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“So,” Berga growled over his hand of cards, “does Claire's girl know?”
Luck smiled, adjusting his own hand. Just his luck—Berga always got talkative when he knew he was going to lose. “Know about what?”
Berga scowled at him. “Yanno, about the fact that we're not exactly on the up-and-up.”
“I'm sure…” Luck paused, turning his brother's words over in his head.
His first thought was I'm sure he told her because that was what any sensible person would do. But, well, it was Claire.
“He met her on the train, right? We still hardly know what exactly happened there,” Berga continued. He rearranged his cards again and again as he talked, as if that would somehow make his hand better. “She might think he's a police officer, or a—a gentleman or something.”
Claire certainly wasn't a fool—he was one of the cleverest people Luck had ever met—but his mind took leaps of logic that were all his own and he very rarely bothered to check whether anyone else had kept up with him. He'd never deliberately deceive someone he cared about (if anything, he preferred to be too honest and let everyone else assume he must be lying), but it was entirely possible he might have just… forgotten.
Luck pinched the bridge of his nose. “We don't know what the situation's like yet. It might turn out just fine between them. And if it doesn't…”
Keith rapped his hand of cards against the table, the sudden noise sending a clear message.
If it doesn't, we'll take care of it.
Luck thought back to just how excited Claire had looked, the way he'd lit up when he talked about the woman he'd met—amazing, he called her—and how she'd promised to see him again if he'd only come find her. He'd gestured wildly, fingers tapping out an excited pattern against the air, as he talked about the places he wanted to show her and the things he wanted them to do together.
Luck had never seen Claire look so in love. If someone decided to break his brother's heart…
“Yeah,” Luck agreed, smiling faintly. “We'll make sure everything goes all right.”
---
For a while after that, none of them heard too much from Claire about his new paramour; instead, he mostly talked about the things he'd seen and the kills he'd made while he was off traveling the country. It was always a good time when Claire came in—his brother could ramble on and on about the same subject for hours without once repeating himself or making the story boring.
(Terrifying, yes, especially for those who didn't know Claire the way they did. Luck had once seen him drive a man to vomit from terror without so much as laying hands on him. But boring? Never.)
The four of them played cards and drank late into the night, or else went out on the town and enjoyed what New York City had to offer. He'd hoped Firo would join them, but apparently he and Ennis were busy helping that new kid-who-wasn't-a-kid, Czeslaw, settle into the city and he didn't really feel like hanging out with anyone just yet.
(Claire had smiled when he mentioned that, wide and innocent and cheerful. Luck didn't ask. A lot of times, with Claire, it was better not to ask.)
Except then Claire disappeared for a couple of days—the most info Luck could get ahold of was that a man had been seen on the other side of the city dangling a reporter off a train, which was a bit random even for Claire as far as targets went—and when he reappeared suddenly he wasn't talking about anything but this girl.
Apparently, she was his fiancee now. Luck had to hand it to him, the guy knew how to move fast.
“She was wearing the dress I bought her,” Claire said. “It looked so good on her, like she was an angel.” His smile turned manic round the edges. “An avenging angel.”
“I didn't know you bought her a dress.”
Claire nodded. “Rachel recommended it.”
Rachel? Luck frowned. This just kept getting more and more convoluted. “Is Rachel your fiancee's name, then?”
“Hah!” Claire shook his head. “No way. Rachel's a friend of mine, I met her on the Flying Pussyfoot.” He sighed, sounding almost nostalgic. “For a while I thought I was gonna have to kill her, but we're all good now. She gives great relationship advice.”
“Okay.” That was probably a blessing, honestly. None of Claire's brothers were especially—or at all—experienced in the art of romance. “Did she help you pick out the ring too, then?”
Claire froze. His eyes widened.
“You didn't get her a ring?”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, I wasn't exactly focused on a ring—”
“Even I know you need to get your girl a ring if you're going to propose to her, Claire.”
“She was wearing the knife sheathes in her dress,” Claire groaned. “She looked like she was about ready to slice this guy to pieces, I got caught up in the way she looked and I just couldn't wait another second. I just…” He drifted off with a sigh, a dreamy look in his eyes. “I just refused to entertain the thought of walking away and never seeing her again, you know? It was the right moment, ring or no ring.”
Wait, knife holsters— Luck paused before the words could leave his lips, taking in the predatory tightening of Claire's eyes.
