Freeks(24)

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said, and took a beer for myself.

“So, what are we playing tonight? Poker? Gin? Blackjack?” Hutch asked as he shuffled the deck of cards.

“How about gin? We haven’t played that in a while,” Luka said.

“Gin it is.” Hutch finished shuffling and dealt the cards. When he’d finished, we all organized our hands. “Okay. So here’s what I don’t understand. Can you see my cards, Mara?”

I shook my head. “Not unless you show them to me.”

“But your mom could see them, right? If she were playing with us?” Hutch asked.

“No.” I looked at him over the top of my cards and saw the bewilderment in his brown eyes. “She’s not psychic.”

“But then how does she see stuff?” Hutch lowered his cards and the furrow in his brow deepened.

“She’s a necromancer,” I explained. “She has contact with the spirits, and she sees what they tell her. Sometimes they give her insight into the future, or into people’s true motives. But that’s only because spirits can see more than we can.”

“And that’s different than being psychic how?” Hutch asked.

Laying his cards facedown the table, Luka chuckled a little. He leaned back in the booth, content to drink his beer and watch Hutch try to sort this all out.

“Hutch,” Roxie said, eyeing him severely. “You’ve been traveling with us for, like, nine months, and you still haven’t figured this stuff out?”

“It’s confusing.” Hutch shrugged and lowered his eyes as he shifted his cards around in his hand. “Maybe you don’t know because you grew up around it or you’ve been playing with fire and shoving swords down your throat most of your life. But for me, it’s all a bit strange still.”

“Where I grew up, there was nobody around who could do the things I did,” Roxie said, her expression darkening.

“They all thought I was a freak and practically ran me out of town,” Luka chimed in. “It wasn’t until I joined the sideshow that things started making sense.”

“Right.” Hutch looked between the two of them. “Because people explained things to you.”

“A psychic can see your thoughts, read minds, that kinda thing,” I told him. “A necromancer talks with the dead. That’s the difference.”

“And Gideon’s psychic,” Hutch said.

I nodded. “Right.”

“So he could read my cards, if he were here right now?” Hutch asked.

“He could, if he wanted to,” I allowed. “But he usually works to keep out of other people’s minds. He doesn’t like invading their privacy.”

“How does he do that?” Hutch asked.

“There’s a couple different ways,” I said, explaining it as I best understood it from what Gideon had told me. “One of them is practice, another way is keeping himself distracted and busy. He’s always reading or talking or doing something. He never just sits alone.”

“Alcohol helps,” Luka added, taking another drink of his beer.

Roxie nodded, laughing in agreement. “Oh yeah, alcohol definitely dulls the extra senses.”

“So then why do you guys drink?” Hutch asked.

“Sometimes, that is why,” Luka said.

“The year before I joined the sideshow, I was on a nonstop drinking binge, trying to make it go away,” Roxie said.

Hutch looked over at her. “You don’t like being able to make fire?”

“Pyrokinesis is all fun and games until you accidentally burn down your family’s house, destroying everything you own, including your pet goldfish, and burning your stepdad’s hands,” Roxie told him flatly.

In her early teens, Roxie had begun to realize that she had the power to create fire, but that wasn’t the worst of her problems. Around the same time, her stepdad realized that she was blossoming into a beautiful young woman, and he decided that he should act on it.

Roxie did her best to control the fire, and for the most part, she did a good job. It was just much harder to keep under wraps when she was upset or frightened. When her stepdad snuck into her room late one night, she’d finally had enough.

Unfortunately, the fire had gotten away from her. While the firefighters were still hosing down the rubble that had once been her home, Roxie turned and walked away, and she never went back.

“But we’re, like, super poor right now?” Hutch asked.

“Well, we’re always kinda poor, but yeah.” I sighed. “We’re pretty broke.”

“Then why doesn’t Gideon just go to Vegas and bet it all?” Hutch asked.

I shook my head. “Gideon has played in poker games before, but only when he’s desperate. He doesn’t like cheating.”

Luka picked up his cards and leaned forward on the table. “So, are we gonna play cards, or what? I’ve had a long night already.”

For the first time, I noticed the weariness in Luka’s face, the kind of look he’d get after a long night of working. He didn’t have a show tonight, but he’d been performing for tips, wandering around the midway swallowing swords and juggling knives. But that kinda thing usually didn’t affect him this badly.

“What happened?” I asked as he dealt the cards. “Why such a long night?”