Two

 

The turn came another garbage card, with a rainbow, all four suits, on the board. I still had my three kings, but this time I just checked to her, wanting to see how she played her hand next. To a pro, in certain circumstances, a check means a weak hand. At other times it’s a trap, meaning the hand is strong and the pro wants someone to bet so the pro can raise.

She looked at me with a puzzled smile on her face, pretending she didn’t know what a check meant.

“Up to you,” the young dealer said, resting his hand in front of the woman to indicate it was her turn to bet.

“Oh, it’s my turn?” Heidi said, looking down at her cards again, then pretending to study the cards on the table. Then she looked up at the dealer, “What can I bet?”

A few men around the table who were taken in by her act chuckled. When a beginning player asked how much they could bet, it always meant they had a strong hand, or thought they had a strong hand. With Heidi I knew it was all an act.

But with that question, the room around us seemed to grow even more distant and blurry. The noise from the other tables faded farther into the background.

I had a sense of downward movement. No one else at the table noticed, including the dealer, as all their attention remained focused on Heidi, her blonde hair, and her v-neck sweater.

“The bet is twenty,” the dealer said.

She fumbled with her chips and then slid twenty forward.

She smiled at the dealer and then looked my way.

I knew I was going to have to make my move pretty soon to stop what she was doing with this table, but I wanted to see that last card before I did. If she had two aces in her hand, there were still two aces left out, and I wanted to be sure that third ace didn’t hit the board before I moved. So I simply flat-called her twenty.

The dealer patted the table to indicate the bets were all square, burnt a card and turned over the river card. A four of hearts that matched the four of clubs already on the board.

 

I had kings full of fours, the highest full house possible with the cards on the board. But not the highest hand possible. And that worried me a lot.

Around the table the rest of the Mirage poker room had become nothing more than a distant blur, the only sounds a faint rumbling. And the air was getting warmer and warmer by the moment. Heidi was moving the entire game into gambling hell, and no one but me seemed to be noticing.

I took a deep breath and focused on a spot between two upcoming seconds. I wanted to use what I had called my Unstuck-in-Time power. Stan the God of Poker had told me I had the power, and since then it had come in handy more than once.

My power froze everyone’s movements except Heidi. Clearly my power hadn’t worked on her. She truly was evil and very powerful.

Seven of the men were frozen staring at her chest, the dealer and one of the other players were staring at her hands.

“Nice trick,” she said, laughing in a way that made me shiver, even though I had on a leather jacket and the temperature around the table had gone up by twenty degrees.

By slipping myself between moments in time, I could see a little better where we were.

Granted, the Mirage Poker room was a faint overlay, sort of blurred and fuzzy, but through that vision I could clearly see a huge cave with dark walls and bright lights hanging from the roof. The table I was at seemed to be up near the roof of the cavern, still sitting in the Mirage, but yet at the same time floating in space, not yet all the way down to the surface.

A river of molten lava ran through one side of the cavern, accounting for the extra heat. There had to be at least a hundred different poker games going on around the room, all frozen because I was looking at them from a moment between seconds.

A poker room in gambling hell. This was the last place I wanted to be.

“So, Poker Boy,” she said, smiling at me, “you hoping to freeze time and come and take a quick glance at what I have in my hand?”

I laughed at her. “Not my style. That’s something you’d do I’m sure. I just wanted to stop this little elevator act you have going on.”

“And you think this trick is going to stop it for long?” she asked, flaunting her chest assets by learning forward and making sure her v-neck sweater bagged out just enough.

Granted, I was a man. But I had turned down sexual advances from a goddess far more interesting than her, so her attempts to distract me dropped short.

“Long enough to get this settled,” I said.

“And just how do you plan to settle this?” she asked, smiling at me. “Knock me off my chair?”

I stared at her, looking deep into her eyes. In my years of doing superhero deeds, I had found many ways of solving problems, and none of them, not once, had I needed to use any physical-type action. Anyone who actually looked at me would know I wouldn’t be any good at that stuff anyway. I kept my poker face on and just kept staring at her, trying to get any kind of read on what exactly what would work. Frighteningly enough, at the moment I didn’t know. I was just playing a bluff.