The generosity of the Market gathering left something to be desired.

  Jeremy didn't have much to wager, and nothing at all to trade, since he barely carried any cash around with him. He was forced to play extremely cautious, lest he lose every penny in a bad bet and be stuck there bored for the whole damn night, or try hitchhiking and hope he didn't get murdered or run down in the middle of the night. Without his gun and stuck in the middle of the woods, looking like he did, Jeremy definitely didn't want to risk it.

  "Fold," Jeremy grunted, tossing his cards forward.

  "Again?" asked a twenty-something girl with way too much makeup on, and not nearly enough basic care applied to her hair. "Jeez, man, you fold every hand. How're you ever gonna win anything?"

  "Someday," he murmured.

  "More for the rest of us," piped up a middle-aged guy looking just as disproportionately disheveled as the girl. His teeth and hair were practically perfect, but his entire face was covered by the ugliest beard Jeremy had ever laid eyes on. "I call," he added, tossing a few bills in.

  "Call," echoed Kyle, the last of their four-person game. He was a short, curly brown-haired kid trying to look way tougher than he appeared with a leather jacket and skull t-shirt. In all honesty, though, Jeremy actually thought he looked great. Man, if I were still nineteen…

  "Hey, what the fuck!"

  Someone two tables down was shouting. They all looked over. Julian was already there, holding the guy's arm in midair. He'd been about to strike someone. The dealer said something calmly to Julian, and in a minute the offender had been escorted away.

  "What was that?" Jeremy asked, turning back to their game.

  "Probably tried to cheat," said the middle-aged guy, as their dealer flipped over the next card.

  The girl next to Jeremy whistled at the new draw. "Ah, fuck yeah."

  "How can you tell?" he asked the guy.

  "Well, I suck at it, but there's ways for you to feel out other people using magic nearby. All the dealers are trained at it, y'know?"

  The dealer nodded, holding a very professional air. Some kind of Market… more like a fuckin' casino. "Bid to the lady."

  "Thaaaaaank you," she said, glancing at her cards again briefly.

  She's full of it. Doesn't have a thing. Jeremy tried to keep from rolling his eyes, curious to see what sort of bids would come out now that he was actually playing with two awakened. He'd been relegated, either on purpose or by sheer chance, to only play with other 'normal' people until now.

  "You're full of it," said Kyle, glaring at her.

  "Am I, Kyle?" she asked, eyes glittering. "How much are you willing to put on it?"

  "Your bid," he reminded her.

  "Tell you what. Since I know you're broke as fuck, I'll put one thousand on the next hand if you bid your copy."

  "Done," Kyle snapped, even as the other guy leaned forward slightly to object.

  "Now hang on a second—"

  "Let's see it," said the girl.

  Kyle twisted around and pulled a plain white sheet of paper out of his bag. It looked totally unremarkable, except that it had some sort of writing that Jeremy couldn't make out even from only a few feet away.

  Holy shit, is that…

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  He held it up just long enough for them to peek at the contents. "Let's see the thousand."

  The girl grinned, and withdrew a tattered mixed stack of hundreds, fifties, twenties — even a couple rumpled tens and fives. The dealer counted it out in front of them. Sure enough, one thousand dollars and change. The middle-aged guy started protesting, something about bid limits, but the dealer overruled him.

  "Bid's down. Are you in or out?"

  "For a thousand?" the guy stammered. He checked his cards. "I fold."

  "Show 'em," said the girl, nodding at Kyle.

  "There's still one more round."

  "What, you got somethin' else you wanna lose?"

  "Giving you a chance to fold and save some dignity."

  She rolled her eyes. "Get real. Dealer, let's go already."

  The dealer nodded and flipped over the last card. The girl's face fell, but she was back to her cocky persona an instant later. "I'm raising another two-fifty." She pulled out another wad of cash and dropped it on the table before Kyle could ask for proof.

  "Jesus, how much money do you have?" Kyle muttered. "What do you want?"

  "Uhh…" she glanced around. "Teach me how to do this spell. This whole secret hideout thing."

  Kyle gaped at her. "For only two-fifty? You know how valuable this is?"

