“Relax, buddy,” Malcolm retorted, rolling his eyes. “No one’s getting kneecapped tonight. This is a legally compliant establishment, not a mobster movie.”
The two security guards politely, yet firmly, nudged them away from their chairs and escorted the couple away as they both voiced their protests.
“Wait! My money! What about my money?” the guy cried out.
“You’ll get your buy-in back, but all your winnings will be returned to the house, since you’ve been cheating your ass off,” Malcolm shot back.
It wasn’t over, though. The crippling fear didn’t leave me. The farther the couple got from me, the lower the intensity of their emotions was supposed to be. That was always the case. No exception. My unique ability was subject to physical distance.
And yet, I was still terrified. I realized then that I wasn’t experiencing the couple’s feelings anymore. It was someone else. I glanced around the casino, catching glimpses of curious customers as they watched the couple getting escorted to the other side of the room.
The three gamblers left at my table were just… upset. They felt like idiots, and, by extension, so did I. But no one here was afraid. The games we’d played were going to be annulled, and they were going to get their money back. Those were the house rules, where cheaters were involved. At the end of the night, they were going to walk away as the winners, so to speak. Of course, we all knew they were just going to gamble their money away at another table an hour later, but still. It felt like a second chance for them.
Malcolm offered a warm smile to the remaining gamblers. “You’re free to put your money into another game.”
That’s how a casino works, after all. They make their money from other people’s vices. It wasn’t Malcolm’s place to preach or to judge. Our key responsibility was to drive revenue.
So, it was obvious that the fear making me tremble didn’t belong to the gamblers. I made brief eye contact with the dealer, who looked away, and it hit me. It was him.
The dealer was absently shuffling a deck of cards, but his fear seeped through me. He was involved with the cucumbers. There was a whiff of familiarity that I hadn’t caught from him earlier because I’d been too focused on the couple. But how? The couple had only seemed to coordinate with each other during the games, so how had the dealer helped?
A thought crossed my mind, and I opened my clutch and took out a pair of small, yellow-lens glasses. I looked through them at his deck of cards and exhaled. They were marked. The yellowish glimmers in the cucumber guy’s eyes weren’t a chandelier reflection. They were contact lenses, crafted from a material that worked like my special glasses.
I quickly took my glasses off, chuckling. “I thought I could see better with my glasses, but the light really isn’t helping,” I murmured, flashing a smile to the other players.
I then gave Malcolm a discreet nudge and nodded at the dealer, who was nervously eyeing us both at this point. He’d caught on. He’d realized what I’d done. The guy was a new employee—otherwise, he never would’ve used marked cards on my shift. No one had warned him, either. Good.
“You,” Malcolm said to the dealer. “We need to talk.”
“A-About what?” he replied, his voice barely audible. His enclosed position at the specially designed table made me feel trapped. The dealer could have no access to people near the table during the games, to avoid foul play. Hence, he was basically plopped in the middle of it. To get out of there fast, he’d have to jump over the table and crawl to the edge.
He didn’t give Malcolm a chance to explain, as he did exactly what I’d expected, and sprang on top of the table. It was time for more… drastic measures.
I held my breath, and thousands of cards burst out from the shelves beneath the table.
The dealer fell backward, dazed and confused by the flurry of playing cards swarming all around him, like crazed birds in a horror movie. He yelped and cursed as they fluttered frenetically around him, swatting him over the face, defying the laws of physics.
Gasps erupted from around the table and the rest of the room as the cards scattered in the air.
Malcolm lunged after the dealer, but he rolled over the table, pushing the other players away as he made a run for the main doors. There was no security on that side, and he could easily escape. The two guards were busy with the cheaters, and the others were farther back in the room, with not enough time to reach us.
“I don’t think so,” I muttered and set my sights on one of the empty chairs at the last blackjack table by the exit.
When I said I wasn’t like most people, I wasn’t kidding. Empathy wasn’t my only unique… skill. Telekinesis, over which I had better control, was the second one—though I’d yet to understand its extent, and it often depended on my anger to perform properly. Straight-up weirdo.
It felt as if I had these invisible tendrils extending from my fingers, and I had to focus them on an object in order for me to take hold of and then move it.
