The Game of Luck Read online

  “Thanks, but I’m fine. I’m not trying to keep anything from you. There’s no big conspiracy. No secret baby. No kids. No pregnancy. No anything. Nothing.”

  Mannette continued looking speculative. She added a cocked eyebrow, giving me one of the famous facial expressions she’d been trying unsuccessfully to trademark. “For something that’s supposed to be nothing, you’re doing a lot of protesting.”

  “Probably because you’re refusing to take the hint. When I say it’s nothing, I mean it, so let it go!”

  It took me about half a second to realize that in my rush to assure Mannette and the entire tri-system there was no baby, I’d pushed too firmly, and much too loudly. Alexei’s gaze whipped in my direction and pinned me with such intensity, I felt like I’d just been crushed by a rogue asteroid falling from the sky. He abandoned the conversation with the trainer and stalked toward me. Mannette watched with lurid interest.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, mouth pulled into a frown. He gave Mannette a dark look before ignoring her.

  “No. I mean…It isn’t…” Flustered by his scrutiny, I couldn’t think fast enough on my feet. “I just wanted to sit down. I’m tired. Excuse me.”

  I abandoned my dog, my husband, and my friend to head inside the main kennel building. I’d barely gotten in the door when Alexei caught up. Then he was in front, forcing me to stop. His hand cupped my chin, lifting my face to his.

  “You’re upset. What did Mannette do this time?” he asked. Feodor was tucked under an arm.

  “It isn’t a big deal. She was just pestering me and it made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t think of a polite way out of it,” I said, cheeks flushing with discomfort. “You know how she gets—she goes on about something and doesn’t let up. This time it was about me being pregnant, which is stupid, because I’m not.”

  “Did she have a reason to think you might be?” His tone was so carefully neutral, it managed to sound frightening.

  I shrugged to show him it didn’t matter. “It’s Mannette. She says whatever she wants to cause maximum drama. Doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “Should we use Karol’s specimen tests to rule out pregnancy so we’re sure?” he asked in that same neutral tone.

  Since One Gov controlled anything to do with human reproduction via their fertility clinics, Karol had devised a work-around to their testing. “I’m not pregnant. I don’t need to pee in a cup.”

  “But if you’re tired and not feeling well, it doesn’t hurt to check,” he said with a stubbornness he seldom used with me. At least, not on this subject. “A specimen test takes a few seconds.”

  “It isn’t necessary.”

  “But we could verify it.”

  “Gods, Alexei! Why are you pushing me?”

  “Why are you resisting?”

  There was something in his face I’d rarely seen before. Hope, I wanted to say, but a hope carefully guarded to protect himself from the crushing disappointment of that hope being unfounded. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d used Karol’s specimen test. Nor was it the second or even the tenth time we’d gone down this road—a road I wasn’t sure I could travel much further.

  “Because I’m not fucking pregnant, so what’s the point?” I shouted at him. Instantly I regretted the words. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Today’s been stressful.”

  “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

  “Looks like Mannette got her drama after all.”

  We stood there—me ashamed, him saying nothing. Between us was the squirming puppy who had no idea what was going on or why we weren’t playing anymore. You and me both, Feodor.

  “I don’t think I can finish the class now. We should go,” I said finally.

  It was a long, silent ride home. Once in the house, we wandered off in our separate directions. Alexei with the dog, and me…I found a specimen test and slunk to the bathroom because it seemed like after what I’d seen in his face, I owed it to him.

  It had been six months since I’d removed my fertility inhibitor, glad to be free of it after years of being blacklisted from the Shared Hope program. I’d blithely imagined some sort of happy ending for Alexei and me without considering the emotional cost. Now I had six months left before the inhibitor went back in, per One Gov mandate. Six months before Alexei and I ran out of time and One Gov decreed us biologically incompatible. If I still wanted a baby who would be recognized as a full One Gov citizen, the law said I had to move on with someone else. It didn’t matter who I was or how politically connected. Nor did it matter that the law dated back to the Dark Times when every aspect of life was controlled to ensure human survival. No, our pairing would be labeled as an evolutionary dead end. I couldn’t be allowed to waste gold notes and precious resources on procedures that didn’t produce desired results. In short, I couldn’t stay with Alexei.

