by Bryan Camp
Renai sighed. Tell the truth and shame the devil, she thought. “When you summoned me from the Underworld, I told you everything I knew. But that was only half of it.” It took another cup of coffee and a handful of Regal’s swears to get through it, but Renai told them everything. Or at least, everything she thought would be important.
She started with Ramses’ disappearance, explaining to them how she and Sal had shown up at moment of his death only to find the wound his absence had left in the world. Then she told them about Cordelia—who Sal had named Discord right before she killed him—and how she’d pretended to be a psychopomp to gain Renai’s trust and follow along with her while she’d searched the living side of New Orleans for Ramses. The more she thought about it, the more Renai realized that Cordelia had never really said she was anything but herself. She’d let Renai jump to conclusions all on her own.
Their biggest accomplishment together had been convincing a magic-using hacker to help them track Ramses down. Renai couldn’t help but wonder if Cordelia had been less interested in finding Ramses and more interested in making sure Renai didn’t. But then why kill Sal? Why not kill her, too? Nothing Cordelia had said or done really made any sense yet, so Renai moved on and told them about her journey with Sal through the Underworld in search of Ramses—though she kept the details hazy, since she might very well have to answer for every drop of tea she spilled—how they’d discovered that Ramses had been destined to die once before, that he’d sold part of his soul for immortality. At that, Leon had been the one to season the conversation with some impressive vulgarity.
And then she told them about the start of the Hallows and Cordelia’s betrayal.
She left out the parts about Seth’s offer and Mason’s deal and her less-than-helpful conversation with Jude, partly because she didn’t know how much longer they could sit around here talking before Celeste threw them out, and partly because she didn’t think these meddling gods were anybody’s business but her own.
But mostly because the last time Renai had trusted someone, they’d murdered her best friend.
“So there it is,” Renai said, swallowing the last of her cold, bitter coffee. “I’m still not exactly sure what this kid and Cordelia have to do with each other, but I know damn sure I’m gonna find him before she does.” She squeezed her hands into fists so tight that her knuckles cracked. “I just wish I wouldn’t have lost everything I had on me when I . . . reassembled. I had a seeing stone that would have led me right to him.” She turned to Regal. “Hey, you think Jude—”
Regal spit out a bitter little laugh and let her feet drop to the floor with a thump. “I’m afraid the Fortune Choad of New Orleans has other duties,” she said, making a loose fist and shaking it back and forth.
Leon, who’d come back into the dining room during Renai’s story but hadn’t sat back down, leaned his forearms on the back of one of Celeste’s chairs. “Jude got a game going. Say the best way he can help us is to keep these cats occupied.”
Renai had an image flash through her mind: a peek into the fortune god’s card room, the assembled horrors she’d seen gathered around his table. “What kind of game?”
Regal shrugged. “Bunch of storm deities and gods of destruction to hear him tell it. Apparently some lame-ass card game is the only thing stopping a bunch of sentient hurricanes from hitting the Quarter like coked-up frat boys. Like anybody’d notice.” That last was muttered to herself as she leaned down to reach underneath the table to retrieve something. “But we don’t need that immortal prick anyway,” she said, dropping a child’s Princess and the Frog backpack onto the table. “You didn’t really lose any of your shit. We sorta stole it.”
Renai unzipped the backpack and dumped out the contents on the table. It was all there: her knife—still in its half-ass cardboard sheath—the seeing stone she’d gotten from Jack Elderflower, the Fortune coin, and the cigarette—now in an empty medicine bottle with the label peeled off—and the lost spirits she’d transformed into a pack of playing cards, all of it. Everything she’d spent half the morning thinking she’d lost.
Renai turned her best glare in Regal’s direction. The spirit rose up in response to her anger, different than it had ever felt before. Easier to control than the part of her from this world remembered, far more destructive than the Underworld side of her could believe. The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees. The hiss of rain hitting hot concrete whispered in Renai’s ears, the crisp stink of burnt ozone filled her nostrils. A spark leapt and popped across her fingertips.
