Jokers Wild Page 0,3

but, Jennifer knew, too large for her to remove and probably too unique for her to fence.

She felt a sudden wave of dizziness ripple through her insubstantial form, and quickly willed herself to solidity. She didn't like that feeling. It happened whenever she overextended herself, as a warning that she had stayed insubstantial for too long. She didn't know what would happen if she remained a wraith for too long. She never wanted to find out.

Now substantial, she looked around the room. It was lined with display cases containing Kien's collection of jades, the most beautiful, extensive, and valuable collection in the Western world. Kien had been profiled on New York Style because of them and they were what she had come for. Some of them, at least. She realized that she couldn't get them all even if she made a dozen trips back to the alley, because her ability to turn extraneous mass insubstantial was limited. She could only ghost a few jades at a time. But a few, really, were all she needed.

First, though, before starting on the jades, there was something else she had to do. The thick pile of the luxurious carpet feeling quite sensuous on the soles of her bare feet, she glided around the teakwood desk almost as quietly as if she were insubstantial, and stood before the Hokusai print hanging on the wall behind it.

Behind the print, so Kien had said, was a wall safe. He had mentioned it because, he had said, it was absolutely, one hundred percent, totally, and irrevocably, burglarproof. No thief knew enough about microcircuitry to circumvent its electronic lock and it was strong enough to withstand a physical assault short of a bomb big enough to bring down the whole building. No one, no how, at no time, could possibly break into it. Kien, who had looked very smug as he'd said all this, evidently was a man who liked to brag.

A mischievous smile on her face as she wondered what riches Kien had hidden in his high-tech sale, Jennifer ghosted her right arm and put her hand through the print and the steel door behind it.

He juggled her in his arms while he fished for his key, and finally unlocked the door.

"You idiot, put me down. Then you can open the door."

"Nope, going to carry you over."

"We haven't gotten married."

"Yet," he said, and grinned down into her face.

Her angle, from where she reclined in his arms, intensified the deformity of his neck, and made his head look like a baseball perched on a pedestal. Aside from that neck-a legacy of the wild card virus-he was a rather handsome man. Short-cropped brown hair, beginning to gray at the temples, merry brown eyes, strong chin-a nice face.

He negotiated the door, and set her on her feet. "My castle. Hope you like it."

It proclaimed the blue-collar origins of this man. Serviceable couch, recliner placed before the television, a stack of Reader's Digests on the coffee table, a large and poorly executed oil painting of a sailing ship clawing through improbably high seas. The sort of painting one found at starving-artist sales in Hilton hotels.

But it was scrupulously clean, and in a touch that seemed out of character in so large and powerful a man, a row of multicolored African violets lined the windowsills.

"Roulette, I haven't stayed out all night since my high school prom."

"I'll just bet you stayed out all night."

He blushed. "Hey, I was good Catholic boy."

"My momma always warned me about good Catholic boys."

He moved in, wrapped brawny arms about her waist. "I'm not quite so 'good' anymore."

"I hope that refers to your morals, and not to your performance, Stan."

"Roulette!"

"Prude," she teased.

He nuzzled her neck, and nibbled on her earlobe, and Roulette pondered yet again the random nature of wild card that it should have struck this very ordinary "sandhog," and made him more than human.

She reached up, and stroked her hands down the sides of his swollen throat. "Does it ever bother you?"

"Being the Howler? Hell, no.. Makes me special, and I always wanted to be special. Used to drive my old man crazy. He always said water was good enough for our kind of people, meaning not to get above myself. He'd sure be surprised now. Hey." He reached out, caught a tear on the tip of one thick finger. "What are you crying about?"

"Nothing. I just... I found that sad."

"Well, come on. I'll show you how good my performance can be."

"Before breakfast?" she asked, trying