Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

Robert with it. But I bet you’ll be glad to have a little luck now and then.”
    This time, after a moment of hesitation, I took the ring. Her logic persuaded me—OK, and a little touch of greed. I eyed the golden circle, trying not to feel excited about it. Somehow, these objects captivated my mind. I put the ringon my thinnest finger and twisted it so the diamond was on the inside. It looked like a simple gold band.
    “I’m going to give this back when I return,” I said.
    “I know.”
    I tried out the ring, using it to cheat at Keno in the lobby restaurant. I was careful, only winning every tenth game or so. Jenna had told me she didn’t feel good about using her ring anywhere other than the Lucky Seven. She still held a grudge against that place. I wasn’t interested in money—I only needed enough to survive. But I wanted to know how to use my objects.
    Half an hour later, I left Jenna and headed for the Lucky Seven. I wanted to have another talk with Rostok. I figured Jenna was probably safer without the ring than she was with it, anyway. These objects seemed to attract trouble.

I didn’t get to Rostok right away. Someone had just been found dead in the Lucky Seven, under less-than-ideal circumstances, and that changed things.
    The hotel was less imposing in the dying daylight. It was also less attractive without the twinkling green lights. The casino resembled two square towers of gray concrete—which was exactly what it was. I approached the building in the shade of the west tower and walked up the red-carpeted steps. I felt numerous eyes on me the moment I passed through the polished glass doors. Undoubtedly, a dozen cameras and eyeballs were checking me out. As I crossed the hotel lobby, a man in a khaki uniform with a mustache that covered his upper lip in red-pepper bristles tapped me on the shoulder. After some initial confusion, I realized first off that someone was dead; McKesson had been called but hadn’t gotten there yet; and that rather than being about to give me the boot, they wanted me up to the room wherethe murder had occurred right away. As they put it, “You work with McKesson, right?” And who was I to say I didn’t? After all, we often wound up appearing together at unpleasant events. McKesson would be mad I’d pretended to be his partner, but I’d deal with him later.
    In the bowels of the hotel, we passed through a door with a combination lock, like the one I’d encountered on my first trip to visit Rostok. I wondered if I would be meeting the hotel’s owner and his pet named Ezzie again today. I rather hoped I wouldn’t, even though they were the most probable sources of hard information in this place.
    “The body is right inside,” the security guy told me. He stopped and tapped on the combination lock. It beeped five times then clicked open.
    I must have had a funny look on my face, because he frowned at me as I hesitantly stepped into the room. I tried to force myself to act calm and in charge. I straightened my shoulders and walked confidently into the dimly lit room.
    The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was an awful mix of barbeque and burnt plastic. The lights were on automatic, and they flickered into full brilliance at about the same time the security guys let the door click behind me.
    What I saw next stopped me in my tracks. Bernie, the pit boss that Jenna and I had just spoken with a day ago, was dead.
    He was lying on his back on what appeared to be a conference table. He hadn’t passed away in his sleep either. He had a foot-wide burn mark over his body—a long streak of charcoal, as if someone had run him over with a steam iron. Blackened flesh and melted clothes had fused together. His one remaining eye was open, staring sightlessly at the fluorescent lights directly overhead.
    I took an unsteady step forward, with my hand over my nose. Getting closer to the corpse wasn’t making the smell any better. I walked around the conference table, looking for evidence. The carpet was burned at the foot of the table, where something hot had first gotten hold of the man. That streak of melted carpet fibers could only have been caused by intense heat. It led from a spot on the floor about six feet from the corpse. The trail was straight and purposeful. Whatever had caused it had rolled right up and right over Bernie. But the trail ended abruptly after that. There was no sign of a burned path leading into or out of the room. The conference table