  I shimmied up my dress, then stopped. Dread and hopelessness pooled in me as I gazed down at the unexpected droplets of blood staining my panties. I’d been taking One Gov–approved fertility enhancer treatments for the past two months. You could take the treatments for no more than four months, so I was well into the groove by this point. They were supposed to significantly reduce and in some cases suppress menstruation, thus increasing the conception window. Light spotting between hyper-ovulation cycles was rare but not unheard-of. It meant you were between fertility events, with the next due to begin in a day or so. Nothing to worry about. The treatments were working as expected. I should be thrilled my body responded so well. Instead, all that came was a flood of heartache that threatened to drown me.

  Taking a shuddering breath, I pulled myself together then threw the unused test away. I had my answer. Now all I had to do was cram the despair back into its bottle and put the cork in hard and fast before I could break. Because if I broke, I wasn’t sure I could put myself back together.

  For the sixth month in a row, I wasn’t pregnant.

  4

  Shuffling Granny G’s deck of Tarot cards, I smiled with reassurance to the woman across from me before I cut the deck and dealt the cards. My hands were cramping from so many readings, but I kept that to myself. The woman was one of my infinite number of cousins, Etna Jane. The reading was for her baby, Teshia. The baby was a tiny sleeping bundle in my cousin’s arms that I studiously avoided other than a cursory glance to admire her newborn cuteness. Beyond that, I got down to business. After yesterday, I wasn’t in the mood to love anyone’s baby. Even during the christening ceremony at the local All People’s Temple when water was pretty much splashed on everyone—Alexei included—I’d caught myself scowling. I didn’t want to be surrounded by babies today.

  I sat at Celeste’s tiny kitchen table in her mobile home in a trailer park in Hesperia, just outside Elysium City. Celeste was another distant cousin—one of the Sevigny multitude that spanned the tri-system—who’d gone out of her way to make me feel welcome when I first arrived on Mars. I loved her generosity and determination to keep the family united no matter what planet we lived on. Even if she could wheedle favors and manipulate the rest of the family into doing her bidding with a skill that rivaled Alexei’s, I tended to give her the benefit of the doubt. I couldn’t argue with anything that was for the greater good of the family—not successfully, at any rate.

  Other family members packed the space, making for a tight fit. In fact, the mobile home seemed filled to bursting with the sheer number of us crammed inside. The kitchen air was heavy and stale, the room filled with too many different smells—food, perfume, and the occasional bad breath and body odor. I congratulated myself on leaving Feodor at home. The poor puppy would have lost his mind in all this madness. By the same token, I wondered if I should have left Alexei at home as well. I hadn’t seen him in over two hours, and the tension between us was uncomfortable, full of so many things left unsaid.

  Originally, Celeste had tried to run some scam to hold the christenings at local banquet halls, but with so many babies arriving at once, th
e expense had gotten out of hand. I’d spent all of one second thinking maybe I should offer up our house to Celeste, but since I was the one who had to read the cards for every newborn, I figured I’d done my duty. This would be my third newborn reading today with one more to go.

  In addition to the babies, other family members lined up to have readings done with Granny G’s fabled Tarot deck—centuries old and all the way from Earth. Most of the questions fell into one of two categories: finances or relationships. I’d heard it all before, but found it comforting that no matter what a person’s social status, wealth, or MH Factor might be, everyone basically cared about the same things.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t be surprised. I had queries from some asking after family members who’d disappeared—cousins from various branches of the extended Sevigny clan. One was Yasmine Mercy, sixteen years old, wild, and at the age when rebelling against her parents was as necessary as breathing. Everyone assumed she’d run away with her boyfriend, but that had been weeks ago. Now her parents were frantic.

