Inside Straight

“No. My dad.… my step-dad, I mean. Josh. He’s out of town all month. But—”

“It’s perfect,” Jonathan said. “Come on. Let’s go take a look!”

“Guys,” Fortune said. “Look, I really appreciate that you want to help out, but… but…”

“You must find your destiny,” Lohengrin intoned, his hand on Fortune’s shoulder. “If God has need of you, and this is the path your honor demands, you must go. You cannot do less. And I will aid you, if I can.”

It should have sounded cheesy, but the fucker really pulled that Arthurian shit off. Jonathan felt genuinely moved.

“Yeah. What he said,” Jonathan said. “Let’s get the check.”

~ ~ ~

Through one set of noncompound eyes, Peregrine’s house looked more impressive. The Beverly Hills address matched with the mission-style architecture and the Spanish tile roof. The lawn was lush and green. He half expected to see Marilyn Monroe slink out of the house with a martini glass in her hand. Which was, he supposed, exactly the effect the architect was shooting for.

Jonathan pulled the car carefully into the driveway, stopping well before the garage door. That was the trick of driving intoxicated; allow lots of room for error.

“It is beautiful,” Lohengrin said, leaning forward until his forehead almost touched the windshield. Maybe the crazed German bastard was a sentimental drunk too. It was endearing. Jonathan tried to turn off the engine and discovered he already had.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Fortune said from the back seat.

Jonathan found the button.

All four doors unlocked simultaneously. The sound was like a prison door slamming closed. Jonathan grinned and got out of the car. The others followed him. Lohengrin was humming something martial as they went up the sculpted concrete path to the door. Fortune started behind them both, but hurried to catch up, as if he wanted to protect the house from them.

“This is just… okay, be careful in here, okay? This is my mom’s house. I don’t want you to—”

“John,” Jonathan said. “We aren’t high school kids sneaking into the liquor cabinet and downloading porn. We’re grown men searching for a pariicuiar answer to a specific question.”

Fortune hesitated.

“We will do you no dishonor,” Lohengrin intoned. “I swear it.”

That was apparently the trick, because Fortune took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped in. While he disarmed the alarm system, Jonathan took in the house. A black stone fountain burbled to itself in the entryway. The decor in the main rooms was chic and clean, with high ceilings and open spaces. He could almost see Peregrine rising from the couch and stretching out her wings. A glass wall led out to the deck he’d seen before, through other eyes.

“Come on,” Fortune said, heading down a hallway to their left. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jonathan walked after him. The art that hung tastefully from the wall was beautiful, one piece commenting subtly on the next. The air smelled like his grandmother’s house in Virginia, the air conditioning doing something arcane that reminded him of cucumbers. The architecture itself made him think of television sets—everything a little too spacious and a little too clean, and everything, everything, in place. Jonathan tried to imagine what it would have been like growing up in a world like this, a climate-controlled childhood. And nothing anywhere that referenced Peregrine’s past as sex symbol and lover of the half-black, half-Asian pimp-turned-ace-turned-monk-turned-martyr Fortunato.

Lohengrin paused in the entryway, swaying slightly. His brow was furrowed in intense concentration.

“What’s up, big guy?” Jonathan asked.

“John’s powers. His old powers,” Lohengrin said. “He almost destroys the world, ja?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “Time magazine did a whole thing on it. Bunch of people thought he was the messiah or the antichrist, or whatever. If Fortunato hadn’t come in, it would have been ugly.”

“Ja,” the German agreed. “And we are helping to get his powers back?”

Jonathan blinked. “But,” he said. “That stuff. Back at the bar. His destiny…”

Lohengrin nodded in agreement but still frowning. “I may have been wrong,” he said.

“Huh,” Jonathan said. And then, “Hey, Fortune?”

Peregrine’s bedroom. Extra-wide king-size-plus bed with raw silk sheets, a skylight on runners that could open to let someone in or out if they could fly, tasteful bedside table and lamp with the latest issue of Variety open to an article about American Hero. But no John Fortune.

“Fortune?”

“In here. Dressing room.”

It was like a walk-in closet the size of an apartment. Dresses, coats, shoes, suits, sweats, a dresser devoted to undergarments. And a table with a jewelry case that would shame some department stores, complete with vanity mirror where John Fortune was sitting, hands flat on the table, jaw set, eyes focused and determined. He looked like the world’s most desperate drag queen getting ready to suit up.