When Andrea turns back to me now, I flick a fresh hundred-dollar bill onto the table like it’s the first one of a long night, even though it represents slightly more than a tenth of my current life savings. And just like that, I’m in the game, counting cards without really realizing what I’m doing. Even out of practice, I’m still quick enough that I can do it while holding up my end of the conversation.

And I win.

And win.

And keep winning.

Normally I’d take it easy, but I’m trying to get Brandt’s attention, and in a situation like this, there’s only one way to go about it. Nine hands in, I’m up a little more than six hundred dollars and feeling confident enough to slip some of my own cards into my hand, at which point even Andrea can’t ignore me anymore.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“I guess I could ask you the same question,” I say. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I did.”

“He’s already watching you. He knows you’re cheating.”

“Good. I want him to.” But before I can say anything else, Brandt drifts over, his joviality just slightly more affected than it had been.

“Yo, Willpower,” he says, slapping me on the back. “Looks like you’re killing it over here, huh?”

“What can I say?” I shrug. “Beginner’s luck.”

“Sure. You think maybe you want to pace yourself, give somebody else a chance?”

“Hey,” I say. “The way that I look at it, if you can’t take the heat, you shouldn’t be running a place like this, right?”

Brandt looks like he’s just swallowed one of his dad’s golf balls, and then he just grins. “Uh-huh.” He shoots a glance at Andrea. “Why don’t you take a breather, Dre?”

Andrea shrugs, then wraps herself around him for a long, slow kiss, then moves back when another girl steps in to deal. Right away I recognize the newbie—it’s Mackenzie, the blond L.A.-producer’s daughter who delivered my poker chip to the library.

“Wow,” she says. “Guess you remembered your lucky rabbit’s foot, huh?”

“Something like that.” Turning, I look over to where Brandt and Andrea are laughing with some other kids at the roulette table. “So how long have they been going out?”

“Three days.” Mackenzie glances up at me, this time in open amusement. “You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Oh, man.” I make a disappointed face, like she’s caught me in the act. “Is it that obvious?”

“She’s not his type,” she says, and shuffles the deck. “Besides, I heard she totally threw herself at him.” When Mackenzie deals the next hand, I can feel somebody standing behind me and figure that Brandt’s got a spotter sending signals to Mackenzie about my hand. Sure enough, when I glance over my shoulder, there’s my good buddy Epic Phil with a big grin on his face, passing me a glass.

“Pepsi?”

“Thanks,” I say, but when I reach for it, my hand slips, spilling soda across the floor. “Oh, dude, I’m sorry.” By the time Phil’s down on his knees soaking up the mess, I’ve switched out my hand with two other cards. I go big in that round and drag in another hundred and sixty dollars.

Two hands later, I’m up another three hundred and ready to collar up. It’s well past midnight, and when Mackenzie stacks up eleven hundred-dollar bills and three twenties in front of me, I can feel Brandt glaring at my back with a kind of radioactive intensity that nobody in the room is going to miss. Even Andrea looks interested in what’s going to happen next.

I walk right up to Brandt. “Thanks for inviting me. Anytime you feel like handing free money away, just let me know. I’m always happy to take it.”

His mouth tightens. His face is red, and I can see veins standing out in his temples. Self-control isn’t a natural state for guys worth as much as he is, and he’s barely keeping it together—picture a ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with an M-80 firecracker sizzling away underneath it. I’m turning away when Brandt grabs my elbow, hard, yanking me close enough to speak into my ear.

“How’d you do it?” he snarls.

“Easy.” I shrug. “I’m just a better cheater than you are.”

“So you don’t deny it?”

“Actually, I pretty much just confessed.”

“How? Counting cards?”

“A magician never tells his secrets,” I say. “It spoils the trick.”

“How come none of my dealers spotted it?”

“Maybe you should consider using smarter people.” I glance around the room. “I hear it’s supposed to be a pretty good school.”

He loosens his grip slightly and actually seems to consider what I said for about half a second. “If you cheated, then I guess you won’t mind paying me back what you took.”

“Sure.” I pull out the wad and fork it over—easy come, easy go—and watch him make a big show out of counting the cash, although what he’s really doing is deciding how furious to let himself get, being humiliated like this in his own place. The answer comes a split second later when he nods at a great swaggering glandular catastrophe of a kid—six foot three with close-cropped red hair and shoulders the size of former Soviet republics—who grabs me by the shirt, swings me around, and slams me up against the door hard enough to knock me through it, out into the hallway. I hit the floor, landing on my tailbone under a fire extinguisher. My arms go numb right down to my fingertips. On the un-fun-o-meter, it’s right up there next to dental surgery.

When I look up, Brandt and his pet mutant have stepped into the hall and are looking down at me. The guy’s got a lacrosse stick pointed at my face, so close that I can smell the grass stains.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have Carl use your face as a punching bag,” Brandt says coolly.

“Well, for one thing,” I say, “that’s a lacrosse stick, and you wouldn’t want to mix sports metaphors. And secondly . . .” I manage to get up, although it takes some time, and start rubbing the feeling back into my butt. “I’m not here on my own.”

“What?”

“See for yourself.” Digging into my back pocket, I whip out a sheet of paper with my photo and real name on it—my profile page from the New Jersey Department of Human Services—and toss it to him. “I’m not even really a student here. It’s all a scam.”

“What . . . ?” Brandt stares at the printout for a long time. Knots of muscle bulge in his jaw, and he cocks his head to one side, frowning. “You’ve got thirty seconds to explain yourself.”

“My boss sent me in here tonight to soak you for as much as I could get.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“Brian McDonald. He runs a crooked online poker game north of Boston. Mentioned settling a score with you over something you did to his daughter last year, a girl named Moira?”

Brandt shakes his head. “I don’t know any . . .” he starts to say, and then he stops. “Wait a second—Moira McDonald?” His whole face changes, and his eyes look like they’re about to pop right out of his skull. “What about her?”

“I don’t know. He just sent me to burn you—that’s it. Paid me a hundred bucks plus whatever I could win.”

“I guess you failed,” Brandt says, and nods at Carl, who hauls off with the lacrosse stick and whacks me in the face. It feels like somebody set off a cherry bomb in my jaw, and that turns out to be the best of it—when my skull slams against the wall, I don’t see just stars, I glimpse whole galaxies and nebulae erupting beneath my eyelids. From somewhere in the distance I hear Brandt say, “Break his nose,” and I’m aware of Carl getting ready to swing again.

“Wait.” I throw my hands up, just in time. “Hold on.”

Brandt gives me a look. “What?”

“I can’t go to Mr. McDonald like this. You already took your money back. If I return with a broken nose, he’ll never use me again.”

Brandt smirks. “Then I guess you should’ve picked a different guy to work for, huh?”

“I wish it were that simple.” I shake my head. “If it weren’t for that two million . . .” And I start slinking back down the hall toward the stairway.