Busted Flush Read online

  I know this won’t make Whitehall happy, but these really are third-rate aces who have accompanied Fortune to Africa, and Fortune has been very clear that none of the Committee members are to take part in the fighting. We should be able to brush through this without any overt interference in Nigerian affairs, and I really can’t refuse without damaging my status within the Committee.

  Oh, and one more thing. I want a raise.

  Sir.

  The Tears of Nepthys

  THE FIRST TEAR: ISIS

  Kevin Andrew Murphy

  SUNLIGHT GLINTED ACROSS THE waves, postcard perfect for a Nantucket summer. Ellen’s mother had loved mornings like this, watercolor mornings she’d called them, time to take the paints and easel and a flap of Bristol board and a daughter by the hand, and drag them off to Brandt Point by the lighthouse, sketching the sailboats like the one Ellen lived on now.

  An easterly wind was already wisping away fingers of fog as Ellen let go of the ladder. She settled herself into the dinghy, then paused, one hand on the mooring line. She raised her free hand to the cameo at her throat, her mother’s brooch, resting a fingertip on the velvet band.

  She decided against it. Today was her day, Ellen alone. She let go of the line, unknotted the rope, and slipped the oars into the water. She rowed in silence, passing the sailboats of the purists, and on past the cabin cruisers tied to mooring posts. The latter waited like wallflowers at a dance, all but three bearing FOR SALE signs faded to gray and Nantucket red.

  Ellen sculled the water until the smooth lee gave way to the rough rippling of open harbor. A gust sprang up and the salt wind stung her eyes, threatening to start tears. Even the most beautiful morning was nothing if you had no one to share it with. The gulls cried mournfully, gabbled and shrieked, some skimming near her, hoping she were a fisherman with lost bait or a tourist with spare bread, but all Ellen had was a rueful smile. Nothing to a gull.

  She found a space at the end of the pier, pausing to check her outfit before she stepped into view: a pair of ivory clam-diggers, nicely cut but unremarkable; a blue-and-white-striped nautical pullover, equally classic and unmemorable; and finally Top-Siders, standard footwear among the yachting set. As for herself, a willowy blonde on the inner cusp of forty might still turn a head or two, but one virtue of classic features was their anonymity, a face glimpsed in a gallery of old masters and fin de siècle poster art, and forgoing makeup was its own disguise. Sun and salt had bleached her wavy hair a shade lighter than the honey blond most would remember, and scrunching it back into a ponytail was not what most would expect of her, either.

  About the only thing anyone looking for Ellen Allworth would expect was the cameo, the one whose profile she usually consciously styled her hair to mirror. But despite being anonymous in its beauty, black and white carved portrait jewels were no longer a popular fashion item, and the only woman known to wear one as a constant was her, Cameo.

  She could always take it off, of course, but then again, Ellen could always cut off her left arm. Instead, she reached into her satchel and withdrew a long red Isadora Duncan–style scarf, looping it once around her neck, concealing the heirloom and source of her ace name. The scarf trailed like a pennant as she came on the dock, an anonymous fashion plate from a yacht magazine.

  There was a peculiar smell in the air. Incense, Ellen realized as she got her land legs and looked for the source. Nearby, uncomfortably close to the gas pumps and their extremely hopeful OUT OF GAS—CHECK BACK NEXT WEEK sign, was a bowl filled with sand, a dozen sticks planted in it, embers glowing like jacinths in the morning light.

  Beyond that, a dark-haired woman knelt on a prayer rug. In her right hand she held a musical instrument that looked like a tuning fork, gilt brass crossed with jangling metal bars—a sistrum, Ellen remembered dimly from the memory of one of her ancestresses; they’d been all the rage back in the twenties, part of the Egyptian Revival when they’d cracked King Tut’s tomb. The woman holding the sistrum looked like she’d have fit right in back then, garbed as she was in a long linen gown with an elaborate scapular beaded with faience and gold. Given the current tensions with the Caliphate, wearing that outfit took either guts or religion.

  Ellen took a deep breath and reached into her satchel as casually as she could. She and her ace had been in hiding ever since Cardinal Contarini and his mad monks had called a hit on her, and given the cardinal’s fondness for ace assassins and their fondness for odd getups . . .

