The City of Lost Fortunes

by Bryan Camp

  Frowning, Regal led Jude up the steps to the glass doors and into the cool quiet of the shopping center. Everything about this space said wealth. Smooth marble floors swept up into massive columns; polished brass and gleaming mirrored reflections. Hushed whispers of conversation, like in church. The chilly air, the silence, the scent of bleach and air freshener—all of it made Jude feel somehow crude and soiled.

  Maybe that was just the hangover.

  Jude wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve and turned to the elevators tucked away in a corner, the doors sliding open as he approached.

  Regal stuck a foot against the door so it would stay open. “Here,” she said, holding out a small medallion about the size of a quarter. It had a stylized sunburst engraved on one side, and reminded Jude of the doubloons he’d used as poker chips the night before. The metal felt cool and smooth against his fingertips. “You remember how it works?”

  “Yeah,” Jude said. He pressed it into a depression on the elevator panel beneath the other buttons. All the numbers lit up when he snapped the medallion into place.

  Regal started to say something but seemed to reconsider. “Good luck,” she said, instead.

  “You know me. Better lucky than good.”

  Regal stepped back and smiled for the first time that morning before giving him the finger with both hands. The doors closed with a soft chime.

  Jude widened his stance and braced himself. He’d been on a ride at Jazzland once that felt like the elevator to Mourning’s office, a slow incremental climb and a sudden, jaw-clenching drop, followed by a minute or so of doing an excellent impression of a yo-yo. At least at amusement parks, they strapped you in. This time, thankfully, he managed to keep his feet. Another soft chime sounded, and the car jerked to a stop. He pried the sunburst free and dropped it into his bag. His ears popped, and the doors slid open with a gritty, aged rumble.

  Everything in the waiting room was an anachronism, from the thick brown carpet that covered the floors and the wood paneling on the walls to the scent of lemon wood polish in the air. The desk was covered in antiques: a rotary phone, a bright green secretary’s lamp, a monster of a typewriter. The door on the far wall had ACQUISITIONS AND INVESTMENTS painted on the frosted glass. Jude had the urge to look down at himself, to make sure he hadn’t shifted into the black and white of an old noir film.

  Even the tweed vest and coat of the little man sitting behind the desk seemed yanked from the past. He clacked away at his typewriter, absorbed in some task. The only thing odder than the room’s quaint antiquity were the segmented ram’s horns that curled up from the secretary’s forehead, thick where they burst from the skin and tapering into points above his thinning hair.

  When Jude stepped out of the elevator, the doors closed behind him and vanished. Mourning’s office was like Dodge’s card room—like any number of places in this city, not one where the entrances and the exits stayed put. Jude found himself settling into his old role easier than he would have expected, taking things like disappearing doors and men with horns for granted—as if magic and all its implications were a pair of worn, comfortable jeans, loose and familiar.

  The horned man, as much a fixture of the waiting room as the carpet and the stenciled lettering on the glass, didn’t seem small at first due to a trick of perspective. Everything around him—his desk, his lamp, even the potted plant behind him—had been shrunk down to his size. In truth, the secretary stood no higher than Jude’s waist. Since Jude had never learned the creature’s name, and since only one expression ever crossed his face, Jude had always just thought of Mourning’s secretary as Scowl.

  Jude waited for a moment and then cleared his throat. Scowl turned at the sound, appeared to recognize Jude, and, true to form, puckered his face into a grimace of disapproval. He nodded toward the bench across from him, a curt, dismissive gesture, then returned to his slow, intermittent typing. Jude sat, his knees popping as he settled on the uncomfortable seat. Getting old or, at the least, out of shape. Just one of the perils of mortality.

  Jude waited with growing impatience while Scowl removed one page from his typewriter and added another, seemed to take a full minute adjusting its placement, and went back to work, never once acknowledging him. Jude’s nerves, already frayed, seemed to twinge and strain with every hesitant clack of the typewriter’s keys. Considering the sort of people that came to see Mourning—powerful, dangerous beings—Jude found it surprising that Scowl hadn’t long ago had his officious little spine ripped out for offending the wrong deity. He took a deep breath, trying to rein in his anger.

  “I’m here to see Mourning.”