  The other was Tait Sevigny, who’d gone to the resort town of Apolli. Mid-twenties, he’d been hired on by a construction company building a new hotel in the area. He hadn’t checked in yet and his new wife, Ami, was nearly hysterical with worry. As a newlywed myself and with a husband who could be away for weeks at a time, I sympathized. Given our history and the grizzly task Alexei had set for himself of cleaning out the Consortium, I knew my fears were justified. Ami’s probably weren’t in the same league.

  While I felt terrible for Yasmine’s mother and Ami, there wasn’t much I could do. I ran the cards, tried not to make the readings sound as bleak as they looked, and gently suggested they contact the MPLE, Mars Planetary Law Enforcement, to open an investigation. That got me a lot of gasps and looks of abject horror—Sevignys never call the leathernecks. Still, I offered what advice I could and hoped it would help.

  For Teshia, I tried to clear all that worry out of my head as I dealt the Child is Born spread for the third time that sol.

  It was a six-card spread, resembling a star once the cards were laid out. The first card gave the child’s temperament. The second, her strength and the third, what challenges she would face. The fourth and fifth showed the positive and negative influences on her growth and well-being. The sixth showed what gift she would bring to the world. And since my family believed in everything to one degree or another, including reincarnation, I’d added an optional seventh card. This was the shadow card, dealt from the bottom of the deck, and it showed what Teshia had been like in her previous life.

  I looked over the cards, pleased. Teshia was only a few weeks old; who wanted to predict doom and gloom for a newborn? All the cards were upright, which generally meant a positive reading, and there was a nice mix of cups and wands. Cups were more than just love; they also represented kindness and caring for others. Wands meant hardworking and ambitious. The shadow card was the High Priestess, upright. Wisdom, serenity, and understanding. In her past life, Teshia had been a teacher or a guardian, both spiritual and intuitive.

  I beamed at Etna Jane. “You can relax. It’s a good reading,” I said, offering a soothing pat when she looked terrified at what the cards might show. Then I pointed to the cards, running her through them and feeling not unlike a fairy godmother bestowing gifts on the new princess. “She’s going to be a happy child, full of love. The Page of Wands means she’ll be a good friend and someone you can rely on for support. The Three of Cups means she’s going to achieve great things but the Eight of Cups in this position means she might tend to hesitate and miss out if she’s too cautious. The Ace of Wands shows she’ll be exposed to a lot of wonderful, creative influences that will shape how she sees the world. The Four of Cups here means she might think it’s all too good to be true and is undeserving of all the amazing things happening to her. But the last card here, the Six of Wands, means she’ll be a role model for others and praised for her accomplishments. I promise, she’s going to have a wonderful life.”

  By the time I’d finished, Etna Jane was sobbing. She took my hands and kissed them. Around us, everyone hugged and congratulated one another as if we’d all done something earth-shattering or dodged some horrific disaster. Another bottle of champagne was opened and a glass was slapped in front of me. I sipped cautiously since it would be rude to refuse, but I got more than a little tipsy.

  “Thank you so much, Felicia,” Etna Jane blubbered, her dark green eyes swimming with tears. “It’s such a relief, knowing she’ll have such a wonderful future. I feel so blessed. We’re all blessed. Thank you again.”

  “No need to thank me. All I do is read the cards. I don’t make it happen. Teshia will do that herself,” I said as Celeste swept in with a selection of facial wipes so Etna Jane could dry her eyes. I took one as well and surreptitiously wiped my hand since Etna Jane had cried all over it and left me feeling a little soggy. In fact, I’d been cried on for almost two solid hours, so I needed a cleanup anyway.

  Like most of the Sevigny clan, Etna Jane had inherited a variation of the same dark hair and green eyes. I’d come to realize that those of us who shared similar coloring also experienced the same gut feeling directing our lives. Those who didn’t had no idea what we were talking about. Celeste, with her blond hair and hazel eyes, was one of them.

  The luck gene was one nugget of information I hadn’t shared with anyone in the family. I’d asked Alexei his opinion, and he said it was up to me. I’d decided I couldn’t—I didn’t want them harboring the same doubts and fears I did. I constantly second-guessed myself, wondering if I controlled my own destiny or if I existed as a pawn of the universe. No one else needed that uncertainty dropped on them.

