Excerpt

1

I always figured that when Lady Luck needed a favor from me, things had to be really, really bad.

Laverne, aka Lady Luck, appeared a little after noon on a Friday. My entire team was in my new office eating take-out Chinese and talking about our plans for the weekend. I had a poker tournament I hoped to play in later in the evening at the Bellagio and Patty Ledegerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, my sidekick and girlfriend, had to work swing at the MGM Grand Hotel front desk.

In other words, a pretty standard weekend night for us.

Then Lady Luck appeared.

When that happens, normal becomes a laughing matter.

Laverne had on her standard business casual gray pantsuit. Her dark hair was pulled so tight into a bun on the top of her head that it had to hurt. Her eyes looked neutral as they always did. Lady Luck seldom showed anyone any emotion and it was always impossible to get a read on what she was thinking.

She looked around my new office and smiled and then nodded. "Original."

I thought that meant she liked my new office layout. At least I hoped that was what she meant.

She glanced at Stan, the God of Poker who was trying to choke down the remains of a spring role. "Good job."

Stan, who had on his standard gray cardigan sweater and gray slacks, only nodded. Compliments from Lady Luck herself were rare and Stan knew that. The expression on his face and in his dark eyes never changed.

At times I couldn't believe my new office, or the fact that a superhero poker player like me even had an office. But I did, and it was invisible and floated above the city of Las Vegas, about a thousand feet above the MGM Grand Casino and Hotel.

I doubted I would ever get used to how amazing that was.

Since Patty worked at the MGM Grand, I figured directly above the MGM Grand just seemed like a great place to anchor the office. Besides, since I got a lot of my superhero power from casinos funneled through my black leather coat and Fedora-like hat, being parked over a major casino never hurt.

And I seldom took off my coat and hat. Even now over a Chinese lunch that was about to get very cold.

The office in this spot also allowed for a great view of all of Las Vegas and the surrounding mountains and desert since all four walls were glass and perfectly clear. At first that had scared me so much I stayed to the center of the room. Finally, after a day of almost crawling around the room on my hands and knees for fear of falling off the edge of my office tile floor, I had decided to put in a wooden rail about a foot wide and waist-high across the glass. On all four walls. That helped. I now could actually go to the edges of my own office and look down.

Compared to normal offices, mine really wasn't much of an office. No desk, no couches, no pictures or awards hanging on the glass walls. The entire center of the square office was filled with a large, oblong wooden booth. It was an exact replica of the booth in the Diner Restaurant from downtown Las Vegas where we had all met for the last couple of years.

Plastic-covered booth seats and a scarred tabletop made it feel real. Bottles of ketchup and mustard sat next to the salt and pepper and a pile of white paper napkins in the center.

Every detail was the same as in the Diner.

In other words, my nifty new office was nothing more than a hunk of tile floor and a diner booth floating in the air over a major casino. I liked it.

So did the rest of the team, or so they had said.

The booth was large enough to handle the six members of my team. There were two or three extra chairs in the room that visitors could pull up to the end of the booth and a couple of lawn chairs in one corner where Patty and I could just sit and stare out at the city and the mountains.

I'd only had this office for a week and I was starting to love sitting in those lawn chairs in the evenings before sunset.

Lady Luck turned around, grabbed a chair and pulled it toward the end of the booth where we were all sitting. It had been Lady Luck herself who had suggested that Stan, my boss and the God of Poker, teach me how to build and secure a floating office for me and my team.

Over the last few years my team had saved the world more times than I wanted to count, so it seemed like a great idea to me and it was turning out to be just that. But while I was building it, I hadn't been so sure.

It had taken two very long days and just about every ounce of energy I had, even with Stan helping, to put it all together and get it secured somehow in its floating and invisible location. But now it took no energy at all for me to keep it there.

Stan tried to explain to me how that worked, but I flat didn't understand a word he said. I figured there had to be some things only the gods could or should know. Since I was only a lowly superhero in the gambling universe, I wasn't meant to know what we had just done or how it even worked. Honestly, I was fine with that, as long as the office stayed in the air and we could go and come from it.

Lady Luck pulled the chair to the table and sat down. Then she sampled a bite of an extra spring roll and nodded. The food was from a restaurant called Larry's Chinese Place just off The Strip. The locals knew it was the best in town.

My entire team was there, plus Stan. I could tell they were all as shocked by Lady Luck's action as I felt. One of the most powerful gods in the universe just didn't join a bunch of superheroes and a poker god for lunch.

The Smoke and Screamer both eased away from her on the left side of the booth. The Smoke was basically a werewolf who could walk through walls. He stood about my height at six foot, but had shoulders so large it made him seem shorter. His most striking feature was his deep blue eyes.

Screamer was shorter than me and usually just wore Las Vegas tourist clothes like bright shirts and ugly shorts. He worked for the law enforcement side of the gods and seemed far, far harder than he actually was.

Madge, the food-service-superhero waitress who always wore a too-tight pink diner uniform and owned and ran the Diner, had been sitting on the end on the right side. She now stood and moved to a position behind the booth facing Lady Luck and behind Stan, who sat in the middle.

Patty and I moved closer to Lady Luck on the right side, taking up some of the room left by Madge.

No one said a word and the smell from the Chinese food filling the middle of the table wasn't helping my stomach any. Since my team covered five different branches of the gods, we were unusual, but I just never expected Lady Luck to join us for anything.

"Poker Boy," Laverne said, looking at me. Then she looked at Stan. "Everyone, I need a personal favor."

Now I really, really, really wished I hadn't just eaten that last piece of sweet-and-sour chicken. Lady Luck never asked for personal favors. She had been alive for longer than any written history. Civilizations over the centuries had come and gone, but Lady Luck had lived through them all. So her asking us for a personal favor had to mean things were really, really bad.

"Anything," I managed to say. Stan only nodded and even though he was the God of Poker with the best poker face I had ever seen, I could tell he was too surprised to even speak.

Everyone else nodded slightly, clearly too stunned to dare move much.

"Thank you," she said. Then she took a deep breath. "I need you to find Helen, my daughter."

I was fairly certain at that moment I had stopped breathing.