Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Shuffle Up and Deal
Gideon
Leon had described the Ravenstone Festival Poker Classic as, "An evening of sophisticated gaming and community spirit.” What it actually was, was six tables with folding chairs crammed into Ravenstone’s small town hall with a registration desk that Sandy had decorated with a banner reading SHUFFLE UP AND DEAL that he’d clearly made himself.
By seven o'clock, every seat was filled, and Rue had already sent out two extra trays of food to keep up with demand.
Leon made a brief speech about the importance of friendly competition and community building that lasted four minutes longer than it needed to. Then the dealer at the head table called the first hand, and the room got down to business.
I'd registered for table one. Not because I was particularly interested in playing poker, but because table one was where Fletcher was seated, and table one was also, as it turned out, where Donny Pace had registered. I wanted to keep an eye on the two of them.
Declan had told me about Licorice's vision the day before. Fletcher and Donny at the brewery. Fletcher red-faced and rattled. Donny with his hand on Fletcher's collar.
Men didn't grab each other by the collar over nothing.
Az had taken the seat to my left, which meant I'd have at least one person at the table whose read on the room I trusted.
Avery O'Neill was two seats down, her ever-present notebook nowhere in sight but her sharp eyes very much present.
Nadia sat across from me, which I hadn't expected.
Maybe she was hoping to win some money to make up for losing the brewery.
But she wasn’t even the biggest surprise. That was Ivan. He’d been mostly keeping to himself since Roy’s death, so I hadn’t expected him to be here. I didn’t know the man well, though, so maybe he simply loved to play poker.
We were almost ready to start when the doors to the town hall burst open hard enough to rattle the frame.
Josh stumbled inside, dripping wet from head to toe, his expensive button-down plastered to his chest and his loafers making miserable squelching sounds across the floor.
“That woman is insane,” he snapped to no one in particular. “She grabbed me and dragged me straight into the fountain outside.”
Several locals looked up at once.
Sandy slowly lowered the muffin in his hand and stared at Josh.
“What woman?” Avery asked, sounding fascinated.
“I don’t know,” Josh huffed. “Just some unhinged woman. I don’t think she was mentally well.”
Az made a soft sound into his drink that might have been a laugh. It was hard to tell with him sometimes. “He’s lucky it was the fountain and not her pond.”
Across the room, Declan caught my eye and made a tiny helpless gesture toward Josh, like even he had no idea how he'd dated the man. I sure didn’t have a clue.
Josh muttered something under his breath about the whole town being unhinged, turned and stalked back out, leaving damp footprints across the floor behind him.
The room slowly settled again, conversations picking back up around the tables.
I had about decided Donny wasn’t going to show and I wouldn’t get an opportunity to try and figure out what the issue was between him and Fletcher, but finally, just before the first deal, Donny walked in.
He dropped into his seat with the ease of someone who'd sat down at a lot of poker tables.
He smiled at Fletcher, but in a self-satisfied way, not a friendly one.
"Fletcher." He stacked a column of chips with one hand. "Didn't know you were a card man."
"There's a lot you don't know about me," Fletcher said. His voice was even. His hands were not. He'd picked up his chips twice and set them back down.
"Mm." Donny leaned back in his chair. "Hope you're luckier at cards than you are at picking the winning team."
Fletcher's jaw tightened. "Just deal the cards," he said to the dealer, without looking at Donny again.
The dealer dealt.
I picked up my cards. Seven of clubs. Two of diamonds. I set them face down and watched the room instead.
Declan had positioned himself near the small side table Rue had set up along the wall that held the food. He'd said he didn't know enough about poker to be useful at the table, and he needed to be free to move around and take pictures for the town's social media.
Sandy was with him, wearing a t-shirt that read A PINT OF ALE BEATS A PAIR OF ACES in bold letters across the chest. He was working through a plate of something from Rue’s spread like eating was a competitive sport.