The dealer had made me angry enough to focus and take control of that chair, twenty feet away from me. It slid across the room and tripped the guy. He stumbled and landed flat on his face, with a painfully heavy thud. I had a feeling he’d at least sprained something in the process.
Atta girl!
I was still working on improving my telekinetic ability, but I’d managed to move an object to a predetermined location without a fuss. Compared to my earliest attempts when it first began to manifest, around the age of seven, I dared to call it progress.
Malcolm ran over to the dealer and pushed his knee into his back, prompting him to cry out from the pain. Two other bouncers rushed in from the bar and got the dealer up on his feet.
“Take him to the back room, too,” Malcolm barked, annoyed whenever he was forced to get athletic in his Armani suit. “We’re pressing charges!”
They both nodded and dragged him away. They passed by me, and there it was again: the sheer terror. This guy had been in prison before. He clearly didn’t want to go back, but hey, you commit crimes, you pay the price.
Malcolm got up as I collected what was left of my poker chips and bid my farewell to the other three players. Two waitresses and a new dealer quickly took over, inviting the players to resume their seats and offering plenty of drinks on the house. It was the least the casino could do, after one of its crooked dealers had shoved three of its clients away from the table.
“How did you do that?” Malcolm reached my side as I walked over to the cashier.
“Do what?”
It was time to come up with good excuses for my inhuman abilities. Fortunately, I had an entire arsenal of perfectly reasonable explanations. Malcolm was very fond of me, but he was also very curious. This wasn’t the first time he’d caught a whiff. My “intuition” had been a subject of his fascination from the day he’d hired me.
“The cards, Harley,” he replied, slightly irritated. “How did you do that?”
“Dude.” I chuckled. “I rigged the drawers. It’s an old-school carnival trick. I knew he was dirty.”
Malcolm frowned. “How did you know that? How did you spot him?”
Ugh, digging deeper.
Malcolm had worked as a police officer for ten years before switching to private security. His detective skills had yet to simmer down.
“I noticed some signs, Malcolm. Nothing special, trust me,” I said. “People are… well, they’re people. Their emotions betray them, and you, my friend, are a very intimidating presence. You made the guy nervous; I could tell before we opened the doors tonight. So, I employed some good ol’ mechanical tricks with the drawers, in case he tried to make a run for it. Which he obviously did.”
“And the couple? How did you spot them this time?”
“It’s my job, Malcolm. I’m not telling you my secrets.” I giggled. “It’s how I earn my keep.”
He smirked. “And the chair?”
He’d saved the best for last. I let out a long, tortured sigh as I returned the chips to the cashier with a friendly wink. She smiled briefly and handed over a receipt, which I slipped into Malcolm’s chest pocket.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I replied dryly. “Not my fault that boy has two left legs and can’t even run without tripping over random objects.”
“The chair slid and—” He stopped himself, then took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
He was frustrated. We’d been doing the same dance for three months now, since I’d started working here. I caught the cheaters. Sometimes I had to employ my unorthodox methods to stop them from fleeing. Then I had to explain the unexplainable. We’d both then shrug, I’d get paid, and we’d part ways until my next shift.
The casino didn’t like drilling for information. As long as the cheaters were caught, and I got my bonuses, we were all happy. But Malcolm’s detective intuition made it hard for him to let go.
“So, what’s my bonus for tonight?” I grinned, eager to change the subject to what really interested me.
“Five percent, as usual.” Malcolm shook his head, giving me the half-smile that labeled me as “incorrigible.”
“Oh, that’s…” I quickly did the math in my head and reached three zeroes, in the upper half of a decimal. “Hell, yes! I get to give my Daisy a new paintjob. Maybe a new exhaust, too!”
After a life spent with a handful of personal belongings stashed in a black garbage bag as I was carted off from one foster family to another, I’d recently acquired a car—a raucous, black 1967 Ford Mustang in need of improvements and lots of love. I’d named her Daisy, and she was my first purchase as a responsible adult. She was also the birthday present I gave myself upon turning nineteen. Naturally, I was eager to invest a little bit of cash in her upkeep, whenever I got the chance, since the casino job paid pretty well. Most of the bonuses went right into my future college fund. But I did spoil myself and Daisy once in a while. Regardless of what others said, adulting was fun.