  Her fingers closed around soft felt, and in a practiced motion, she donned Nick’s fedora.

  “What . . . ?” Nick began, looking around.

  Quiet, Ellen said in the back of his head, her head. That woman. I think she’s an ace.

  Nick looked, noting the sistrum and prayer rug. “Elle,” Nick said in a soft undertone, “if that woman’s Catholic, then the Pope’s a Unitarian.” He sighed. “If the Alumbrados ever do send anyone, it’ll probably be a guy in an I AM THAT MAN FROM NANTUCKET T-shirt.”

  Nickie, I’m not being paranoid. . . .

  He grimaced, all the response she needed. “Elle, please, just live a little. For both of us. It’s not like being up the sleeve ever did me any good. No one but you even knows who Will-o’-Wisp was, or even remembers half of what I did. And in the end, I still got killed. . . .”

  Before she was born, Ellen knew, but before she could respond, Nick took the hat off and she was alone inside her skull. Again.

  Ellen clutched the worn fedora for a long moment, then slipped it back inside her satchel, shouldering it as bravely as she could, and soldiered on, wind stinging her eyes. Nick was right. Live a little. She smiled and nodded to the woman on the prayer rug and walked on past.

  The woman stopped shaking her sistrum and stared at Ellen’s throat. “Kamea.”

  Ellen paused, her free hand coming up to where the wind had whipped the scarf aside, almost touching the exposed brooch. “Excuse me?” she asked, stepping back a pace.

  “Kamea,” the woman repeated, a word in what sounded like Arabic or Hebrew, then gestured to Ellen’s cameo with her free hand. “You bear the charm, the face of Nepthys, the white goddess in the black night. You are her avatar and my prayers have been answered.”

  “Nepthys?” Ellen echoed, trying to place it as she fumbled for Nick’s hat.

  “The wife of Set,” the woman supplied, “the mother of Anubis and the sister of Isis. And, oh, my dear sister, I am Isis. Isis of the Living Gods. My brother-husband, Osiris, he-who-rose-from-the-dead, had a vision that the avatar of Nepthys would arise at dawn on this morn from the waves at the whale road’s end.” She gestured with her sistrum, bars chiming softly, indicating Nantucket. “Nepthys would rise, surrounded by the dead that walk and the wind that wails.”

  The morning wind was brisk but not yet wailing, and as for walking dead, at this hour, there weren’t even any hungover tourists. Ellen raised an eyebrow. “See any of those?” she asked, her hand inside her satchel, a death grip on the dead man’s fedora.

  “No,” Isis admitted. “My brother-husband’s visions are sometimes confused. I’m afraid he was a little drunk when he had this one. He gets free drinks at the Luxor. I believe his exact words were ‘zombies and hurricanes.’ ” She covered her eyes. “I’m sorry, my daughter has died and I have been clinging to Hope’s slimmest thread . . . .” Isis fell to her knees, her sistrum vibrating in a white-knuckled shake. “O Nepthys, send me a sign!”

  Ellen bent down, hugging the woman hard before she started ululating. “Hush,” Ellen hissed, then whispered in her ear, “I’m the ace you’re looking for, but please, I’m up the sleeve.”

  “O Nepthys be praised,” she breathed. “Thank you, O sister.”

  “I can’t promise anything. Just get your stuff and follow me.” Ellen rubbed at the bit of Isis’s makeup that had smeared on her own cheek and led her back to the dinghy, placing her satchel with Nick’s precious hat by her feet. “We can speak when we get to my boat.”

  The wind w
as stronger rowing out than rowing in. By the time they were at the boat it was seriously whipping Ellen’s ponytail. Isis’s circlet was at least keeping some out of her face. “Will-o’-Wisp . . .” Isis read the name on the sailboat’s stern. “That is . . . a drowned soul?”

  “Yes.” Ellen tied up, clambering up the ladder, then helped Isis ascend with her bag. “Let’s go below deck.” Ellen ushered Isis into the main cabin and shut the door securely behind them. Sound carried, and when dealing with mad monks, one never could be too paranoid.

