Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

starting to turn toward me when I drop inside, pressing against the bricks with my feet and my back, wedging myself. I pause to catch my breath.

“Watch for tails,” Capra says into the phone. “Don’t stop or slow down for anything, not lights or police. They can chase all they want. The more collateral damage, the better. Let them burn.”

Burn! I’d bet all the money on that poker table that the trucks are full of explosives. A fireworks show, the necromancer had said. And Jay’s going after them. I was crazy to let him off the leash.

Panic surges through my heart. I slide down the inside of the chimney, scraping hands and elbows, tearing up my dress. Soon—too soon to be at the bottom already—my shoes hit a roadblock. Feeling around, I find no openings in the walls. The blockage is solid metal. It’s the flue. The flue is shut! Why hadn’t I thought of that? I push on it. I pound on it. I stomp on it. I jump up and down on it. Once, twice…

On the third jump, the flue dislodges, and I crash down into the fireplace with an explosion of soot. Coughing, eyes watering, I roll out of the hearth into the dark basement. This dress has had enough. With only a slight shrug of my shoulders, it falls in tatters around my feet. Luckily, I had worn jeans and a T-shirt underneath it—a tip which Hillerman gave, but couldn’t follow herself with a backless dress.

Well, what a pretty sight I must be. Covered in soot, hair a wreck, knuckles and elbows bleeding. Chucking my mask away, I hang my clutch bag on my shoulder and mount the crumbling concrete steps leading up to the ballroom floor.

Time to crash this party.

“You know what, I changed my mind,” I holler over the music to the bartender. “Give me one of those flaming drinks.”

He looks me up and down, jaw dropping.

“You know the ones? With the frickin’ fire on them? So badass, right?” I flash him a toothy smile.

“Right, but—”

“Perfect. I’m at the poker table. Have it brought right over. Big tip coming your way.”

As I cut through the crowd, I can see armed guards looking from mask to mask, moving toward the center of the room. Hillerman and Russo hover near the poker table. Russo is first to see me, doing a double take befitting his jester face. Hillerman follows his gaze to find me, and I see her eyes grow wide behind her mask.

Fortunately, my chair at the table is still open, and Beyona is nowhere to be seen. Doubly fortunate is the giant pile of chips and neatly stacked hundred-dollar bills at my spot. I guess Tabitha couldn’t resist my non-bluff. I’d say I regret not being able to see the look on her face, but what’s about to happen should more than make up for that.

“Jumping jackpot!” I shout, lowering into my chair and dropping the clutch bag at my feet. “The old one-card trick, huh? I’d claim it works every time, but that’s not saying much, because I’ve only tried it once. Somebody please tell me they got that on video for their YouTube channel. I just want to see her face when it happened, like…wait, that’s it, right? That’s how she looked! Am I right?” I point at Tabitha Durran, who is utterly thunderstruck by the sight of me. “That’s exactly it, thank you.” As the bartender arrives to pour my drink, I prattle on. “I’m sorry I missed it, but I had to run all the way up to the roof to take out Rocky and Nash so the rest of my team could come over. I brought them down the chimney, can you believe that? How long’s it been since that thing was cleaned out?”

Sensing something of a problem at the table, the bartender stops pouring my drink, so I say to him, “What, no fire?” When I offer him a hundred-dollar bill, he overcomes his hesitation and ignites the drink. Yellow and orange flames dance across the rim of the glass. “Now look, I know half of you recognize me, so this goes without saying, but rules is rules, so I’m required to announce myself. I’m Shayne Davies of the FUA Double-D, and every single one of you sons-a-bitches is under arrest. Detective Russo, tell ’em what they are.”

Ripping his mask off, Russo turns to the demon thug next to him and knocks him clean out with one punch to the face. “Every single one of you sons-a-bitches is under arrest!” he bellows.

While all attention is on him, I tip my flaming drink over into my clutch bag and kick it further under the table. “If you don’t believe me, go ahead and ask Tabitha Durran if I’m the type who bluffs.”

It’s quiet now. No music. No talking. And some oblivious moron comes running up to Tabitha, all out of breath, and blurts, “Up on the roof! Rocky and Nash—”

Tabitha chops him in the throat and kicks his knee out from under him. He drops, smashing his jaw on the edge of the table and biting his tongue. In the tense silence, we all listen to him gurgling in pain on the floor. Nobody breathes. You could hear a pin drop, or a heartbeat, or a pressurized can of whipped cream expanding in the heat of a fire. From living all my life around a campfire with rowdy boys, I know exactly how long it takes for aerosol cans to explode when tossed into a flame.

“In about ten seconds, I’m going to give the order for my team to storm in here. When that happens, I would advise all of you to panic and start running around like crazy, because that’s more fun for my guys.”

A gun is pressed to the back of my head. A demon guard screams into my ear, “Tell them to stand down! Tell them to—” He cuts off abruptly as his