She’d provided sliders, pretzel bites, and a spiced nut mix. Declan had his own table on the far end with neat rows of cupcakes with dark chocolate frosting, some kind of small pastry I didn't recognize, and a basket of golden-brown muffins that smelled extraordinary from across the room.
Several people had already made their way to the muffin basket.
I’d snagged one of the chocolate cupcakes and a kiss when I first got here, but other than that, I'd been watching the table.
Az had a small plate with one of the muffins on it sitting beside him. He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and said nothing for a moment. Then he set the muffin down and stared at it like something about it surprised him.
He glanced at me.
I raised an eyebrow.
He looked back at his cards.
For the most part, the table was uneventful. Fletcher won the first two small pots and lost a decent-sized one to Donny. Nadia folded three hands in a row.
Between hands, Avery decided to make a run to the food table. “Can I get anyone anything?” she asked.
“Only if there’s a gluten-free option,” Fletcher said. “I can’t tolerate it.”
“I’ll take something,” Nadia said. “I swear that whole eating for two thing is no joke. But maybe something savory instead of sweet.”
Az looked up with a calculated smile on his face. “Grab her one of Declan’s muffins. They aren’t too sweet, and they are quite good.”
Avery nodded and went over to the table. She returned with muffins for herself and for Nadia and a cup of nuts for Fletcher.
Play resumed, and Avery won the first hand. “Maybe Declan is my good luck charm,” she said, taking another bite of her muffin.
The second hand after that, she raised a sizable amount, and Ivan asked her if she was bluffing. "Yes, I totally am. I have absolutely nothing, but the odds justified it," she said in a tone of mild surprise, like she'd answered before she'd meant to.
The table laughed. Avery looked faintly puzzled.
Three hands later, a festival visitor who was sitting at the table next to ours said, "Snowmen. I've got snowmen, and I don't know if I should raise or fold.” He said it loud enough for most of the room to hear him as he held up a pair of eights.
"Why would you say that out loud?" another man asked.
"I don't know," the man said, blinking.
Another player across from him at the same table said, “Well, if you have eights, you have my ducks beat, so I might as well fold.” There was a beat of confused silence, then laughter.
I glanced at Declan.
He was standing very still near the food table, watching the room with wide eyes and an expression of pure horror.
Sandy was next to him, muffin halfway to his mouth, frozen.
Slowly, Sandy turned to look at the basket. Then at Declan. Then back at the basket. He set the muffin down carefully.
The look on his face told me something was very wrong, so I excused myself and walked over to where the two stood.
"Declan," I said, very quietly. “What’s going on?”
"I’m not sure," Declan said.
"Did you—" Sandy asked.
"Not on purpose."
Sandy stared at him. "The sage."
Declan pressed both hands over his face. “And then the wish.”
“Someone tell me what’s going on.”
“I think I accidentally put a truth spell on the muffins,” he hissed.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah, oh,” he agreed.
I made it back to the table just in time to see Fletcher lose another sizable pot to Donny when a river card flipped the hand completely. Donny looked at Fletcher and said, "That's the thing about poker. You can't bluff your way through everything forever. Eventually, the lie catches up to you."
Fletcher stacked what little remained of his chips without responding.
Donny smiled at the rest of us like he’d just said something profound.
It was two hands later when Nadia took down a big win. She got exactly the card she needed on the river. She grinned as she pulled the chips towards her. “That was lucky.”
“I’d say so. Unless you cheated like Roy,” Ivan said, stunning the whole table into silence.
“Roy wasn’t a cheater,” Nadia insisted, her eyes filling with tears.
Ivan scoffed. “He was, and everyone knows it. He wasn’t good enough to win on his own, so he had to hex his competition.”
Nadia looked down at the stack of chips in front of her and said, "I made the hexes. Roy didn’t have anything to do with them."
Nadia’s face had gone the color of chalk. "I—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together hard. Tried again. "I didn't mean to say that."
"But it’s true?" Avery asked.
