CHAPTER THREE
My grandmama always said that bad fortune immediately follows good fortune. She also said that nothing good ever happens after two o’clock in the morning.
Two hours before I made an emergency trip to the spirit world and got attacked by a scorpion demon who wanted to turn me into a human shish kabob, I was up three hundred dollars in a game of blackjack.
I was a pathetic sight at The Chateau Casino, the poshest new riverfront casino in St. Louis, leaning over a blackjack table, guarding my stack of clay chips like a troll. Slot machines blazed in a frenzied fury of lights, and cigarette smoke hung in the air so thick, it could have rained ashes.
It was bone quiet, the kind of quiet that only happens in a casino late, late at night when all the normal people have gone home
