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“Go in there and win today. The Shonin isn’t looking so good. He’s drinking that lousy poison book because you’re not coming up with the goods. Get something useful today.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Don’t work on it. Do it.”
He lets go and moves off with his suits. I’ll give him one thing. He’s got quite a grip.
EVERY TIME I walk into Mason’s cell I half expect to see one of the meat cathedrals. Pink light glowing off his smug face. Flayed guards hung upside down in narrow naves. It’s almost disappointing when the door opens and it’s the same flat fluorescent light as always. I think I’d prefer an Angra butcher shop. We’d be somewhere real, where the consequences of our games—the ones on the table and the ones we’re playing in each other’s head—are laid out, bare and raw, on cards made of skin and chips carved from bones. But no, we’re in a dismal cell, playing Old Maid like we have all the time in the world.
Mason is at his table, handcuffs secured to the top again. He doesn’t seem to mind. He looks up and smiles when he sees me.
Wells was telling the truth. Mason’s eye is black and the sclera is red from a broken blood vessel. He moves from his shoulders, like he has a stiff back. Well, my hand still itches a little from where I punched out the car window, so in my book we’re even.
There’s a deck of cards on the table.
“More poker?” I say. “I already beat you at that. Wait. I forgot. It’s all the Infinite Game. I’ll have to infinitely beat you again.”
“These cards aren’t exactly what we should be playing with, but we can make them work,” he says. Then his voice goes raspy and guttural. “The game is called Take and Give.”
Mason is speaking Hellion. I forgot that he could do that. Hearing it come out of his mouth brings back bad memories of him running Hell, me chasing Alice’s soul, and losing my arm.
I speak Hellion back to him. Whoever is monitoring the room is scrambling for dictionaries and flipping on supercomputers for voice analysis, but they’re going to be shit out of luck.
“A Hellion game? I never heard of it.”
“Aristocrats played it, but you killed off most of the people who might’ve taught it to you.”
“How does it work?”
Mason cuts the cards, breaks the deck, and slides half the cards to me.
“I take something from you and then I give you something. A card in this case. Hellion cards are more interesting, but we’ll just have to make do. You take something from me and give me something. The one with the most at the end wins.”
“What am I giving and taking?”
“Anything.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’ll get the hang of it. I’ll go first so you’ll see how it works.”
He lays his hand on his cards.
“I take your heart and give you . . .”
He draws a card.
“A three of s
pades. Your turn.”
“That’s it? That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Just try it.”
I keep waiting for him to laugh in my face and explain the real game, but he just sits there. I draw a card.
“I take your lace doily and give you . . .”
