The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(58)

The waitress brought over a round of drinks. They sat before us, untouched.

“Let’s talk a different kind of business, then,” I said. “What would you want in exchange for a copy of his contract? Not the original, nothing binding, just a copy.”

“Now you’ve got me curious,” Calypso said, “but such things aren’t for sale. Tell me something, sorcerer: are you a gambling man?”

“Now and then.”

I didn’t see where the cup came from. Calypso just waved his hand and there it was on the table, an old cup of battered and stitched leather. Beside it, five little dice carved from yellowed bone bathed in the smoky electric light.

“I can always spot a gambling man. No, I won’t sell you the copy,” Calypso said. “If you’re willing to put a little something on the table, though, let’s play for it instead.”





Twenty-Eight



“Absolutely not.” Caitlin bristled. “I forbid it.”

Calypso looked pained. “Wingtaker, please. You’re charged with upholding the law, and you know the law. The mortal has every right to bargain with me. No one can interfere with that.”

“I can. He’s mine.”

He shook his head. “Not in the eyes of hell’s law. No mark, no brand, no tokens? You can’t speak for him.”

“What’s the game?” I said, wanting to get between them before things escalated.

“Liar’s dice,” Calypso said with a smile. “Individual-hand style. A simple little game of chance and skill.”

“And what do you want me to put on the table?”

Calypso took a drag from his cigarette, studying me through the haze. I felt like he was peeling me back, layer by layer, measuring how badly I wanted the contract and what he could get in return.

“One year of your life.”

I tried to look like the proposal didn’t faze me. In any contest of wits, steady nerves are half the battle. If you don’t have them, fake them.

“Front end or back end?” I asked.

“Back end. Memories aren’t worth a thing to me. Now and then, though, I get a client who wants to live just a little longer. Five years, ten years, enough time to appreciate what they’ve got. Those years have to come from someplace. Every man has his time to go, and your candle will burn out exactly one year sooner than its appointed date.”

“Daniel,” Caitlin said warningly.

“Could we have a second?” I said to Calypso.

He slowly rose from his chair. “Take your time,” he said. “Need to freshen up.”

I waited until he was out of earshot—I hoped—and leaned in.

“Cait, I have a plan, but we’re going to need that contract to swing Roth. It’s worth the risk.”

“A year of your life?”

“On the back end,” I said. “And if Lauren wins, I’m gonna lose all the years left in my life, along with everybody else on Earth. Look…if you really don’t want me to do this, I won’t. But I believe it’s worth taking a chance.”

She reached out and put her hand over mine. She looked me in the eye.

“All right,” she said, “here are the rules. He has to play fair, and so do you. That means following the spirit of the game. He can bluff, he can use wordplay, he can mislead within reason, but he can’t use loaded dice or cast a spell to swing the outcome. He likes games where you have to read people’s faces, because he’s been doing it for a very, very long time. You’ve never played against anybody this good.”

“Oh, I doubt that. You’ve never played Scrabble with Bentley. He has all the X, Y, and Z words in the dictionary memorized. Triple word score, every time.”

She squeezed my hand. “Please, Daniel. Take this seriously.”

I leaned in closer. I couldn’t resist a kiss at her earlobe as I whispered, “See? I’m nervous as hell, and I made myself look flippant. Trust me, I can take this guy.”

Calypso came back and slid into his chair, looking between us with an unspoken question on his lips.

“Let’s do this,” I said.

He smiled.

“Did your lady explain the rules?”

I nodded. “We play by the spirit of the game.”

Now there were two identical leather cups on the table and two sets of dice, as if they’d always been there.

“Then let’s play,” Calypso said.

Individual-hand liar’s dice is a stripped-down version of the real game. It’s a two-player showdown based on a little luck and a lot of bluffing. I scooped up the bones and spilled them into the cup, keeping my palm pressed over its mouth as I gave it a shake. All the while my eyes were fixed on Calypso’s face, roaming from his forehead to his lips, trying to get a read on his expressions.

They say that everybody has a tell. That’s not true. Everybody has lots of tells. There are over forty muscles in the human face, working in concert with thousands of possible ways to put your feelings on display to the world. Add in little twitches, shrugs of the shoulder, or the curl of a finger, and the number of tells—and the number of possible interpretations—is too many to count.

Show me a stone poker face when you’ve been expressive all night, and I know you’re hiding something. The right way to bluff isn’t to throw up a wall, because it can’t be done. What you want to do is mix your signals, throw up so many conflicting reads that your opponent can’t possibly get a fix on what you’re thinking. Baffle them with noise, not silence.