That was new.
“You’d best have an explanation,” Renai said, and Leon widened his eyes at the threat in her voice. If Regal felt any fear at Renai’s display of power, though, she didn’t show it. Instead, she leaned closer, a slow, satisfied grin curling across her lips.
“I knew I liked you,” Regal said. “As for why I took all your toys away, take a look at yourself. Maybe it was a dick move, but I don’t think I made the wrong call. When we found you in front of the cemetery, you were like Hunter S. Thompson fucked-up. Muttering nonsense, holding that gris-gris bag in one hand, and calling down lightning with the other. Until the sleep charm I threw at you actually worked, I wasn’t sure you were even human. I had no idea who was going to come out of that room when you woke up: the girl who needed our help, or death in a pretty dress.” She shrugged. “So yeah, I went through your pockets. Sue me.”
Renai took a deep breath and pushed the power back down into her belly, pleased at how obediently it responded. There was none of the fight she’d expected, none of the weakness that came from wrestling with the storm. The ease with which she called the magic to heel took some of the edge off her anger, made it easier to slow her pulse. “I guess that makes a certain kinda sense,” she said forcing an apology into her voice that she didn’t really feel.
“So we cool?”
Oh good, Renai thought, now she’s trying to speak the language. She kissed her teeth. If Regal wanted a stereotype, she’d give her one. “Yeah, fam,” she said, “we cool. You just gotta reco’nize and respect, y’eard?”
Regal nodded, not seeming to pick up on the mocking ’hood tilt to Renai’s words. Bet she tells people she’s “woke,” too.
To give her hands something to do, Renai scooped up the child’s bag and started filling it back up, the coin of Fortune and the pack of cards going in first, then the gris-gris bag of Sal’s Essence, and the stick-and-yarn conjure figure—re-covering the effigy that was holding her two halves together with its cloth wrapping—knowing that she’d have to be very, very careful with it.
“Does any of what you just said mean y’all can keep from killin’ one another for five minutes?” Leon asked, his voice full of fatherly disapproval. “ ’Cause a brother could use a smoke.” He didn’t wait for either woman to answer before he stomped past Renai, muttering to himself on his way out the door.
“Speaking of,” Renai asked, picking up the pill bottle with the cigarette in it, “whose idea was this?”
“Celeste did that. She touched that thing and yanked her hand back like it burned her. Said it was death to touch it. I was like, ‘no shit, surgeon general, it’s a fuckin’ cigarette.’ But I get the feeling she meant something else?”
Renai hummed in agreement but didn’t elaborate. She picked up the knife and pulled off the cardboard covering its blade. The jagged, curved edge of it had a wicked gleam, even in the dining room’s dim light. As soon as her palm closed on the handle, she recognized it for what it was: the broken-off piece of her Underworld mirror. She remembered holding it that first time the Hallows ended and she broke in half, the mirror cracking right along with her. She thought about reaching for the other larger piece and trying to press the edges back together, but she knew what would happen if she pulled something from thin air in front of the Magician, and she’d spent enough of her morning answering questions.
She covered the broken glass blade with the pieces of cardboard and—acting
like she was putting the knife into the backpack, but really just hiding her hand and the blade from Regal’s view—reached into that nowhere place that held the mirror and slid the knife inside. A little frisson shook through her when it vanished, the taped-together strips of cardboard remaining behind.
Regal drummed her fingers on the tabletop and fidgeted, her toes on the floor and her heels driving up and down, like her body was trying to run away from whatever her brain was fighting with. Renai picked up the stone she got from Jack and bounced it on her palm, expecting a dozen questions from the other woman before she could look through it, but Regal’s attention was fixed on the front door, where Leon had gone. Something is up with those two, Renai thought.
Trying not to get her hopes up, telling herself that the stone might show her Ramses asleep in his own bed or still in class or somewhere else unhelpful, having not caught up to his current time yet—or worse, nothing at all—Renai closed one eye and held the stone up to the other.
