Read Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy for Free Online

bastard.
    They walked around the corner and cut back through the Blackjack parking lot, half-filled with six-passenger buses and single and double-passenger cars, the bright-colored plastic shining under the tall white lights.
    He grabbed her hand. “Come with me.”
    There was that old heat again. He would never give up; it just wasn’t in him.
    “No, Samm. I’ve got a lot to do here.” He sighed, dropped her hand. “Take some time off. Carouse. I won’t expect you until Thursday morning.”
    “Carouse?” He laughed. He gave her a quick cool kiss on the cheek and turned toward the lot, heading for his own floater. She headed toward the building, slowly, reluctant for once to quit the evening air for the clangor of the casino.
    Her home shop stood like a bright dwarf among dead giants and burned rubble at the western end of the old strip. The old ones, Harvey’s and Caesar’s and Harrah’s, had been built for a bigger tourist trade. They’d been built for a massive power grid, too. Those still standing were dark, left to crumble, the casinos closed. She wished she could either get them up and running again or just tear the damned things down like they’d tried to do in Vegas before they ran out of workers. People came to Tahoe for a good time; relics of the crowded past were too depressing.
    Blackjack was wide and long and three stories high, bleeding light from every door and window, noise from every chink and crack.
    Judith was wise and she was clever and that was why the Colemans owned Blackjack and pieces of the relics and a couple much smaller independent casinos on the strip near Stateline. They had only one real competitor: Scorsi’s Luck, opened thirty years before in a motel down past the old California line. She felt acid burn the back of her throat, felt her mouth twist in disgust. Scorsi.
    Back to work.
    Jo had just touched the door of Judith’s office when it jerked back and Judith’s two kids came out, Lizzie pushing ahead of Drew, bumping into Jo.
    “Watch it, kid,” Jo growled.
    At seventeen, the girl had passed through her sullen victim phase and now seemed to be caught up in a dominance game with her two-year-older brother. But not with her Aunt Jo. Lizzie mumbled an apology.
    Jo waved it away, ruffled the girl’s stripes, and stepped inside her sister’s office.
    Judith, holding a cup of that imported San Francisco black tea she liked so much, sat behind her six-foot desk, squeezed into her oversized and overstuffed green chair, looking like a beefsteak tomato sitting in its own leaves, big and round and powerful in her red dress.
    “Want some tea?”
    Jo shook her head. “Just wanted you to know Samm’s gone until tomorrow. Sent him to pick up the vax. And I’ve got a fixer coming to see me. I hear she’s good.”
    Judith looked pleased. “When?”
    “When she has time.”
    They both laughed again. “Could be months,” Judith said.
    Jo shrugged. She half turned. “I’m going down to talk to Waldo now. See you later.”
    “Good luck. You tell him from me I’m sick of losing the help because he’s a lecher. Costs too damned much.” She held up an index finger, scanning her desk. “Oh… wait, there was something…” She fanned a pile of papers like a poker hand and jabbed at one scribbled note with a blunt forefinger. “Yes. Rica Marin. Came from the Riverboat Queen over on the Delta. They say she can wait tables and she can sing, too. Just sent her to Waldo.”
    “Sounds good.”
    “We’ll see. Why don’t you check her out. See if she really can sing.”
    Jo trotted down the steps back into the main room. Some old guy had hit the jackpot on a nickel slot. He was hopping around like a puppy. Good. Good for business.
    The dimly-lit restaurant was beginning to fill up for dinner. Cousin Waldo was at his station trying to look the part of a maître d’. Out in the kitchen, the two cooks were banging utensils. The food smelled good, basil and rosemary and garlic.