behind her, glaring like he wished he could keep on brawling. He was bleeding from a gash in his arm but used a card to heal himself quickly. His eyes met Ernie’s. “Sorry about that,” he said. “As you can see, we have a few differences between us. Some of us play fair, and others . . .”

  Virginia’s lip curled as she shuffled her cards. “Some of us are competent, and others . . .”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Ernie yelled as Trey flipped one of his cards, causing another vase to rise from a sideboard and hover over Virginia’s head. Ernie glared at him until he magicked it back, then she looked around the trashed living room, too tired to think about how much time it would take to clean all this up. Slumping, she stepped off the coffee table, her sneakers smeared with some sort of creamy dip. “Maybe you guys should just leave.”

  “Maybe we should simply take those cards from you and divvy them up among ourselves,” said Alvarez with a sneer.

  Gabe moved forward, his hands out like he was trying to keep everyone calm. “Maybe it will help Ernie to understand why each of you is determined to take Duncan down.”

  “I’m not talking about it,” snapped Alvarez.

  “Maybe because it’s not much of a story,” drawled Virginia.

  Alvarez’s jaw clenched, and rage glittered in his eyes, but he remained silent.

  “I, on the other hand, have good reason to exterminate the Diamondback,” the old woman continued. “He’s a master defensive player with a taste for brutality.” Her lips puckered as if she’d tasted something sour. “I learned that the hard way during the Siege of Leningrad.”

  “Wait,” said Ernie. “Does that mean you were on the side of the Nazis?”

  “Let us keep to the matter at hand,” Tarlae chided. “What we’ve just established is that Virginia appreciates an intense offensive but has something to learn about defense.”

  “And that she’s a Nazi, apparently,” muttered Ernie.

  As Virginia assumed an offended air, Gabe wrapped his fingers around Ernie’s wrist and said, “Ernie, we’ve all done things—helped people, hurt people, whatever—that we’re not proud of.” He let out a heavy breath. “Anyone else?”

  Tarlae leaned against the wall and folded her arms over her chest. “Duncan ambushed me in a bazaar many years ago. Thieves, perhaps a dozen of them. I was a new Dealer—I had not yet learned to always have my cards at the ready, to be prepared to defend myself at all times. These thieves took my cards, each of them grabbing a few, and ran off in all directions, leaving me with just five.” Her dark eyes were on Ernie. “I understand what it means to lose your deck.”

  “But you got it back,” Ernie said, gesturing at Tarlae, who was practically glowing with health, something Ernie was deeply envious of at the moment.

  “I had help,” Tarlae said, looking down at the floor.

  “It’s how we met,” Trey murmured with a soft smile. “For the first and last time since I’ve known her, she was the damsel in distress.”

  Tarlae looked haunted by that vulnerability, which Ernie felt like she understood. “It took us months to get all my cards back, and months for me to recover my strength,” Tarlae said.

  Trey crossed the room and put his arm around her. “Duncan did it just for sport. He didn’t even care if he got her deck—he just wanted to see a new Dealer die. Shows you what kind of quality person he is.”

  “Shows you what kind of Forger he’d be,” added Minh. “Duncan is a scourge. He needs to be put down. He kills for sport and makes messes the rest of us have to clean up. That massacre in the Moro crater last century? Him. Shaji Massacre in China not even twenty years later? Him! Khaibakh—that was in the Soviet Union, and that was all him. Oh, and last but not least—” Minh’s eyes were alight with fury. “My Lai. You know what happened there?”

  Ernie looked away from him, because she could feel the heat of his anger. “US soldiers killed a bunch of Vietnamese civilians.”

  “Unarmed. Women and children. And who do you think played the cards that led to it?”

  “God,” Ernie said, shaking her head as she thought about it. “Next thing you’ll tell me is that he was responsible for 9/11.”

  Virginia shook her head. “To our knowledge, no Dealer had a hand in that,” she said quietly. “We have our assignments from his majesty”—she made another sour face—“and we operate for clients, but we are not involved in every human tragedy and triumph.”

  “But I get it. Duncan is basically the devil.” A devil who, by the sound of it, had been responsible for millions of deaths during his time as a Dealer.

  “You might get it with your mind,” Minh replied, “but your gut has no idea. You haven’t stood among the bodies. And he may not have been responsible for the towers, but we don’t even know what else he’s done—I only listed the disasters that I decided to mit
igate and to manage.” When he spoke again, Minh’s voice was all cold rage. “But at the least, I hope you see that this is bigger than any of us. Because if Duncan has his way, he will tear the world apart.” He gave Gabe the side-eye. “You sure you have the Marks secured?”

