Lillyanne Plume's Arc

Chapter 7 of 22

Lillyanne set the envelope on the bar between them. The wax caught the firelight. Scott looked at it the way a man looks at an old scar. He did not touch it at first. He drank instead, set the glass down, and slid the envelope toward himself with two fingers. He read. His mouth stayed flat. Under his cuff, a black band circled his wrist. A small light on its face pulsed with his pulse. She watched the light dim, steady, then dim again. He folded the paper along its old creases and pushed the envelope back to her. "You read it," she said. "Good. Be my partner." "No." "Why." "Because the place nearly killed me." He tapped the band on his wrist. The light blinked once. "This is what it left me. I don't go back." "How," she said. "How did it nearly kill you." He looked at her a long moment. When he spoke, his voice dropped and flattened. It was not the bar voice. It was a voice that had been waiting under the other one. "Walk away, Lillyanne. Get on the train. Burn the letter. Move cities. Don't say the word game out loud again." The warning was clean. She felt it in her stomach. She stayed on the stool. "How," she said again. He almost laughed. "You don't scare." "I'm asking." "And I'm not telling." He pulled the whiskey closer. "Not to a stranger. Tell me why you're so hungry to die, and I might tell you what it costs." She thought about lying. She thought about the practiced answer, the sympathy answer. She gave him the real one. "The world bores me," she said. "I win every game I sit down to. I mop floors at night because the days are the same. My father loved puzzles. He taught me. He's gone. Nothing since him has been hard." Scott watched her. The band on his wrist blinked. "And the game?" he said. "The game isn't the puzzle I want." She tapped the envelope. "This is. Someone picked me. They flooded my apartment with these. They sent a woman in a white suit to beat me at cards and hand me one in a parking lot. I want to know why they want me. That's the puzzle. The game is just the room where I get to ask." He was quiet. The fire moved. He turned the glass on the wood, once, twice. Something she said changed in his eyes. She could see it. He drank. He set the glass down and grabbed a deck of cards, but with a light chuckle he set them back down. “You like games? What about a riddle?” She met his grin. “Only if it comes with a prize.” “Answer this riddle correctly, and I’ll be your partner. Don’t, and you’re on your own.”