Jokers Wild

Bagabond wondered if Paul liked cats. He had better.

"Okay, how did you track me to Jetboy's Tomb?" Bre

"It was easy. I'd put a bug on the cloak I'd given you. That little fellow with Fatman teleported me to the middle of the Holland Tu

"Humph. And then?"

"And then? Wyrm had planted lookouts to make sure they wouldn't be bothered while they were recovering the books. You must have come through while they were either still secur ing the perimeter or rousting someone else. At any rate, I took the place of one of them just as Wyrm and the others were dragging your unconscious body out of the tomb. Then it was simply a matter of waiting for my chance. I saw it, and jumped Wyrm."

"What did you do to him, anyway?"

Bre

"Remember the mustard I brought from the street vendor?" She did. "Wyrm s tongue is an extremely sensitive sensory organ that doesn't take too well to spices. Besides dis comforting him, I'm sure the mustard also wiped away all traces of your scent. So you should be safe from him."

"Thanks. And thanks for saving my life."

"You did the same for me. I'd have never gotten that gun away from Kien."

Je

They walked on in silence for a while. She felt Bre

"Well, here we are."

Books were everywhere about the living room, giving it a comfortable, lived-in look. At least that's how Je

"Make yourself at home," she said as she turned to put the coffeepot on the stove and got two plates and utensils from the cupboard. She turned back to see Bre

He nodded. She took the bag off her shoulder and put it on the counter next to the food. She selected a box, ladled a portion of shrimp fried rice onto her plate, and reached for the box with the sweet-and-sour chicken.

"Well, go ahead."

If Bre

"Is this a joke?" Bre

He was holding up Kien's diary.

Je

He thumbed through it, disbelief on his face.

"It's blank," he said, fa

"What the hell happened?" Bre

"Well, the nearest I can figure is that the ink didn't translate when I ghosted the book. You see, it takes special effort to make dense material like lead, or gold, insubstantial, and he must have used something like that to write… with… you see…"

Her voice ran down as the storm gathered on Bre

"I. Went. Through. All that shit. For. A. Blank. Book." He said each word as if it were a sentence.

"I couldn't tell you," Je

Bre

"A blank book," he repeated. The storm on his face broke and vanished as quickly as it had gathered. He sank down unseeingly into the large stufled chair near the bookcase, rose up slightly and picked up the hardcover copy of Scaramouche that was open, face down on the chair. He looked at it as if he'd never seen a book before and muttered, "Ishida, my roshi, if you could only have experienced the events of this day. What lessons could be learned. Tell me." He looked at Je

"I-I don't know," she faltered.

He shrugged. "I don't know either, yet. A new koan to meditate upon." Bre

He smiled, the first real smile that Je

Bre

She'd never seen him before with a true smile on his face, and she liked it. He told her, without saying anything, that he liked what he saw when he looked into hers.

He took his hood off and dropped it on the counter. Some of the tension had gone out of his face and he looked years younger than when Je

"Did you get any egg rolls?" he asked.

She looked down at the little boxes filled with Chinese food, and felt a strange, unexpected, unanalyzable stab of joy.

When Jack finally managed to find Freakers, he understood why it wasn't the kind of all-night dive that advertised itself strenuously. Those who needed to know where it was, found out. Looking at the moving neon woman astraddle the door, Jack thought that maybe some people arrived here simply by following their darkest instincts.

The neon seared his retinas like a branding iron. This hour of the early morning, there was no one guarding the door. Presumably this was the time of day when only the most dedicated clientele showed up.

Ignoring the swooping, glowing lines above him, Jack pushed open the door and entered. Smoke, muted conversational noise, geometric patterns in neon primariesthese were what he noticed first.

Across the main room, an obviously tired stripper desultorily went through the motions on a cylindrical revolving stage. Bathed in a rose spotlight, she undulated to a slow beat Jack couldn't even hear. He squinted, trying to focus in the smoke. He realized the strippers abdomen was covered with what looked like pairs of vertical lips. She was down to her last Gstring.

Jack turned away, sca

There was a nondescript man in a brown suit standing over the booth, talking to the young woman. He straightened as Jack approached. Jack faltered, then walked up to them. Ignoring the man in brown, Jack looked down at the woman. She started to smile.

"Uncle Jack?" The malachite eye in the silver alligator hanging from her left earlobe flashed as it caught light from the follow-spot clicking off on the stage.