  The typing stopped. Scowl clasped his hands together over the keys and turned moist, almost tearful eyes toward Jude. “I see. And you are expected?” he asked. He spoke with a slow, rhetorical-question sort of cadence, as though speaking to a stupid person who had asked an extraordinarily stupid question.

  “I am,” Jude said. “He sent for me.”

  Scowl nodded, tracing a finger down a yellow legal pad to his right. “Name?” he asked. First name Eat, last name Shit, Jude thought, but said only his name. Scowl made a brief clucking noise with his tongue, turned a page. “I am showing no appointments under that name. Are you certain you have the correct establishment?” Without waiting for a response, he returned his stubby, hairy-wristed hands to the typewriter.

  Jude clenched his jaw, swallowing down a sliver of anger. He could point a finger and set the asshole’s grease-slicked hair on fire. He could speak just one word, and those curlicue horns would twist and grow until Scowl’s scrawny neck snapped from the weight.

  Most of the contents of his magician’s bag were benign—potions and amulets and protective charms—but he was sure he’d find a weapon in there if he looked hard enough. He had a thunderbolt that would leave nothing of Scowl behind but a snide little smear of a memory.

  Coils of magic twisted in Jude’s gut, begging to be released. He could do it. It would be easy. Instead, he took another deep breath. He forced himself to stay calm, partly because he needed a clear head when he went into the next room, partly because he knew most of his anger was only frustration at Dodge’s murder searching for an outlet.

  But mostly because as easily as he could snuff out Scowl’s mean, petty life, Mourning could do the same to him.

  “He sent for me,” Jude repeated. “Why don’t you check with him?”

  “Mr. Mourning prefers not to be interrupted.”

  Unbelievable. Jude opened his mouth to say something else, but the phone on Scowl’s desk let out a soft buzz. The secretary held up a sharp-nailed finger up, shushing Jude, and answered it. “Yes, sir,” he said, into the receiver. “I believe so, sir.” He held the phone away from his ear. “Mr. Dubbysin?”

  Jude managed, barely, to resist the bait of the mispronounced name. “That’s me.”

  “Yes, sir, he has arrived. Yes, straightaway, sir.” He hung up the phone and turned that suffering gaze back to Jude. “Mr. Mourning does not appreciate tardiness. He will see you now.” Jude’s anger drained away into the urge to laugh; Scowl’s contempt was so complete it went past infuriating and entered the realm of the sublime.

  On the way to the door, Jude twitched a finger and muttered a curse. When it took hold, Scowl’s typewriter would type increasingly vulgar obscenities, no matter what keys he punched, for about an hour. Childish, sure, but a little justified, too. The small release of magic itself felt better than Jude wanted to admit, an itch scratched, a muscle stretched. The knack came back easily. It felt natural, felt right, like an athlete finding the groove.

  Or an alcoholic falling off the wagon.

  He opened the door and stepped into Mourning’s office, squinting as his eyes struggled with the radiance that poured in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Jude tried to keep his breathing even, nervous as he always was in Mourning’s presence. For one thing, the man was simply too bright; the sunlight seemed to refract around him, prismatic, shifti
ng, brilliant, making Jude’s vision swim. Then, like a switch had been thrown, it dimmed, and he could see again. Nothing about Mourning’s blue eyes dimmed, though; if anything, they burned brighter than ever. Jude couldn’t meet that gaze for more than an instant—the eyes were too sharp, too knowing.

  Mourning’s skin was the color of burnt umber, burnished with the patina of old bronze. He wore his dark hair long and swept back behind his ears, and day or night his cheeks were as clean as if he’d just left the barber’s chair. Mourning tapped his full lips with two of his fingers, a smile curling behind his hand. There had been rumors when Jude still worked for him about that blinding radiance, that overpowering presence. Some said Mourning had a faerie glamour he cast when people came into the room—magic designed to make him appear beautiful, powerful. Others thought he might be Apollo or Ra, or some other sun god in disguise. Whispered rumors, of course. Jude believed the truth to be something more complicated, more sinister, but had always kept his thoughts to himself. The one thing everyone who had ever met him agreed on was that Mourning’s beauty was the shimmer on the edge of a wickedly sharp knife.

