Read Online Cursed: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 1) by J. A. Cipriano - Free Book Online

opened the goddamned door.
    The inside of Jack’s was surprisingly well-lit in the antiseptic hospital sort of way. Fluorescent lights set into the ceiling cast sterile white light across the concrete floor. A couple of pool tables made of polished oak and covered with tournament grade Belgian Simonis cloth sat toward the back of the room. They must have cost ten times what the building had cost. Each.
    The wall behind them was filled with pool sticks, but they were covered in so much dust, I got the distinct impression no one ever used them. With tables like that, most players probably brought their own pool cues. Those were not the type of tables designed for frat boys on a beer buzz. No, those were serious tables for serious players.
    An Indian man, feather not dot, dressed in faded blue jeans, a white chamois shirt, and a tan snakeskin cowboy hat stood next to one of the far tables. He chewed on an unlit cigarette as he studied the pattern of balls laid out on the green cloth. I didn’t see anyone else near him. It made me think he might be playing by himself. He bent down, leaning across the table and aiming his stick at the cue ball.
    The cue stick itself was a marvel. Sleek black wood with a crimson Chinese dragon emblazoned along its length. Better still, it looked like the guy knew what he was doing. As his muscles bunched, the stick exploded in his hands like a rocket, smashing into the cue ball with a thunderous crack. The poor cue ball struck the blue two ball, sending it careening into a corner pocket.
    The cue ball, now misdirected by the two, struck the rail hard before spinning in an arc that let it kiss the orange five before dying abruptly in the middle of the table. Somehow, all of its momentum transferred to the five which shot off like a bolt of lightning, banking off the upper rail before dropping in the center left pocket.
    The guy looked up at me, caught me watching, and tipped his hat. “Like what you see, partner?” he asked, his chapped lips twisting into a grin. “I got plenty more where that came from if you’re man enough.”
    “Nope, I’m not a pool player,” I replied even though I had no idea if it was true or not. Something told me it might not be since I could identify the make of the cloth on the table with only a glance, but either way, now was not the time to be distracted by billiards.
    “Too bad. I didn’t peg you for a woman.” He shot me another grin to let me know his words were all in good fun and turned his attention back to the table, his cigarette all but dangling from his lips.
    Instead of marching across the room and belting him across the face in an effort to show just how manly my fists were, I scanned the rest of the room. There wasn’t a single television in sight. The top half of the walls were painted sky blue and were completely bare. The lower half of the walls were covered in that overbearing white vinyl stuff used in places that expected to get sprayed down. I traced my eyes along the floor and, sure enough, found a drain in the center. So they did expect to hose this place off. That was curious and somewhat troubling. How many pool halls needed to get sprayed down?
    A large oak bar that matched the tables encompassed the entirety of the left wall. In front of it, a smattering of mismatched stools with names like “Butch” and “Oliver” stenciled onto their colored vinyl seats filled my vision. Bottles of various liquor filled the shelf behind the bar along with a smattering of weird trinkets that didn’t seem to fit together very well. An old wooden Indian sat next to a green army man and a model tie fighter.
    The brunette sat in the far corner, elbows on the bar with her head in her hands. She was no doubt waiting for the old man behind the bar to finish wiping out his beer mug with his stained white towel. From the look of things, he didn’t even know she was there, but I was reasonably sure the smirk on his wrinkled face was due to the