  "Big deal, didn't you copy it from someone else anyway?"

  "...Three hundred."

  "Done." She tossed another crumpled fifty onto the pile. "Dealer and this dude as witnesses."

  "Of course," said the dealer. Jeremy shrugged. The other guy at the table had since wandered away in search of a less intense game.

  "No refund if you aren't the right affinity," Kyle added. "It's not my fault if you can't actually do it."

  "Just so long as you don't wuss out teaching it," she shot back.

  "Show your cards," the dealer said, nodding at Kyle.

  Kyle grinned. "Nice try, Laura," he smirked, flipping over a straight.

  The girl stared at his cards for a few seconds, dumbstruck. She started to giggle, a little at first, until it boiled over into a full-bodied, bent-over laugh. "You went… all in… with that pool… on a fucking straight?" She choked back her laugh, reaching up to flip over her cards.

  A flush, with four cards in order. Only the last card prevented her from picking up a straight flush.

  Jeremy whistled. "Well played."

  Kyle dropped the paper onto the pile with a groan. Laura grinned, before sweeping up the pot onto her side of the table. The dealer started to gather up the cards for the next hand.

  "So when d'you — Jesus Christ, Laura!"

  Without warning, she'd grabbed the piece of paper and shoved it in front of her eyes. Jeremy could hear her muttering something, but couldn't make out the words.

  "Here? Are you serious?"

  The dealer inched his chair away uneasily, watching as Laura's murmuring sped up. Her pupils dilated wildly.

  Is she…

  Without warning, Laura pitched over backward, falling off the bench into the mossy dirt. She was twitching on the forest floor, gasping for breath. Choking.

  Jeremy leapt from his seat, hurtling around the table to get to her. Nobody else moved. He was running through his CPR training in his head, trying to remember exactly how to apply pressure.

  An invisible wave forced him back. The dealer's hand had snapped out at him, palm open.

  "What the fuck?"

  "She's quite all right," the man said calmly. "Please, restrain yourself."

  Even Kyle, who had protested initially, looked mostly bored by the proceedings. Jeremy's heart was racing, but obviously something was off here. He stared down at the convulsing girl on the ground, still clutching the piece of paper in her hand. The paper looked like it was turning to ash, burning without a flame. In only a few seconds, it disintegrated.

  She appeared.

  Right next to the girl, sitting on her knees, leaning down next to Laura's head. She whispered in Laura's ear, and the girl's seizure ended as abruptly as it began. As she kept whispering, Laura's mouth echoed the words, and slowly her eyes fluttered open.

  The girl helped her up to a sitting position, holding Laura's hand while she recovered. They held a brief, silent conversation. Jeremy tried to read their lips, but it was too fast to catch, and the girl's thick brown hair curtained away her face from every oblique angle.

  Laura sighed, as if she'd just taken the most satisfying drink in history, and laid back down again. "Holy shit," she murmured.

  The girl looked up — directly at Jeremy.

  Hang on… don't I know her? I recognize those damn eyes.

  "Don't say anything," she spoke, barely above a whisper. No one else reacted. No one else even seemed to realize she was still there. Kyle and the dealer had returned to the table, already prepping another game.

  Jeremy inclined his head, just enough for her to notice.

  "Can we talk? Over there." She pointed to the space behind the food table, where an area was walled off by forest-green tarps.

  Well, I'm not about to say no…

  She vanished a moment later, right before Laura's hand was about to pass through her head as she got to her feet. "That was incredible," Laura continued, still breathless. She took a few uneasy steps to steady herself, falling back onto the bench with a thud. "So, Kyle, when are you gonna deliver?"

  "You haven't even cast a single spell yet, how the hell are you gonna do something this complicated?"

  "Try me," she cackled. She looked around. "Hey, what the fuck?"

  "What?"

  "Where'd it…" She glared at Kyle. "You asshole, you didn't tell me it was second-gen."

  "You got what you wanted," he shot back.

  No one was paying Jeremy any mind, something he hadn't felt in a long time. It was refreshing. He simply got up and walked away without a word.