  Mourning sat at a desk made entirely of glass, which added to his ethereal appearance, bare except for a nameplate, which simply said S. MOURNING, MANAGEMENT. His silver watch flared as he gestured for Jude to take one of the black leather armchairs. Aside from Mourning himself, the most striking thing about the room was its uniformity, everything either transparent or black or white, the floor covered in a checkerboard of jet and slate, the nameplate dark walnut etched with pale letters. A small end table of carved ivory and glass in between the armchairs held a porcelain mug, steam wafting above it. Jude sat and picked up the cup, inhaled the scent of chicory coffee, grateful for some sort of normalcy in the room. Mourning himself wore a suit black and shiny as fresh poured tar, a tie the color of bleached bone. That unsettling smile still stretched across his face.

  Jude tried to speak, found his throat dry, and sipped at his coffee instead. Mourning steepled his hands in front of his lips and waited.

  “You wanted to see me?” Jude asked when he found his voice.

  “Yes, Mr. Dubuisson,” Mourning said. “I certainly did. You might say I felt seeing you was of the utmost importance.” He had a soft, buttery purr of a voice, a hissing lisp on each sibilant consonant that Jude found entrancing. It crept into his thoughts and made it hard to concentrate, like television static, in the background at first but growing louder and louder. His heart was beating so hard, he thought it might burst.

  He said nothing. Mourning looked down at a black file folder on his desk that hadn’t been there a moment before. No flourish, no word of command, just magic, used with the offhand, natural ease of a god. Jude put his coffee mug down, sure that any second now his trembling hands would betray him and spill it everywhere.

  Mourning spoke, not looking up from the folder. “It says here you have, of late, resisted any involvement with those concerns that fall under the auspices of this office, so far as we are able to ascertain.” Behind him, downtown New Orleans stretched gleaming to the cloudless, empty sky, the summer heat blanching the blue from the air.

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  Mourning looked up, cocking his head to the side like a curious bird, his smile vanishing. “Which aspect? We are accurate in our understanding that you have sequestered yourself? Or are we correct to doubt the veracity of this presumption?”

  “Um.” Shit. Not the tone Jude wanted these questions to have. He fought the urge to squirm, tried to remain still despite his discomfort. “I’ve been laying low,” he managed to say. “Haven’t used magic in six years.”

  Mourning held up an index finger. “Aside from this very moment, when you profaned my affiliate’s Underwood.”

  Jude paused. “Right.”

  “Might you be so kind as to elaborate as to your rationale behind this?”

  The words were out of Jude’s mouth before he could stop them. “Because your secretary is a rude little prick who had it coming.”

  Mourning smiled, a brief flash of white so keen it could leave a blister. “He does have the tendency to undertake his role as sentinel with undue diligence,” he said. “My inquiry, however, was in regard to your argument for complete withdrawal from our coterie.”

  Jude thought of numbers and X’s spray-painted on doors, of water stains on walls higher than his head, of the city crying out for all that it had lost. “Just don’t have the stomach for it anymore,” he said.

  “Ah.” Mourning pursed his lips and nodded. “Indeed. For an individual of your particular appetence, these environs must have become quite, hmm, harrowing, of late. Yes?”

  Jude agreed, waiting for the ax to drop.

  “And yet.”

  There it was. Even though he expected it, Jude flinched from the blow.

  Mourning leaned forward, the leather of his chair creaking. “As a former member of my employ, you are no doubt aware that I take a certain pride in my apprehension of the occurrences here. The who, what, where, when, and whys, as it were. Here is what I know. Last night, you engaged in a speculative enterprise with some rather potent opponents, the outcome of which is both significant and—for at least one of its participants—most unfortunate, yes?”

  Jude nodded, certain that if he opened his mouth he’d only make things worse.

  “So you will forgive me if I am thus puzzled, as I am, that current events do not conform to the narrative of non-involvement with which you persist.”

