Left-handed Luck

If you accused Leo of being lucky, he’d deny it. He’d tell you his life is a disaster and, truth be told, it is. He’s burned every bridge. Still, he’s never been hurt, never been homeless, and things have always pretty much gone his way. Except for now. He’s fallen prey to the Tattooed Woman and her goon, Gary, and the only thing that’ll save him is blind, inexplicably fabulous, left-handed luck.Leo’s scamming free drinks at The Nugget, one of the old-school casinos off Freemont Street in Las Vegas, when the Tattooed Woman cuts him out of the herd. She plays him—like Hendrix played the guitar—chatting him up and touching his forehead, doing a mind reading act that looks like a trick, but isn’t. It’s a true thing wherein she learns everything she needs to know: he has enough ready cash to make him worthwhile prey and he’s all alone. No one, anywhere in the world, will care if he just ups and disappears. He’s soured every relationship—burned every bridge. Leo surprises her. He wants to do it back—read her mind in return—and it’s something the Tattooed Woman doesn’t see coming: a blind spot in her future-sense. Generally, she sees everything coming—everything that’s going to happen in the next few minutes—and this is not on her radar. This is an alarming anomaly.And, to make matters worse, Leo’s mind reading actually works. It’s the first bona fide paranormal thing that’s ever happened to him. He has a vision of something so unspeakably horrible it blacks him out, leaving him confused and weak—easy to manage. It’s a tooth-and-nail contest that can only end badly, one way or another. Leo doesn’t even suspect, but he can change things—what’s supposed to have happened, the set future, to something else, something it wouldn’t normally be. In his general vicinity, probability does not behave as it should. Chains of events rearrange themselves for his benefit. It’s something he does unknowingly, without any degree of skill, an alternate universe in the making beyond conscious control. That’s the difference between them. She knows what she’s doing. She’s as accomplished a sorceress as there has ever been. Compared to her, Leo is easy meat. Unless something really unreasonable happens, something beyond cause and effect, her and her goon, Gary, will kneel him down in the desert, in a lonely place somewhere, and shoot him in the back of the head, execution-style.