“So fifty six dollars total then?” I asked as I reached for my wallet, which felt just a little too light. I started to thumb through my wallet and I immediately started to mentally curse the emptiness. There was not enough to cover the cost of the martini, let alone anything else I might want. I should have planned a little better than this. Taking a deep breath I told myself that there was no need to panic, I just needed to produce a little more capitol. Grasping the first bill I could, which happened to have good old George picture, I poured enough heat through my will and into the bill to trigger a permanent transformation. It cost me more body heat than I wanted to use but it was what I needed to do. And as the warmth flowed into the lowly bill the guidance of my mind transformed it into a portrait of Ben Franklin.
I almost lost my balance. It was a lot of heat that I hadn’t been planning to use, but the last thing I needed was for any of the bills I used to revert back to their original form. Hence the extra body heat. The sudden chill I could deal with; that was why I had my collection of hand warmers. But what I couldn’t deal with was an irate Dempsey, so a few cold fingers were worth the extra trouble. Clenching my jaw, while trying not to appear to clench it, I pulled the newly transformed bill out of my wallet and handed it over to Simon.
“I’ll get you your change in a second sir.”
“Keep the change.”
“Thank you sir.” He replied with a vigorous nod.
Picking up my two drinks I turned around and headed back to my table, hopefully the hand I left was just about done. I also hoped that the interruption would help me block out Tyson’s icy gaze. It was exceptionally creepy.
Chapter 9
It was nice to finally win a pot. Not that this was my first pot of the night but it had been a while since I had won my last one. As I collected and stacked my new chips I looked around at the surviving tables and began to wonder why we hadn’t received an infusion of new blood. Since the start of the tournament five of our original number had been eliminated and plenty of the others tables had been removed, but the displaced players never made it to our table. Which was rather annoying since shortly after I had assumed control of William’s stack the table had cooled off rapidly for everyone.
As I continued stacking my winnings Allison chimed in. “You’ve had quite the run of luck recently, Marcus.” Glancing from her smile to her fingers I saw her smoothly guiding a chip back and forth across her knuckles.
Putting on a warm smile I replied. “Ever since William’s departure everyone at this table has had a good run of luck.” With a rather forced and disgusted chuckle I couldn’t help but add, “Keep in mind that we haven’t lost someone in oh…” Looking down at my watch I did the simple math before looking up and added, “It’s only been a couple of hours?”
“Stealing little pieces of each other’s pile has proven to be quite the kill joy.” Kelly voiced dryly.
“Has it really only been a couple of hours since William was eliminated?” Jonathon asked through weary eyes. His visible exhaustion made me glad I was so far able to keep myself supplied with adrenaline shots and caffeine pills, just never too much of either. With a smile I remembered the willingness of a chemistry teacher I once met to answer my random questions.
“Yes, it has!” snapped Kelly, who hadn’t fared all that well over the intervening hours. “And since we’ve all grown cautious, it means we’re unfortunately due for another boring three hours!”
“You are right that we’ve had to endure a rather tedious stretch of poker, though some of us have managed to keep our minds occupied.” And since I really didn’t care about her reaction, I shifted my gaze to Tyson and offered, “Since you’re the one most bothered by dithering about, I figure you must be going absolutely stir crazy sitting there and waiting for something to happen.”
The closed mouth Tyson looked up at me and asked, “Can I assume that the meaningless chit chat is finished for the time being?”
Every time I tried to stare down those lifeless orbs I got a chill down my spine. The man still unnerved me, and I did my best not to let him get anything more out of me than the barest minimum. So I looked straight at him and spoke with as little emotion as I could manage. “You’re the only person here I would have preferred never to have met.” And when he offered no reaction, not even a hint of surprise added grudgingly. “But I will admit, you’re quite the skilled player.”
For a second I thought I had rattled him as I thought perhaps confusion crossed his brow. But as quickly as the expression had appeared it was gone. Why had my compliment gotten a reaction, when my attempt to poke the proverbial bear went unnoticed? I guess the man had expected anything but a sincere compliment. After another moment Tyson nodded in acknowledgement before placing his neat little stack of chips into the pot. Immediately Kelly picked up one of her own chips as she considered her own decision.
I couldn’t help but wonder why the blinds themselves had yet to knock someone out; they were large enough, fifty and twenty-five thousand respectively. But as I had told Allison, everyone was getting a turn courting luck at this table. Thus the money simply kept getting passed around, which didn’t seem to be happening at any of the other tables. They were eliminating players, but for some reason this one seemed unable to do so. Taking another look around, I counted only three remaining tables.
When a table lost too many players to continue, it was removed and the players were lead to other tables. The magic number for this consolidation seemed to be five. Once a table dropped to five or fewer the remaining players were asked to pick up their chips and follow their guides to their new table. But for some reason there had been no additions to our table. I couldn’t think of a single reason why we were being ignored.