Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(83)

The twins urged him to get in on a game of Threefold, but Cayo hung back, still hesitant. The buzzing was everywhere now, rattling his bones and making his teeth ache.

“Just one game,” they wheedled. “One!”

Finally, he relented to more cheers and Tomjen squeezing his shoulders with an encouraging shake. Cayo slid onto a stool and grinned at the dealer, a young woman with black skin and a brilliant, flashing smile.

“You look hungry,” she said in a rich alto voice.

Cayo scooped up his cards with a practiced hand. “Starving.”

Even while tipsy he knew which cards were throwaways and which would bring him fortune. They were imprinted onto his mind, scratched onto his skin like ink. Cayo dropped a hand that resulted in an effortless win, and Tomjen and the others screamed at his back, jumping up and down.

“Next round on Cayo!”

He gradually lost his sense of direction. He allowed them to pull him onward, into a wine bar where Tomjen nearly got into a fight with a man twice his size, through a street packed with half-dressed callers who whistled as he went by, and eventually into a casino that Cayo recognized as the Grand Mariner.

“You’re back,” said the dealer with the curly hair, the one he’d always been sweet on. They sounded happy, and that made Cayo happy, because finally there was someone who was glad to see him, someone he hadn’t disappointed yet.

“I’ve been away on business,” Cayo slurred, nearly falling in his attempt to sit at the Scatterjack table. “Top secret.” He put a finger to his lips, but it landed more on his nose.

The dealer laughed and dealt the cards, only one other person joining them for the game. “Sounds exciting. Want to tell me about it?”

Cayo made up a mess of a story about sailing the Southerly Sea, how he’d wrestled a squid and rode a whale to an underwater kingdom. The other player kept glancing at him in irritation. Then Cayo won, and the other player huffed before stalking off. Cayo ordered another drink.

“Might want to take it easy,” the dealer warned him.

“I’ve been taking it easy for forever,” Cayo mumbled as other bettors filled the seats beside him. “But nothing is easy. Nothing, nothing.”

He won that round, and the next. Where were Tomjen and the twins? He took a drag of someone’s cigarillo, but he wasn’t sure whose. His mouth tasted of pomegranates and smoke.

And then he lost, most of his winnings pushed to the far side of the table where a man had played his victorious hand.

“Wait,” Cayo said, unsure what had happened. “That’s my money.”

“That’s what you put on the table,” the dealer said, watching him with concern. “Maybe you should choose a different game? Or call it a night?”

“No.” He pushed a handful of coins forward, wondering what would happen if he upended his drink over the tiny mound of gold. Would they turn black? “I’ll win it back.”

The dealer sighed and kept going. Cayo lost the next round. And the next. His coins dwindled, and his glass was empty.

“What did you do to these cards?” Cayo demanded, the bite of anger in his voice.

“I can assure you, they’re not tampered with.”

“I’m not supposed to lose!” He lumbered to his feet, swaying. “Don’t you know the constellation I was born under? Luck! I’m the king of luck! I’m unstoppable!”

“Sir—”

“There you are!” The twins took him by the arms, they and Tomjen steering him out of the casino. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere less crowded.”

Cayo lifted his face to the drizzle of rain outside, laughing in delight at the simple pleasure of it, his anger forgotten. Who cared about money? He was feeling good, and he wanted to keep feeling good, because once he stopped then the bad things would come and devour him again.

“Don’t let them eat me,” he murmured to his friends, but they didn’t hear him over their own chatter.

He didn’t know where they went next. It was dark, cast only in a dim red light that reflected in the liquor bottles along the back wall and shone weakly through the haze of jaaga smoke. The people dancing in the center were a shadowy mass of limbs, and the air carried the tang of sweat and fermented things.

One of the twins danced with him, then he was getting another drink. The room was spinning funnily, his feet on backward. The entire world had shrunk to this one spot where he stood, laughing at nothing and everything.

Then he was leaning against the wall, a young man before him. He was handsome, with light brown hair and jet-colored eyes. When he smiled, it plucked a chord in Cayo’s stomach.

The young man said something, and Cayo responded, but he could barely hear or understand the words. The young man’s arm rested beside him against the wall, trapping him.

Lips found his. The young man kissed him, swiping his tongue through his mouth. Cayo hummed in surprise, his lips mostly numb but still feeling how they reacted, how he kissed him back because that was what he was supposed to do, wasn’t it?

And then something was in his mouth. The young man pressed a tablet to his cheek using his tongue, and Cayo felt the scythe of his smile against him.

Cayo mumbled a question, panic only a thin trickle in his bloodstream. The young man laughed and patted his cheek.

The tablet dissolved quickly, even as he doubled over and tried to spit it out, only making a mess as saliva dribbled down his chin. It left a medicinal taste in his mouth, his tongue tingling as it already began to take effect.