  Jude started to nod, but froze when he realized exactly what Mourning was implying. He opened his mouth, closed it again. There were two men in Jude’s head. One of them was the Jude who had hidden for six years, a gibbering, reeling, panicked voice desperate to give Mourning whatever information he asked for, to agree to whatever demands he made, anything to get out of this room as quickly and as intact as possible. The other one was the old Jude, who wouldn’t know how to bow even if he wanted to, who spit in the eye of authority on principle, sometimes just for the hell of it. That one wanted to tell Mourning exactly where he could shove his insinuations, his intimidations, and his ornate lexicon, too. In their brief struggle for Jude’s voice, Mourning spoke again.

  “Usually, Mr. Dubuisson, this is the point where you would attempt to clarify any of my misconceptions before my suspicions solidify into, well, let’s call them motivations.”

  Here, beneath Mourning’s glare, the broken Jude won.

  Words rushed out of him in a torrent, like water through a broken levee, assurances that Dodge’s summons had come as a complete surprise, a list of the game’s participants and their interactions, confusion about his own cards being empty, fleeing the game and waking up in his own bed. Through it all Mourning said nothing, his only motion the tap of his fingers against his lips. When Jude finished, he was filled with the embarrassing conviction that he’d started to babble. His throat had gone dry. He sipped from his coffee, which had grown tepid, hoping he’d given Mourning what he wanted.

  After a silence that dragged on from awkward into full-on uncomfortable, Mourning spoke. “Quite the aberrant turn of events,” he said. “I must admit an inordinate level of curiosity as to the rationale behind your inclusion among so puissant an entourage. Perhaps the connection is hereditary?”

  Mourning’s words cut through Jude’s anxiety. He’d wondered himself why he’d been invited to the game but hadn’t considered this possibility. His thoughts whirled. Was that why Dodge had been willing to give him the satchel? Had he finally found his father, only to lose him again?

  Before Jude could try to get him to say more, Mourning glanced at his watch—the face turned to the inside of his wrist—and sighed. “Brevity it is, then,” he said. Mourning put his hand down on his desk on top of a small pile of folders that, once again, simply appeared. He flipped through them, absently, as he spoke. Jude had the impression of someone who had already moved on to other business. “Mr. Dubuisson, in your previous occu
pation with us, you conducted various inquiries, yes? In similar fashion, would you be so kind as to dedicate your eminently suitable abilities to this particular problem?”

  Jude realized what the bright god was asking him and fought down a quiver of panic. He’d told himself that if anyone in this city would know where to start looking for a god’s murderer, it would be Mourning, and here he was, handing Jude this assignment like this was still his job, like the storm and the past six years hadn’t happened. But Jude wasn’t that man anymore. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

  Mourning kept talking, as though he hadn’t heard, and for a brief, terrible moment, Jude thought he was going to have to repeat himself, but then Mourning stopped mid-sentence. “Beg pardon, but perhaps you have misapprehended me.” Those eyes, a blue so deep they were nearly purple, bored into Jude, robbing him of speech. “Do not mistake courteous wording as denoting the presence of a request, Mr. Dubuisson. You were one of the last people to see this city’s fortune god still alive. You may either choose to assist this inquiry, or you implicate yourself as its potential target. I advise careful consideration of these two options.”

  Jude bit down on the smartass response that leapt to his tongue. Not here, not with Mourning. “I want to help,” Jude said. “I do. But the truth is, this, uh, inquiry is way out of my depth. Whatever you’re looking for killed a god, Mr. Mourning. I’m so low on the totem pole, I’ve gotta take shit from your secretary out there. I’m not saying no because I won’t. I’m saying no because I can’t, much as I hate to admit it. But I really like breathing and having a heartbeat, and I’d like to keep doing both as long as possible.”

  Something passed across Mourning’s face that Jude had never seen before, an odd twist of his lips, a widening of those unearthly eyes. After a moment, Jude realized Mourning was surprised. “How disappointing,” he said. He closed the file on his desk and shook his head. “I must confess myself unimpressed with your lack of ambition, Mr. Dubuisson, as well as disdainful of the fervor with which you cling to your mediocrity. Rest assured, however, that my offer stands as only a brief opportunity, after which you will firmly enter the categories of ‘witness’ and ‘suspect,’ rather than the much more preferable status of ‘ally,’ which you might otherwise enjoy.” He turned his wrist up to check the time again. “I have, however, neither the time nor the inclination to compel your cooperation at present. Now, if you will be so kind, I have another engagement.”