  Ernie narrowed her eyes. “Where are they?” Gabe had told her she shouldn’t take them to the meeting with the Forger, in case he decided to confiscate them.

  Gabe didn’t look apologetic. “Safe, and even safer if you don’t know. You’re already a target, and you can’t protect them. Not yet.”

  He was right, but something in Ernie twisted. Her dad had somehow gotten ahold of the Marks, and he’d sent them to her mom, and now . . . she’d lost them. Although she knew Gabe’s decision made sense, it felt like they’d been her responsibility, and she couldn’t quite shake the impulse to try to handle everything herself. As if he understood that, Gabe’s expression softened. “I think it makes you safer, too, Ernie.”

  She nodded. The other Dealers had begun to talk of their recent exploits, of how they’d use the Marks if they could get ahold of them, all while they pulled out their cards and began to magically repair the room. Gabe palmed his cards and did the same. “Why don’t you take a rest while we work on a plan?” he suggested.

  Ernie turned away, grimacing. She’d just witnessed these Dealers get into a fight over a few petty insults, and it wasn’t exactly inspiring confidence. But on the other hand, she was freaking wrung out by everything she’d seen and heard tonight, and she badly needed a break. She felt as if she’d been run over by a freight train—twice. “Okay, just for a few minutes.” She coughed and waved away a plume of soot as Tarlae reconstructed the fireplace hearth. “Maybe I’ll get a little fresh air.” She said it loudly and waited for some acknowledgment, but the Dealers were so involved with what they were doing that they seemed to have forgotten Ernie was there.

  Tears of exhaustion stinging her eyes, Ernie limped out onto the porch and trudged to the carport. Her head ached, a dull throb at the base of her skull. Her arms and legs hurt so much she almost wished she could just slough them off like dead skin. For one shining moment, she’d felt like she might have a chance to get her mom back, to win against all odds, but now it was clear that these people couldn’t work together. They were more likely to kill each other than to defeat a shared enemy.

  She sat on the hood of her mom’s old Volvo, cold and uncomfortable, and pulled out her cards again. For a moment, in the middle of that fray, Ernie had gotten her cards to work. Or she’d thought she had. Her voice had been loud enough to get the job done, but had that just been her, not the cards? “Hey, snake. Can you hear me?” she said to the cards. “Can you point me to the Strength card?” She flicked on the light, just a bare bulb hanging a few feet over her head, its filament glowing orange. Shuffling through the cards, she tried to decipher the symbols. She knew the Revelation, the Amplify, and the Friend-Lover card. On that last one, she could swear she saw a Gabe-shaped shadow beneath the skeleton-key symbol. But the other cards? This was a joke. Beneath the symbol, there were no moving shapes, no hologram. Everything was flat. Still.

  Dead.

  “Oh, god,” she whispered. Had she already lost?

  “Do you know,” said Minh, who was suddenly standing next to her and pocketing his cards, “why Virginia thought you looked familiar?”

  “Give me a second,” Ernie said in a strangled voice. “Trying to get my heart to beat again.”

  Minh laughed and offered her a beer. She took it, even though it was a brown ale and she preferred IPAs. It was cold and felt good as she took a few swallows. He climbed up on the hood, and she scooted over to make room. Out of all of them, he seemed the most sensible, which was a strange thing to think about a guy whose pet pig wielded hand grenades.

  “I shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on you so easily,” he told her, tipping back a beer of his own. “If you’re going to survive as a Dealer, you’re going to have to protect yourself. The cards will warn you if you ask them to.”

  “Oh. I’ll have to give that a try.” How could she admit the cards weren’t working for her? If he realized that she had already lost, he had no reason not to take her cards just to make sure Duncan died, too, never able to unite his deck.

  “It takes a while to learn all the tricks, even if you have a full deck,” said Minh. “I imagine you have to be more creative with half.”

  Ernie chuckled. “Yeah. Very.”

  “Your last name is Terwilliger.” He said it slowly, like he had when they were in Hong Kong.

  She turned her head to see him watching her, his dark eyes bright and his smile mischievous. “Yeah?”

  He looked up at the cobwebbed ceiling of the carport. “I knew a Terwilliger once.”

  “Oh, we’re everywhere.”

  “He was a Dealer.”

  Ernie’s stomach clenched.

  “He had the Dragonfly deck,” said Minh. “Dragonflies are intimidating predators. And related to serpents—at least symbolically—in some cultures. Did you know that?”

