by Bryan Camp
Maybe he can help us with High John! Jude felt Renai’s body perk up, posture straightening, toes curling, with an excitement that wasn’t Jude’s, a reminder that she was only a guest in this body.
A handful of things clamored for Jude’s attention: that she needed to track down the corpse of Jude Dubuisson and the killer, who she’d all but decided had to be Regal; that she needed to help Leon somehow, that—thankful as she was that she’d managed to keep her thoughts about Mourning away from Renai—she thought the bright god was more likely responsible for Leon’s condition than he was the solution; that she no longer saw a path through the next couple of days that didn’t end with her soul devoured by gods or back in front of the Thrones.
All of this, yet what came out of her mouth was “How about you start by explaining what Scarpelli was doing with that damned book?” Renai groaned in the back of her head.
Mourning finished making his drink and returned to his chair. He ran his tongue along the edges of his teeth before he spoke. “Four qualities comprise everything that exists: you, the chair you’re sitting in, this office, the Sazerac in this glass”—he smiled without humor—“even me. Anything that is a real and true object shares these fundamental elements: its relationship with other objects in space, the changes in those relationships over time, the ability to influence other objects, and the object’s understanding of itself. Simply put, to exist, a thing must have shape, duration, impact, and essence. This object we collectively refer to as ‘New Orleans’ is in jeopardy because these qualities are in jeopardy.”
He paused, a teacher waiting for his more obtuse pupils to catch up.
“Take my drink, for example.” He shifted his grip on the glass, holding it with this thumb and two fingers, turning it so the amber liquid caught the light. “It has a shape, dictated by the container which holds it. It has a particular duration, a series of moments from the one where I concocted it to the one where I consume the last of it. I taste it, and it gives me pleasure; its alcohol numbs my senses just slightly, and so it influences the world around it through its existence. It also has an essence, the degree to which it aligns itself to the ideal cocktail. Four qualities in harmonious equilibrium, allowing my drink to exist. If one of those qualities is forced to change”—he let the glass slip from his fingers, where it shattered against the chessboard marble floor, the scent of liquor and anise bursting into the air—“they all change. New shape. New duration, new perception, new essence, you see?”
He reached across the desk to Bienville’s journal, turning to Pauger’s map, the design that laid out and named the streets of the French Quarter, the original city. “This is the shape of the city,” he said. “This is the glass she’s poured into. Symbolic, most assuredly, but symbols matter. Symbols can be corrupted. Or destroyed. Or even, rarely, restored.” Mourning made a twisting gesture with his hand and held his glass once more, not a drop spilled. He sipped, delicate as a hummingbird drinking nectar, and leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking.
Everything slid into focus. She didn’t have the entire picture yet, but viewed in this light, so much of the past few days made more sense. Scarpelli hadn’t cared who the card game declared the next Luck, because he’d planned on changing the shape of the city into one where only he could assume that role. The other gods were willing to gamble on it—and kill for it—because being the Luck of New Orleans wasn’t just a title; it meant you were a fundamental influence on the destiny of an entire conscious, magical city. And the big question, the one that had plagued Jude for as long as she’d known the nature of the prize: Why would Dodge give away such power? Why have the game at all?
Answer: He hadn’t had a choice.
She pictured the glass shattering against the floor, and news footage of the levees breaking and the lake flowing in. The shape of New Orleans had changed six years ago, her body pierced and wounded, and so her soul and her essence and all the rest had to change as well. Dodge had the winning hand; if Jude threw the game—not that she had any concept of how to do that yet—if her fate wasn’t triumphant or tragic enough to overcome the hand Dodge had played, then he would be the city’s Luck once again.
Mourning said symbols could be restored. But what would that even look like?
“What about Leon Carter?” Jude asked, except she hadn’t really meant to say the words out loud. That had been Renai, pushing from the back of her mind.
Mourning laughed, a sound so rich and pleasant it nearly disguised its own cruelty. “Ah yes,” he said, “the lamentable Mr. Carter. He has indeed found himself in a situation of most grievous vexation.” Mourning reached into the empty space beneath his desk and pulled out a small black case. Renai lurched forward so frantically that Jude had to clench her hands on the armrests to remain in her seat. Renai was either a Sweetwater Carter fan or had siphoned knowledge of the case’s contents from Jude’s thoughts, but she certainly recognized it. Mourning spun the case around and, with precise, emphatic, gloating gestures, flicked open one clasp, and then another, and then eased open the lid to reveal Leon Carter’s brass horn.
The one he’d told the crowd at the Maple Leaf he’d traded his soul for.
