Queen of Cards

By Jon Jacks

As soon as Holly’s brother Hal finally starts winning at cards, he’s murdered.
Worse still, he leaves her little more from the family fortune than an ancient pack of cards he claims brought him luck.
As lady-in-waiting to the queen, with high standards of living to maintain, Holly has no choice but to try her own luck at the tables.
But it seems the cards literally have a life of their own...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: May 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005481230

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Queen of Cards

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella’s Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch’s Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare – SpinDell

Swan Moon – The Unicorndoll – Lesser Nefertiti – My Shrieking Skin – Stone in Love

Font of All Lies – The Bared Heart – The Fairy Paintbox – An Angelic Alphabet

Forewarnings and Three Grapes – Death of a Fairytale Princess – The Incurable Caress

The Maid’s Caul – Nu’s Ark – A Disgraced Angel – Wake Me Up When it’s Christmas

God’s Toybox – Aurora Rising – The Veil – Petals: Portals of Desire – Ripppples

Golden Elk – MatchBox Fairy – The Snow Nymph – The Deep and Secret Yes

Mirror Merror – The WatcHousE – Winter Queen – Sweet Vale of Aricia – InterLace

Text copyright© 2021 Jon Jacks

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Chapter 0

Yes, her brother had been a fool – but that didn’t mean he had to die, did it?

And now, fool that he was, he’d left her nothing but his deck of cards.

The very thing responsible for his death!

What had happened to all the money he’d won using them?

That would have been of far more use to her!

But, fool that he undoubtedly was, he’d probably squandered it all. Money rarely stayed long in his pockets.

Holly threw the cards against the wall in frustration.

There was nothing magic about them, despite everything he’d claimed.

*

Chapter 1

Naturally, Holly had painstakingly checked through the entire deck.

Yet no matter how much she’d studied it, she could only come to the conclusion that it was just a regular set of cards.

There were no hidden markings, as far as she could see, that would reveal which card was which while playing a game.

What had her brother told her?

That every previous owner of the cards had come by the most astonishing wealth.

That every previous owner, too, had come to a violent end: accused at some point of cheating, and murdered either while at the table or down some dark, ill-begotten alley.

He’d flattered himself that he had the wit to avoid such a fate.

That at last he’d win back the family fortune he’d gambled away earlier – and then retire, satisfied with his wins, from the game.

Even so, he must have presumed after all that there wasn’t really any foolproof way of avoiding the apportioned fate of the cards’ owner – for he’d warned Holly long ago that, should anything happen to him, she must ensure that no one but her inherited the deck.

But why?

She’d seen her brother play.

And yes, it was only on his acquiring these supposedly magic cards that her brother’s previously atrocious bad luck – as he’d put his horrendous losses wholly down to, of course – abruptly changed for the better.

Yes, he didn’t win every hand.

How suspicious would that have looked?

And yet he won every important hand on which prodigious sums of money were riding.

Unfortunately, there’s not one single gaming table renowned for bringing together players who accept their losses with good grace.

He would inevitably be accused of cheating at some point.

Of slipping cards out from beneath his coat sleeves.

Of using a marked deck.

And so he would roll up his sleeves – and insist, moreover, that a new deck of cards should be brought into play.

Still, though, he would continue to win.

So why, Holly wondered once again, had her brother always spoken so reverently of the cards? He’d even made the quite ridiculous claim that they could only be the creation of some great and ancient magician.

He’d continued to insist almost right up to his end that the magically endowed cards were responsible for his success.

And all this, too, despite the evidence regularly presented before Holly’s own eyes that the deck had absolutely nothing to do with her brother’s almost miraculous luck at the gaming tables.

*

The magician was the offspring of the queen and a demon.

How else could his birth be explained?

The queen, along with her twenty eight sisters, had left their husbands behind in the old lands long ago.

Not that a single one regretted this in any way.

They had originally planned to be rid of their husbands after all.

So, exiled to this far away island for their attempted crimes, they now lay each night instead with the demons who had long inhabited the land.

Demons who visited them as they prepared to sleep.

There were other offspring of these nightly liaisons, naturally.

These were giants. Monstrous ogres who would freely wander across what they came to consider as their isle until the very last of them, Gogmagog, died with no one else left to mourn his passing.

The magician, however, appeared in every way to be human.

The demonic within him thankfully remained wholly spiritual, it seemed, while simultaneously endowing him with powers that no other man could be capable of wielding safely.

Not that he appreciated this in any way.

For who really likes to think of their mother sleeping with a demonic being?

And, in fact, the magician was particularly incensed by the thought.

It was truly, truly humiliating.

It was undoubtedly a situation that required addressing – or, rather, transforming – in some way.

And unlike any other in this unfortunate position, he had the talents, capabilities and resources at his disposal to achieve this.

There would be no holding back – just as soon as the moment was right.

*

Chapter 2

Of course, scattered haphazardly across the floor, the cards appeared even less magical than ever to Holly.

How could a truly magical deck allow itself to be so ungraciously treated, so easily discarded?

Shouldn’t she be struck down dead or something along those lines?

Wouldn’t they, at the very least, somehow fly back together? Or, maybe, somehow avoid striking the wall at all?

No, there was nothing magical about these cards.

Her brother had been mistaken in his belief that he’d alighted upon and been a beneficiary of some mystical arcana.

Yet, admittedly, it had been a belief that had inspired him to win, if only through granting him a confidence, a bluster, he’d have otherwise lacked.

The court cards that had fallen face up on the floor appeared to Holly to stare up at her forlornly. The expressions of the Pages were especially sorrowful. The queens in particular glowered back with frowns of astounded fury.

How dare she cast us against a wall in this manner?

But…and she’d never noticed this before, and she couldn’t wholly understand why she’d failed to spot it as she’d closely inspected the deck…a queen was missing.

Of course, many of the cards were lying face down: she could be hidden away amongst all these others easily enough.

And yet, no: Holly was certain that the deck was short of a queen!

How could she have missed the loss of such a highly important card?

She bent down amongst the cards, hurriedly turning those that were face down over, searching out the missing queen, more sure than ever now that finding her would somehow reveal the deck’s