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Silas wisely endured his punishment in silence. She paid him quickly, then ran the cards through the shuffler. As she waited for the machine’s light to go green, she laughed again.
“I guess the sun even shines on a dog’s ass, some days.”
The others made their bets as she grabbed cards from the next deck. All except the gray-haired guy, who’d apparently had enough. Scooping up his own meager chip-stack, he climbed down from his chair and wandered away.
“Sat there for an hour and twenty-two minutes,” Veronique muttered nonchalantly. “Didn’t tip me once.”
The time seemed uncannily specific. Yet I didn’t doubt her for a single second.
“Well did you deal him anything good?” asked Silas.
“A couple of pocket flushes,” she shrugged. “But nothing like that four of kind over there.”
A sudden rush of movement called our attention to the neighboring table, where an entire group of people leapt to their feet. They began cheering and high-fiving wildly, hooting and hollering as the pit boss made his way over to verify the win.
“Kings,” Veronique said, still without looking up. “Good for them.”
It was downright uncanny; how much she could see without actually looking. Veronique’s attention might’ve seemed focused on her task at hand, but as always she saw everything and everyone around her. The whole thing at the next table had happened within the span of a single second. She’d called it even before the crowd began to cheer.
“H—How did you do that?” the woman with the earrings demanded.
“Do what?”
“You knew there was a four of a kind without even looking!” she gasped. “Almost like you made it happen.”
Veronique rolled her shoulders back and cracked her neck to one side. Her expression was suddenly whimsical.
“Who’s to say I didn’t?”
The woman stared back in astonishment for a long, long time. So long that she forgot to bet the bonus space, which she’d been doing the whole time.
“Here honey,” Veronique said, tapping the red circle. “Don’t forget.”
Eventually the excitement at the next table died down, and Veronique cracked her neck to the opposite side. Her all-seeing gift was amplified by her job. As a Vegas dealer, she was in the unique position to see everything that went down on the casino floor, night after night, patron after patron, in the most celebrity-ridden city in the world. As a result she knew who was in town and who wasn’t. She knew who won, who lost, who was cheating on whom. Damn near everything, really.
“Don’t take this wrong, but you’re a little bit spooky,” the woman with the crazy earrings told her solemnly.
Veronique’s face was impassive. She dealt the face-down pairs swiftly, then settled back as the players reached forward to peek at them.
“So which one of you is with the red princess?”
She nodded almost imperceptibly over my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn around to know who she was referring to.
“She’s with the both of us, actually,” Silas answered.
Veronique laughed merrily. “Yeah, well she’s too pretty for either of you. That goes for Smiley also, by the way. Just because he’s not here doesn’t get him off the hook.”
The dealer shot a quick glance at Brynne, during which she took complete and total stock of her. Behind her black-rimmed glasses, Veronique’s eyes suddenly narrowed.
“She’s not a…”
“No,” I said immediately, cutting her off. “Of course not!”
The card dealer’s mouth twisted sourly. Even so, I thought I saw the slightest hint of a grin.
“Didn’t think so,” she said, leaning in confidentially. “Women of the evening have a certain look about them. Their eyes are vacant. Haunting.”
“Haunting?”