Through the hole in the stone, Renai saw Ramses in bright daylight walking along an empty stretch of road. Judging by the sweat soaking through his uniform shirt, he’d been walking for a while. She searched the image for any kind of landmarks: buildings, street signs, anything, but there was nothing. Just palm trees growing in a wide neutral ground that separated four lanes of empty road in two, and overgrown foliage on either shoulder. The absence of identifying signs was itself a bit of a clue—she knew he wasn’t anywhere in the city proper, at least—but he could be on any long stretch of road going nowhere on the edges of the city, maybe in New Orleans East—the suburb of the city that had suffered the most and struggled the longest in the aftermath of the storm—or even out somewhere on the West Bank for all Renai could tell.
She opened her other eye and saw that Regal had taken out her phone and was scrolling through it but kept glancing up to the door. Renai smirked. “So you sweet on Sweetwater Carter, huh?”
Regal’s wince was covered up so quickly that Renai could have convinced herself that she imagined it, except for the red flush creeping over the other woman’s cheeks. Renai couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger or infatuation. Probably some combination of all three. To spare her a little dignity, Renai closed her eye again, turned her attention back to Ramses and his empty road.
After a moment, Regal spoke. “Wouldn’t matter anyway,” she said. “That man is puckered up tighter than a priest on Ash Wednesday. I know he’s got history with Legba, and that he’s a pretty famous musician here in the city even though nobody anywhere else has heard of him, but that’s all information I got thirdhand. Voice of this whole shameless painted whore of a city, and I can’t get him to say five words to me ain’t about our limp-dick duties.”
Renai fought a smile. She hardly knew this woman, wasn’t sure she even really liked her, but it was strangely comforting to know that even with all the weird shit they dealt with, with all the power they possessed, relationships were always awkward. “Might have something to do with him being High John de Conquer,” Renai said, more to herself than anything. Even though she couldn’t see the other woman, she felt Regal’s nervous jittering go suddenly still.
“His real name isn’t Leon?”
Renai looked away from the stone entirely, to see if Regal was joking, but from the expression on her face, it was clear she had no idea what Renai meant. “I guess it’s more of a title, really. The original High John was like King Arthur for the Africans abducted during slavery. You know, that whole part about him coming back one day when his people need him most? That was one of the first things I learned on the other side. The loa have been waiting for years for Leon to claim his crown, to really become High John. I imagine it weighs heavy on him, you know?”
“I ever tell you I used to have King Arthur’s knife? Whisper the right charm and it made you practically invisible. It was sweet as fuck.” She drew out the last word into a long drawl, punctuated by a little sideways shift in her chair.
The abrupt shift in subject didn’t really fool Renai, but she didn’t press it either. The other woman’s love life—or lack of it—was her own concern.
Renai held the seeing stone back up to her eye and found that Ramses had turned off the main road and was now slipping through a hole in a chain-link fence. On the other side of the fence, amid a dense tangle of undergrowth, a massive sign rose on two dark blue columns. The top and sides had once been a bright red, but over a decade of neglect had faded it to a light pink. The main image had been similarly bleached by the sun:
SI_ ___GS
was all that remained, and even that had faded almost to obscurity. The only portion of the sign that hadn’t been impacted by time was the small marquee board beneath the main logo, which read:
CLOSED FO_R STORM
Renai wrapped the stone in her fist and hissed out a quiet “Yes!” to herself.
“Good news?” Regal asked.
“That depends. Did you two drive us here?”
Regal barked out a laugh as she bounced to her feet.
“What’s so funny?”
“You can’t get Leon Carter to give a single straight answer to a question about himself, not for love nor pussy.” She stretched, straining her arms toward the ceiling until her spine popped, and she let out a satisfied groan. “But try, Sparkles, just try to shut him up about his fucking car.”