  Isis stood in the middle of the cabin, taking in the Philippine mahogany, the easel, the sketches, the assorted bits and bolts of cloth, and the vintage sewing machine with a half-finished dress strewn inside-out across the galley table. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.” Ellen shoved aside the unfinished dress, making a place for Isis. “I don’t cook, but do you take tea?”

  “Yes, please,” said Isis. Ellen nodded. A kettle would have been nicer, but a micro wave was a small luxury for a single woman. She didn’t bother to ask what type Isis preferred—Taylor’s of Harrowgate was good enough for anyone—and in a minute and a half, it was done.

  By the time she turned around, the Living Goddess had conjured a bowl of sugared dates, either from her bag or thin air. Ellen didn’t much care which. She set the mug in front of Isis, considering, then sat down opposite. “So,” Ellen said, “what did your, uh, brother, tell you?”

  “That only Nepthys, of all gods, can raise the dead. We were bewailing the loss of our beloved Aliyah and . . .” Isis raised her mug, inhaling the steam like an oracle with her bowl, then put it plainly: “Can you help us?”

  It had been a long while since Ellen had sat with a client. “Perhaps, but I have to tell you that it’s going to be less than what you want. I have to be up-front about that. The last time . . .” How was she supposed to put it? “My last client was expecting the Second Coming and just got a Broadway Revival. I’m a psychometric trance channeler. Most objects”—she hefted her mug as demonstration—“I can feel the psychic impressions on, like smudged fingerprints or whispers on the other side of a wall . . . but if an object is very important to someone, I can tell that, and if that person has died . . .”

  Isis finished her thought: “You can channel the soul of the departed?”

  Ellen took a sip of tea, letting it linger on her tongue as she thought of the best way to phrase it. “I think they’re souls, but the dead . . . well, when I call them back from the darkness, they don’t recall an afterlife. They only remember up to the last point they touched an object.”

  Isis’s dark eyes were limned with kohl. “My daughter left the world as she came into it, naked and screaming. But at least . . .” Her voice caught. “. . . at least, your gift is kind.” She reached into her bag. “You will spare my darling Aliyah the torment of her end.”

  Ellen moved the mugs and the untouched dates aside, making room for Isis to unroll a tightly furled bundle of denim. It was like unwinding a burial shroud, revealing at last a pair of low-rise jeans and a black baby-doll T-shirt with the American Hero logo, the legend EVERYONE WANTS TO BELONG TO THE CLUBS!, and the image of a pretty brown-haired girl wearing nothing more than a whirlwind of glitter, the name SIMOON stenciled below. Isis then added a pair of earrings, small bits of silver and Swarovski crystal in the shape of the Egyptian Eye of Horus, the same as you could get in any Cambridge or Greenwich Village Goth shop. “My daughter wore these her last day on American Hero.”

  Ellen blinked. “Your daughter was an ace?”

  “We called her Simoon, the child of the whirlwind. Though the name on her birth certificate is ‘Aliyah Malik,’ ‘Malik’ for ‘daughter of the King.’ ”

  “Oh . . .” What Ellen did not usually tell her clients was that when the person she channeled was an ace, she channeled their power as well. The contestants from American Hero included some pretty potent aces. If occasionally wonky ones. Ellen pursed her lips. “Before we go any further, there’s one other thing we do have to discuss: payment.”

  “I am not rich,” Isis said, “but you will have the eternal gratitude of the Living Gods, this I promise you. And you may join us at any of our temples as our Nepthys.”

  “No offense, but I’ve got Catholic nutjobs after me. Rather not have Muslim ones, too.”

  “Osiris foresaw this. As payment, he offers prophecy. The night hawk has killed the red bird, he told me. Does this omen bring ease to the heart of Nepthys?”

  Ellen sat back. A red bird? A cardinal? Contarini was dead? That would be welcome news—mostly—but she’d like better assurances than a vision from a Las Vegas lounge act. She made a counteroffer: “Just let me keep your daughter’s things.”

  “They are mere mementos. If you can make my Aliyah live again . . .”

  Ellen composed herself, picking up the jeans. They were . . . unimportant. “You can keep these.” She touched the T-shirt, feeling a touch of excitement, a thrill of passion, and a great deal of disappointment, quickening as she touched one, then the other of the earrings.

  “Aliyah very much wanted to have her ears pierced,” Isis explained, Ellen hearing her words as if from the end of a long tunnel. “I would not let her until she was sixteen.”