He recognized the look on his brother's face; it was the same deceptively tranquil expression he wore whenever he was discussing his own godhood. He'd long since grown used to the way Claire's mind worked, but the fact that he was talking about this woman like that was new and a little unsettling. Claire only ever brought this side of himself out for family or people he was planning to hurt—if he was willing to rhapsodize this way over his brand-new fiancee, well…
Luck sighed. There was nothing for it. If Claire was putting this mysterious woman in the same category as his brothers and killing assholes, then his mind truly was made up. All Luck could do was throw his lot in with him and try to keep up.
“So,” he asked instead, “when's the wedding going to be, then?”
Claire ran a hand through his hair. “Ah, well, that's a good question, actually. I think Chane's going to want to have her side of the family there, which means I'm going to have to make a quick stop by Alcatraz and break her father out first.”
“Her father's in Alcatraz,” Luck said flatly. It wasn't a question. There was little point in questioning Claire, most of the time.
“Oh, yeah, didn't I tell you? It's what started all the shit on board the Flying Pussyfoot. Or some of it, anyway. There were a lot of impolite passengers on that train.” Claire's smile was as bright and sharp as the edge of a knife. “Her father's like you—older, I think, though. A bunch of his guys decided to break him out, I guess because they thought they could win themselves immortality that way? Pretty pathetic, if you ask me.” He shrugged. “I was planning to kill her for a while, but she was fighting this other guy on top of the Pussyfoot and it turned out she didn't really think killing the passengers was the way to go either, so…” His savage grin turned into something much gentler as he spoke—he looked almost bashful. “I decided to ask her out.”
Another immortal. An assassin. A train-top duel.
And here they'd been worried about the fiancee marrying in over her head. Apparently Claire had finally met his match, or at least the closest thing to his match that could exist on this planet.
He shook his head and let a smile creep up onto his face. “Well, let me know when you decide to hold it, okay? I'll have our men clear out one of the bars and we'll have ourselves a wedding reception. Oh, and one more thing—” Luck pinched the bridge of his nose. He already had a feeling this whole thing was going to lead to more headches than he could count—“bring your girl by some time, would you? Keith and Berga and I have been wanting to meet her.”
Claire laughed and gave Luck an enthusiastic pat on the back. “Absolutely. Don't worry, I'm sure you're going to love her.”
Any woman who could capture Claire's heart so thoroughly was, one way or another, going to be a very interesting person.
---
On the other side of the table, Berga eyed his cards with a look of deepest betrayal. “I heard you talked to Claire?”
It was a good thing their parents had waited until their third child to name one Luck; Berga had a devastating combination of shitty poker skills and an inability to know when to fold. It was tragic to watch, or at least it would be if Luck didn't enjoy winning so much.
(The Gandors were fortunate Berga didn't have much of a taste for playing cards with anyone outside of the family, or they would have lost a speakeasy's worth of cash just to his playstyle.)
Luck kept his poker face as neutral as possible. “I did, yes. We're staying out of it as much as possible.”
“What? You shittin' me, Luck? What are we going to do if this thing gets all fucked up? It's a wedding, not a business transaction. You've gotta keep a personal touch on these.”
He wasn't quite sure whether Berga was worried about the fiancee or Claire. Either way, it didn't matter.
“They met while she was trying to hijack the Flying Pussyfoot. Claire bought her knife sheathes as an engagement present and proposed to her because she was about to slice a man's throat. Her father's another immortal—one of Maiza's group, if I'm not mistaken.”
Berga's mouth was hanging open. Even Keith looked a little surprised.
Luck smiled, fanning his hand out with a smooth flick of his wrist. “I don't care how crazy it gets, we are letting Claire take care of this one for himself. If things fall in on him, we'll do all the cleanup he needs, but until then…” He shrugged. “This one of Claire's plots, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not about to jump into the middle of it.”
Berga swallowed. “We're really marrying another immortal into the family?”
Luck could hear the question underlying his words, the one he didn't quite dare to ask: can our lives get any more chaotic?
“Sounds like it,” Luck said in answer to both. “I guess we'll just have to wait and see.”
Keith nodded in agreement, the chair creaking under his weight with the movement.
He'd suspected Keith would take it in stride. His oldest brother had always been good at rolling with life's dice.
“Oh, and Berga?” Luck added.
“Yeah?”
Luck spread his hand out on the table with a predatory smirk. “You lose.”
“Goddammit, you bastard!” Berga's cards scattered through the air as he roared. “I had a chance that time!”
Luck tuned out his brother's ranting and knocked back another sip of wine. It was true; their lives had gotten pretty crazy in the past year, and all signs pointed to things only getting wilder as time went on. He had a feeling he could live with that.
Immortality would be awfully boring otherwise, after all.