The car in question was a light green Rolls, gleaming like he’d just finished polishing it. Leon leaned on the hood, smoking a cigarette and reading a copy of the local paper The Advocate—folded in half so he could hold it in one hand—that he must have taken off Celeste’s front lawn. He wore black pinstripe pants, a matching vest, and a charcoal-gray dress shirt. Behind him was a two-lane road and the grassy rise of the levee, and a train clanking and rumbling by. A cool breeze blew in from over the levee, carrying with it the subtle brackish scent of Lake Pontchartrain.
When Leon saw them come out of Celeste’s house, he cocked one knee and scrubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his glossy wingtip shoe, tucking the butt into a vest pocket. “Where we headed?” he asked, holding open the back door for Renai and the passenger door for Regal.
Renai had a moment, just one, where she considered lying to them. The people around her lately seemed to end up either traitors or victims, and she didn’t want that to be true of either of these two, especially not Leon. She could get them to take her back to Kyrie and—assuming the bike had waited for her—ditch them and go after Ramses on her own.
But Celeste’s effigy would surely only hold her together for another couple of days. Sal was gone. She was out of time and out of options. Whether she wanted it or not, she needed their help.
Regal slid into her seat, and then both she and Leon looked at Renai. Waiting. Expectant. So Renai said the only thing she could:
“We’re going to Jazzland.”
Chapter Twenty-six
From the beginning, Jazzland was a series of mistakes waiting to happen, an amusement park complete with roller coasters and a Ferris wheel out on the far edge of New Orleans East, on land that most people in the city thought was Federal Wildlife–protected swamp. In its inception, it doubled down on every cliché of a tourist’s idea of the city even when they didn’t make any sense, combining Cajun terminology with vaguely French Quarter–inspired architecture and hyperbolic historical references in a bland, tasteless stew, like gumbo served in a Cleveland airport. When it was bought out by Six Flags—who added vapid cartoon characters to everything in a veneer of Americanization and based their publicity campaign around a thin, tuxedoed, frenetically dancing white actor in a creepy old man mask—everyone in the city still called it Jazzland.
To everyone’s amazement, when the storm hit, the Ferris wheel and the huge coasters stayed standing. Unfortunately, they were standing in seven feet of filthy, salt-dense water for over a month. The gates were closed and hadn’t opened since.
Not to the public, anyway. Teenagers left their spray-p
aint tags on everything in sight, and drug deals went down, went bad. A couple of movies used the park for filming, particularly the parking lot that was the size of an airport runway, and the police started patrolling the area, trying to keep out the gangs and the thrill seekers and the urban decay bloggers.
Teenage kids in school uniforms could still slip in unseen, apparently. Maybe Ramses’ ability to evade the patrol had something to do with whatever inhuman nature Opal had recognized in him. Or maybe security had just gotten lax.
Either way, while Leon’s and Regal’s attention was focused on the road in front of them, Renai pulled her black glass knife out of its nowhere place just long enough to cut two slits in the back of the jacket the Thrones had given her—the blade slicing through leather and fabric without effort, without even a whisper—big enough for her to push her wings through as she shrugged it on.
She transferred most of the contents of the child’s backpack to her pockets—the playing cards and the cigarette and the coin of Fortune—but left the pouch of Sal’s Essence and the stick figure effigy in the bag, which she left locked in the backseat of Leon’s car. It was way too hot outside for a jacket that heavy, and she didn’t know if its magic would even work anymore, given the way her wings and her mirror had changed thanks to the Hallows, but there was no way she would go into the ruins of Jazzland without the jacket. Nor would she risk those things most precious to her—the gris-gris pouch of Sal’s Essence and the effigy that was holding her together—by bringing them inside.
After all, things even hungrier than junkies, more territorial than gangs, and way more dangerous than the police made their homes in ruins.
That thought got her pulse jumping when Leon pulled the Rolls over onto the gravel-strewn shoulder, the realization that they might encounter something in there that she couldn’t reason with or intimidate with her connection to the Thrones. Something that she might have to destroy. It scared her, of course, but even more than fear, she felt anticipation. She’d been confused and broken for far too long—and now the tempest inside of her was ready to break some shit of its own.