  “My mom calls dragonflies ‘snake doctors,’” Ernie said, reeling. “When I was a kid, she said that they hovered over snakes, waiting to stitch them up if they were wounded.” Her voice had sunk to a whisper. “Have you seen him lately? This Dealer named Terwilliger?”

  “My encounter with him was many years ago.”

  “How many?” Her voice broke.

  “The years don’t mean much to me now. Perhaps twenty?”

  “The first time you saw him or the last time you saw him?”

  “Both, actually,” said Minh. “I met him in Moscow, of all places. I was there to ensure the outcome of a mob war. The Bratva, you know.” He waved his hand like the Bratva were silly little gnomes instead of terrifying mobsters. “They pay well. And the Dragonfly, he was there on his own mission. He was looking for something.”

  “Do you know what?” Ernie felt strangely desperate, like someone on a desert island, dying of thirst and surrounded by salt water.

  “I never could get him to tell me, but I got the sense it was a relic of some type.”

  Her dad had been an antiquities dealer. “Did he happen to give you his first name?”

  “Of course. Redmond Terwilliger.” Minh was silent for a moment before he turned to look directly at Ernie and added, “You have his eyes.”

  Ernie’s mouth went dry. “Did he tell you anything else?”

  “That he had a wife and daughter that he missed very much. He was a young Dealer. It was a stupid thing to tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, young Dealer, it is a terrible thing when an enemy knows how to hurt you. Even worse when you hand him the weapons.”

  “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

  Minh shook his head. “I had no reason to, and, unlike Duncan, I don’t inflict pain for the fun of it.” He leaned back on the windshield, wincing as his back rested against the old wipers. “Virginia had a run-in with the Dragonfly as well. I don’t know the specifics, but I asked her about it earlier. Like me, she hasn’t seen him for many years.”

  “What does that mean? Did someone steal his deck or something?”

  Minh gave her a pitying look, maybe because of the broken tone of her voice. “No Dragonfly Dealer has been seen for years. So there’s your shred of hope.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  Minh glanced at the house. “Gabe is certainly very protective of you.”

  “He’s giving me a chance, but I know he wants to take out the Diamondback more than anything.” Which reminded her to go carefully with Gabe—she wanted to trust him, but he was holding her life in his hands.

  “Hmm,” said Minh. He sighed and took a long draft of the beer. Ernie did the same while she waited, enjoying the warmth in her aching tummy. “As we told you earlier, Dealers tend to work alone. Never in teams and rarely in pairs. Too much power, too many obstacles to forming lasting bonds.”

&nbsp
; “Why?”

  “We are owned creatures,” he said. “What the Forger gives, he can take away. We are hired for jobs, sent to unsavory places. Hardly the kind of lifestyle that nurtures good relationships.” His knowing, world-weary look had turned to one of desolation, and Ernie wondered what he had lost, to become what he was.

  “Tarlae and Trey seem close.”

  “They’ve joined their decks. A very foolish thing to do.”

  “Why is it so foolish?”

  “They are one heart with two bodies. You can figure out the rest.” Minh sat up. “I’m going to go see if there’s any beer left,” he said, stifling a burp with the back of his hand. “Coming?”

  Ernie shook her head. He had casually walked—or teleported—out here and dropped a bomb on her. She wasn’t sure she could stand upright, let alone deal with the individuals now squatting in her mother’s house.

  Her father had been a Dealer—and maybe still was—of the Dragonfly deck. But he hadn’t been seen in years. Except—she’d been getting postcards from him each year, sometimes a few times a year. What if . . .

  Newly energized, Ernie slid off the Volvo. She stood still for a moment, looking at the house and listening. The lights were still on, and she could hear laughter and talking. None of the Dealers would notice if she left for a little while, would they? Gabe had told her to get some rest.

  All she needed was an hour. She knew Duncan couldn’t track her, since she had the Revelation card. She put away her half deck and pulled out her phone. After calling up a Lyft, she limped down the driveway to stand by the road until the car came for her.

  If her dad was a Dealer, could she find him? Could he help her?

  She had no idea. All she knew was that the postcards had to be clues and that she was going to decipher them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By the time the Lyft driver dropped her off at her apartment, it was nearly ten, and the only thing dragging her out of the car was determination. Her thoughts had to push their way through a sludge of fear and exhaustion. But the notion that maybe, just maybe, her father might come back, might be out there somewhere, and might even be able to help was enough. She pulled herself up the steps to reach the second floor and let herself into her half-empty home.