  Ellen unwound her scarf and pulled off her pullover, shedding them along with her identity as she slipped on the T-shirt, adding the earrings, and then . . .

  Aliyah yawned, coming awake muzzy-headed as if from a dream. In the back of her head, Ellen stayed silent, watching and observing as Aliyah shook her head and focused on Isis. “Mama?” She blinked. “When did you get here?”

  “Aliyah,” Isis breathed. “Oh, you are back. You are back. Nepthys be praised.”

  “Uh, when did I leave?” Aliyah looked around the messy cabin, taking in the oddments and fabric notions, then looking back to her mother. “Mama, where the hell are we?”

  “We are in the bark of Nepthys. She has brought you back from the dead.”

  “The dead?” said Aliyah, standing up, then looked at Ellen’s hands, her hands, in incredulity. Then she touched them to her small breasts. “Where the hell are my tits?”

  “You are in the body of Nepthys. She has lent you her form.”

  Aliyah grabbed her chest and squeezed, feeling herself up. “I haven’t worn an A cup since I was twelve.” She scanned the room. “You expect me to believe I’m suddenly some flat-chested old lady so I can freak for the cameras? What sort of fucked-up illusion is this?”

  Actually, Ellen thought, it’s not an illusion. You’re in my body. And I’m not flat-chested. Or old. Hell, I’m not even forty.

  “Aliyah,” Isis cried, tears forming in her eyes, “it is no illusion. You died in Egypt.”

  “Egypt?” Aliyah echoed incredulously. “I’ve never even been to Egypt!”

  “Yes, you have. You were killed by a villain named the Djinn. But your uncle Osiris foresaw a way for you to return, and so I quested until I found Nepthys . . .”

  “Then why don’t I remember anything about it?”

  Because, Ellen thought, when I channel someone, I can only channel them up to the point where they last touched or wore something. I’m channeling you from your shirt and earrings.

  “Oh, this is utter crap,” said Aliyah, “and I’m not buying it. Watch.” She grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled, ripping it straight off over her head and tossing it into the corner.

  The connection faded a fraction, becoming appreciably weaker, and Aliyah staggered.

  Isis caught her. “Aliyah, my dear one. It is true. But Nepthys has brought you back.”

  Aliyah hugged her mother. “Egypt . . . why would I go to Egypt?”

  “The Djinn was killing the Living Gods. You went with John Fortune to save them.”

  “The PA?” Aliyah had a flash of memory. It was as if a dam broke, belief and realization crashing through, coming out as tears and great gasping sobs. “Oh, Mama . . . Mama . . .”

  Ellen stayed silent. It was best
at these moments.

  “Hush, Aliyah. Hush, my dear one. Mama is here.” Isis rocked her in her arms, stroking Aliyah’s hair, Ellen’s hair, one and the same. “Mama is here. It is all right.”

  “I didn’t tell you how much I loved you . . .”

  “Nor I, Daughter,” Isis said, tears at last beginning to fall, “nor I.”

  They held each other for a long while, rocking in time with the boat, Isis crooning some wordless Egyptian lullaby.

  Volunteers of America

  Victor Milán

  TWO TALL MEN IN Nigerian Army uniforms stretched the young boy’s arms out to the sides. A third stepped forward, raising a machete.

  Screaming, the boy’s mother bolted from the flock of Ijaw villagers kneeling under the patrol’s guns. Sergeant McAskill, mercenary “advisor,” bellowed a command. Beneath his boonie hat his face was redder than usual, clashing with his ginger mustache. A buttstroke took the mother down, blood and teeth flying. Her husband sobbed in his mush-mouthed wog English that they were innocent.

  Watching from well back among the cluster of shacks that rose on stilts from pale green swamp weeds and white sand, patrol leader Captain Chauncey grinned in his beard. Sod that for a game of soldiers, he thought. LAND, the Liberation Army of the Niger Delta, had blown an oil pipeline two kilometers away last night. The lump of black smoke still hung in the sky to the northeast.

  These people knew the game. Prices must be paid. And as for innocence—“It’s bloody Africa,” he said aloud, shaking his head. He inhaled deeply from his cigar.