Page 107 of Kiss of Wrath

He had a pile of winning thousand-dollar chips sitting in front of him on the green baize, along with a Jack Daniel’s in a tumbler, beaded with condensation. On his one side was a hot widow from Iceland who kept putting her free hand on his thigh, high up. On his other side was this entertaining fellow, P. Jack something-or-other, who had recently married for the fourteenth time. Harek and everyone else at the table, including the young dealer, were having a grand old time.

In fact, Harek hadn’t had so much fun in ages. Literally. His sin had been greed, very bad greed, and he’d been forbidden by Michael to gamble anymore. Who was he hurting? No one, except the casino owner, who was probably a mob boss or something, Harek justified. Besides, what Michael didn’t know wouldn’t hurt Harek. Another justification to himself.

Just then, as the dealer cut a new deck of cards, and was placing it in the shuffling machine, Harek glanced over to the walkway that surrounded the casino proper, cut off by a velvet rope. Then he did a double take.

Five midgets stood there waving at him. Midgets? Well, little people. And the most bizarre little people he had ever seen in all his thousand-plus years.

The two girls or women, it was hard to tell from this distance, wore wigs and wobbly high heels, and enough makeup to plaster the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Their spandex dresses highlighted breasts that were either bad boob jobs or nature’s mutants. The boy-men wore little suits and hats . . . a beret, an oversize Stetson that kept falling down over the person’s eyes, and a baseball cap. Two of them had mustaches and one of them had freckles . . . a lot of freckles.

But why were they waving at him? And one of the females was squealing in a decidedly girlish, not womanish, manner, “Har-ek!”

“Oh. My. God!” he muttered when understanding seeped into his thick skull. It was Miranda’s kids.

And among the security guards who were rushing to the site was one who could be a twin of Mike. Or Mike himself. He knew the answer to that question even before he noticed the guard’s fierce scowl directed his way.

Oh, he was in big trouble!

“Cash in,” he told the dealer.

Everyone at the table protested his leaving in the middle of a winning streak, but he knew that he had no choice. Another minute and Mike would be over here dragging him off by the ear.

“What are you kids doing here?” he asked the minute he came up to them and steered them into a lounge area.

“What are you doing here?” Mike asked him.

“We were looking for you,” Maggie, the older girl, said, as she adjusted her drooping décolletage.

“Me? Why me?”

Mike was looking at him like he was scum.

“Because we’re trying to find Mordr, and we heard that you were here. We figured you would help us find Mordr.” This was Sam, who was eyeing the slot machines even as he spoke. Given a chance, the kid—the one who had an inappropriate-for-his-age interest in gambling—was going to make a dash for the nearest Wheel of Fortune.

In fact, a heavyset woman sat down at that particular machine, put in a dollar, and the thing went wild. “Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune,” its speaker kept saying, along with a lot of raucous bells and whistles. Apparently, she had just won a jackpot, as evidenced by casino personnel running to her side.

Sam looked as if he could puke. “That was my machine. I was gonna put in four quarters. See.” He held out an open palm that held four quarters. “She stole my winnings.” He was about to shoot across the rope fence and confront her.

“Oh no, you do not!” Harek said, grabbing him by the back of his suit jacket and tugging him back. “Where did you kids get these clothes anyhow? And how did you know I would be here?”

“Yes, Harek, curious celestial minds would like to know how they knew you would be here.” Mike had his arms folded across his chest, glaring his way. “Could it be you are always here?”

“I am not!” he said vehemently. “This was my first time.”

Mike rolled his eyes.

“Well, my second time. In a hundred years.”

“We knew you were here because Mr. Trixson mentioned it to Miranda when she dropped us off at his pool this afternoon,” Ben informed Harek.

“Mr. Trixson works in a dance club next door and he came here for breakfast this morning,” Maggie added.

Mike glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. The message was clear. The archangel was now aware that Harek had been in the casino all day.

“Mr. Trixson has a whole closetful of costumes,” Linda, the little one, with two missing front teeth, added further information to the kids’ story of how and why they got here.

“Did Mr. Trixson bring you here?”

“No!” all five of them said with horror.