"I made the hexes," Nadia said again, and this time her voice cracked on the last word like she didn’t want to speak the word. "I didn’t think it was hurting anyone, just ensuring the outcome." She laughed, short and awful. "At least that’s what I told myself."
Her hand dropped to her stomach.
"He was so excited," she said, quieter. "About the new ale.
About the contract and what it was all going to mean for us.
And I wanted… I just wanted things to go right for once.
" Her eyes were bright. "So I did it. I made them.
I planted them. And I told myself it didn't matter because the Ravenswood Red really was the best ale in the competition, and what was the harm in making sure the judges knew that. "
Silence.
Then she put her face in her hands.
"I'm sorry," she said, muffled. "I'm so sorry. I didn't… I wouldn't have… I didn't kill him. I need you to know that. Whatever else I did, I didn't—"
"Nadia." I kept my voice level. Calm. The voice I used when I needed to stop an argument in the pub from escalating. "No one at this table thinks you killed Roy."
She looked up.
I held her gaze. "But you need to tell Elwood what you've told us. Tonight. And you probably need to tell Grady, too."
Her jaw worked. Then she nodded.
"Okay," she said.
The dealer glanced around the table. "Are we… do we keep playing?"
“I think we’re all done here,” I said.
Avery nodded and got up. “I know I’m done.”
Ivan glared at Nadia with a horrified look on his face, as if her being the one to make the hexes was the worst possible outcome.
“I knew it. I knew someone had cheated, but I swear I thought it was Roy. I… I just, I thought it was him.” He got up. “I need… I need to go.” He rushed across the room and out the door.
I looked over at Declan, and I could tell he wasn’t sure what to feel, torn between the recognition that his muffins had just cracked something open and the guilt about it being an accident.
I gave him the smallest nod I could manage.
He pushed his glasses up and averted his eyes.
Fletcher stood and glared at Nadia before saying, “Yeah, I know I’m done.”
Donny watched him go with an expression that looked almost satisfied.
He caught me looking.
"Man's unlucky," Donny said, shrugging as he got up to go find a different table to play at.
That left just me and Az sitting there.
“You ate the muffins,” I said.
“I did. They were tasty.”
“You knew what they were?”
“I did. I just figured your Declan was a very clever baker.”
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” I insisted. “But why weren’t you affected?”
“I’m a demon,” he said simply, like that explained it.
Sandy appeared beside me.
He was quiet for a moment. “Will Declan get in trouble? With Elwood, I mean. For the accidental truth magic.”
I considered that. "No, Elwood knows Declan wouldn’t do that on purpose. But I think he’ll be in for some extra training with Elwood, learning how to keep it from happening again."
Sandy nodded slowly. "That makes sense.” He paused. "There aren’t but a few left. Declan put them away."
"That’s probably for the best.”
"Probably," he agreed.
Across the room, Declan was helping Rue pack up the remaining food. He was moving quickly with his head down, and I had no doubt he was beating himself up over the whole thing.
I crossed to him.
He looked up when I reached him. "I didn't mean to," he said immediately.
"I know."
"I was just angry about all the lying, and I added the sage which the muffins needed, but then I said if I could have one thing, people would stop lying, and I guess I had that intention, and you know Elwood always says intention is everything so that must’ve been my intention, and I was stirring the—"
"Declan."
He stopped.
"You found out who made the hexes, without anyone getting hurt. Accidentally with muffins.” I held up the container with two muffins in it. “Elwood is going to be unhappy that you spelled people without their permission, but he’ll also be really proud of the fact that you managed to do it.”
Something loosened in his face. "You think?"
"I do, and I think he's going to tell the story at every misfits’ meeting for the foreseeable future."
Declan let out a breath that was mostly a laugh. He took the basket from me and tucked it under his arm. "I’ll still need to talk to him. About the sage and the magic, and, well, everything.”
"Tomorrow," I said. "Tonight, let’s go home.
He looked at me for a moment and then nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay."