I hold up the poker chip and tap it against the glass, and he opens the door without a word.

“Thanks.” Stepping in, I can’t help but notice the guard has a dog-eared paperback propped up next to his stool, along with a styrofoam cup of coffee. The book is Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. The guard sees me looking at it and scowls.

“Is there a problem?”

“That book,” I say. “It’s funny.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong author.”

“No, I mean, somebody just recommended it to me.”

“Yeah?”

I nod. “How is it?”

He takes a sip of coffee and glances down at the cover. “Well, I can’t say I’m crazy about his implicit assertion of transcendental idealism denying the reality of external objects.” He flicks his eyes up at me. “I mean, I suppose that you could argue that he refutes it in his discussion that self-consciousness presupposes external objects in space, but I’m not totally convinced.” Turning, he sits back down on the stool and regards me coolly. “Now, did you want to keep talking about philosophy, or are you ready to go lose all your money to that joker upstairs?”

“Tough call, but I think I’m ready.” For the first time I get a look at his laminated ID badge, which reads murphy, george. “Hey, George?”

His expression turns curious. “What?”

“You know much about him?”

“Kant?”

“Brandt.”

At the mention of that name, George’s whole face goes sour. “Put it this way,” he says. “I’ve sat here on this stool long enough to watch punks like you throwing your trust funds into his bank account in exchange for a few minutes of feeling like you’re some kind of postpubescent jet set.”

“So then how come you help him out like this? Serving as his personal doorman?”

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

“My first week.”

“Let me fill you in on a little secret. There are only two types of people here at Connaughton—the kind that play along with Brandt Rush and his clan, and the kind that don’t last.” He takes another sip of coffee. “I happen to need this job. Not that you’d know a whole lot about something like that.”

“It might surprise you.”

“I doubt that,” George grunts, and picks up his book again, disappearing behind it until I turn and start upstairs.

Crowley House is even older than my dorm, but it wears its age well, like the cabin of a vintage luxury yacht. It’s eleven twenty as I head down the second-floor hall and realize that I’ve started walking faster, trying to keep time with my heartbeat. My pulse always speeds up when I’m getting ready to start a con. I used to worry about it, but at the last second I always cool off, so I’m hoping tonight is no different.

My mission this evening is simple: figure out how Brandt is cheating, and cheat better. I’ve got five of the most popular decks stashed in my pockets—Bicycle, Maverick, Bee, Streamline, and Aviator—matched up with the cards I’ve heard he’s most likely to use. It’s actually not particularly important that I don’t get caught, and at some point I pretty much want him to know that I’m cheating—just not right away.

After that, things are going to get really interesting.

I can already hear the hip-hop music and laughter coming from the corner room. And I wonder, what must it be like to be neighbors with Brandt Rush? Or did the housing office just give him his own wing?

I get my answer when the door opens.

The dorm room is actually three singles with the walls knocked down, creating one spacious suite overlooking the quad below. It’s already packed with students, thirty of them at least, gathered around the tables, talking and sipping drinks, savoring the occasion as if they were the European crème de la crème in the golden age of the French Riviera. Some are actually wearing tuxedos, and the girls have on cocktail dresses and heels. I find myself thinking of the Sigils. I’m assuming most of the students here belong. Is there some kind of secret handshake?

Nobody so much as glances up when I walk in. I make my way through the crowd, until I find myself face-to-face with Brandt.

“Yo, bro.” Grinning, he grabs my hand and shakes it. “Good to see you. I’m totally stoked you got my invite.”

“Thanks.” I don’t know if I’m more shocked by the warmth of his greeting and its ostensible authenticity or by the fact that somebody actually still uses the word stoked. Apparently we’ve come a long way from him sending me out to get his coffee. The miracle of money, I think, and smile. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

“You get in okay? Any troubles at the door?”

“George let me in,” I say. “But I think I interrupted his reading time.”

“Yeah, dude’s a trip, right? Thinks he’s Sophocles or something.”

“He never gives you any trouble about curfew?”

“Who, that guy?” Brandt says, and rolls his eyes. “He’s lucky to have the job. His son’s a student here, and the tuition assistance is the only way he’s able to keep the kid out of public school. He does as he’s told. Anyway . . .” Brandt grips my elbow and steers me hard to the left. “You want a drink? Bar’s over there. Epic Phil can hook you up with the beverage of your choice.”

“Great.” I follow him over to a long freestanding table full of bottles, where another student—the guy who helped me in our Global Risk class—is making three drinks at once, both arms blurring like an adrenalized octopus above a small forest of crystal stemware. “You know Epic Phil, right?”

“Hey,” I say, and the guy stops for a second to stick out his hand, which is cold and slightly damp from the martini shaker. His real name is Philip Van Eyck, but I guess he goes by a different moniker when he’s slinging martinis. “How’s it going?”

“Epic!” says Epic Phil, which I suppose must be his trademark. “What’re you drinking?”

“Hmm.” I make a big deal of perusing the selection. “Do you have Pepsi products?”

Phil and Brandt exchange a glance and then they burst out laughing, and Brandt pounds me on the shoulder so hard that I feel my sternum pop. “Good one, bro!” he hoots, and tosses a sidelong glance at Phil. “Get him whatever he wants, on the house. He’s my guest tonight.” Then he grabs my elbow again and steers me toward a table. “Hope you brought your rabbit’s foot with you,” he says. “Word around the campfire is that you’re a regular five-card stud. What’s your game?”

Blackjack is the word on my lips when I turn to approach the table and see the dealer standing behind it, shuffling the cards.

“You already met my girlfriend, right?” Brandt asks, and grins at Andrea. “Take good care of him, huh?”

And Andrea smiles back at Brandt and then at me. “Absolutely.”

Eleven

“I’LL GIVE YOU THIS,” I SAY, STANDING IN FRONT OF THE TABLE, close enough to whisper. “You are good.”

Andrea just keeps smiling, as radiant as the lights on Las Vegas Boulevard, as she shuffles the deck. She’s already on to the next thing: dealing in new players on both sides of me as they move in, stacking up chips and tossing crisp piles of twenties across the green velvet. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out what it means that she’s dealing cards for the guy that we’re both supposed to be scamming.

When she doles out my cards, I lean in again and whisper, “It didn’t take you long to make your move.”

“Turns out Brandt likes to jump right into new relationships,” she says. “Who knew?”

“So how long have you been dating him, thirty-six hours?”

She smiles. “You play him your way, I’ll play him mine.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

My mom was the one who taught me how to count cards. She’d been dealing blackjack at the Palms when she’d met my dad, and my lessons started back when I was eight years old; I was what you might call homeschooled at the time, so I guess that part counted as math. By the time most boys my age were playing Little League and swapping Pokémon cards, I was already dragging in massive pots in basement games against disgruntled, chain-smoking weekend warriors while my dad sat behind me in case anybody got irritated about losing his grocery money to a kid whose voice hadn’t even changed yet. People occasionally used words like “prodigy.” And “phenomenon.” And “cheat.”