  I scooped up Granny G’s cards and looked around the sea of faces. “I’m not sure how much more I have left in me,” I admitted, my eyes landing on Celeste since she was the hostess. “I can read for Azure’s little boy, but then I need a break. All the champagne is making the wands and the swords look alike.”

  “When did you become such a lightweight?” Lotus teased, dropping into a chair beside me. “Remember when we’d hit the clubs in Elysium City? You drank like a fish.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure you’re remembering things correctly? I recall more than one occasion when I practically carried you home.”

  Lotus waved a hand as if this were some negligible detail of no interest. “That’s so far in the past, who can even remember now?”

  “It was a few months ago, and I remember it just fine,” I said, giving the cards another shuffle.

  “That was the old me,” she said, smiling beatifically as if she’d been canonized a saint, and rubbed her belly. At five months, her baby bump seemed to have popped overnight and her breasts had gone up two cup sizes. I knew about the cup sizes since I was privy to every detail of Lotus’s pregnancy whether I wanted it or not. “Now that I’m going to be a mother, all that’s behind me. A baby puts everything in perspective and makes you reevaluate your priorities.”

  I fought not to roll my eyes. “You know you’re full of shit, right?”

  “One sol, your time will come, and you’ll be glad you had me here to share my valuable advice and insights.”

  “We’ll all be here for you, Felicia,” Etna Jane assured me. “You coming to Mars has been such a blessing and getting to know you has been wonderful. Someday, you’ll experience the miracle of a new baby and feel that same joy we all feel. It will be such a…” She drifted off, groping for words.

  “A blessing?” Lotus offered with a snicker.

  “Yes, a blessing!” Etna Jane cried. “That’s it exactly! A blessing.”

  Gods save us all. I drank more champagne as if that could shut off the blessings, wishing this whole sol was over and I could get away from the steady stream of babies.

  “What about Azure? Is she still interested in a reading?” I asked Lotus, lifting my champagne glass one last time. Shit, it was empty. How had that happened?

&
nbsp; “Celeste! Where’s Azure?” Lotus bellowed. “If she wants a reading for Tavas, she’d better get her ass in here!”

  Nearby cousins winced. A baby woke up and let out a wail before settling again.

  I eyed Lotus. “I recall you being a lot less shouty when you worked for me.”

  “Nope. Same amount of shouty,” she assured me as Celeste walked back into the kitchen.

  “She’s here. I’m just not sure where. I tried shimming her, but she didn’t reply,” Celeste said, shrugging. “If she doesn’t want a reading, we can’t force her.”

  There was some tutting and murmurs of disapproval as if Azure had done the unforgivable. I shrugged and put the cards back into my black travel case. I was tired, drunk, and stressed—not the right headspace to read for anyone.

  “Do you know where Alexei is?” I asked Lotus. I could have pinged him, but since my family didn’t know about my implants, asking around was easier. “I haven’t seen him in hours.”

  “He’s with Stanis. The men were bored and went off to play cards or something. I think Stanis has reached his christening limit and wants to hide out,” Lotus said.

  An image popped into my head of my relatives shamelessly trying to fleece Alexei while playing some card game with dubious rules. I winced in embarrassment, imagining him enduring it politely. Or worse, feeding them tips they’d want to try later on some unsuspecting innocent.

  “We have to go shopping sometime,” Lotus said, moving to another topic. “I need baby things and as the godmother, you’re obligated to help.”

  Although shopping with Lotus had been fun when we’d worked together, now I dreaded it. But I couldn’t say, Sorry, I’m not interested in your baby because I’ll never be able to have one myself and now I’m sinking into a major funk. I didn’t want pity or sympathy. No one could know how brittle I felt, or how close to breaking. After all, didn’t I have the perfect life? What right did I have to complain? So I turned my smile up full blast and scraped up all the excitement I could muster.