“A lesson may be gleaned, here,” Mourning said, “concerning the ineluctable perils of storing one’s more ephemeral qualities within a physical receptacle. I confess, my sole intent in acquiring this particular item lay entirely in securing the allegiance of Atibon Legba, but as a result of this”—he tapped a finger against the journal—“bringing so swift an accordance with Mr. Cross, I find myself without any true purpose as regards it.”
Knowing that there must be some trick hidden here, some tripwire she hadn’t yet seen, Jude responded cautiously. “So, let’s just call it a fair trade, then. The book for the trumpet.”
Mourning feigned a pained expression. “Perhaps you have misconstrued the nature of our discussion, M. Dubuisson. I have already dispersed the agreed-upon remuneration for this trifle, and, with a far more valuable asset than a mere musical instrument, I have revealed to you the nature of this city’s predicament—indeed, the nature of all things. No, if you hope to gain possession of Mr. Carter’s horn, I fear I will accept only one specie in exchange . . . You, M. Dubuisson. As has been true for quite some time, it is my most fervent desire for you to be engaged in my service once again.”
Do it, Renai thought. Let’s be real here—you’re already dead. You can save High John right now if you just say yes.
Doing her best to tune Renai out, Jude considered what she knew of the bright god who referred to himself as “Management,” including who—and what—she suspected Mourning might be: another Trickster in a city rotten with them—one who, like the Scorpion on the back of the Frog, could only do what was in his nature. Jude reached down into the duffel bag at her feet and pulled out the pair of magically loaded dice. A petty hustle to try against a god, but Jude’s bag of tricks was getting pretty light. “Why don’t we make it interesting?”
Mourning tapped his lips with a finger. “What did you have in mind?”
“One throw. Five or a seven and I walk out of here with the trumpet, free and clear. Anything else and I’ll come work for you in exchange.”
Mourning released a sharp bark of amusement. “A marvelous suggestion,” he said, “but ultimately without merit, as I fear your definition of ‘interesting’ seems exclusively one wherein there is no increased reward for me. May I counter?” He didn’t wait for a response. “One cast of the dice, as you said, but if the sum is anything other than five or seven, then your term of service is dictated by the dice. Shall we say, one year for each pip?”
Something was wrong here. Mourning had agreed too easily, had to have some counter-trick of his own planned. Before Jude could think of some way of climbing out of the shit pile she’d talked herself into, Renai seized control of her own mouth. “Done,” she said.
Mourning smiled sharp enough to leave a scar.
Renai faded into the back of h
er mind, a sensation of chagrin, maybe, but not guilt; as far as she was concerned, this simply needed to happen. No matter the cost.
Mourning gestured for Jude to make the throw. Heart sinking, Jude stood and rolled the dice in her hand. She tried to tell herself that this was a good omen. Surely Mourning knew that no matter what the dice read, if Jude failed she was lost. Mourning wouldn’t be able to collect his years of service, not unless he descended into Hell and dragged Jude’s soul back from the Abyss. In a way, Jude couldn’t lose. So why, then, was the blue-eyed god’s smile so wide?
Jude blew on the dice in her fist to activate the spell and released them, holding the number seven in her mind. The dice danced and clattered and bounced across the glass, first two, then four, then a handful. Jude lowered her head, unable to watch. When the rattling stopped, she forced herself to look. Dice covered the table—well over a hundred—each marked with a single black dot.
“Most unusual,” Mourning said. “But a deal is, as they say, a deal.” He closed the trumpet case with an abrupt snap-snap of the clasps and spun it so that the handle was next to Jude’s hand. When Jude picked it up, it was far lighter than her destiny ought to be. “While I would much prefer it if you began immediately,” Mourning continued, “I understand that you are as yet under obligation to others. Shall we reconvene when you have resolved your dealings, then?”
He searched Jude’s face, clicked his tongue at what he saw there.
“If it brings you a measure of solace, M. Dubuisson, know that your former teacher made a similar arrangement with me some time ago. The outcome was identical.” At those words, Jude stopped trying to count the dice, knew exactly what Mourning meant, understood how Eli had become the Magician of New Orleans. Knew how much of a debt she herself now owed to Mourning.
Two hundred years.
Mourning plucked two of the dice from the table and cupped them in his fist, his gestures as deft and as theatrical as any stage magician’s. He held this hand out to Jude, unfurling his fingers. The two cubes resting on Mourning’s palm had reversed their colors: solid black with white pips marking their values. “As a show of good faith—a signing bonus, one might call it, were one so inclined—I will reward you with an equal measure of knowledge as I paid for the journal. One question”—he glanced at the watch on the inside of his wrist—“and then I really must consider our business concluded.”
At this point, only one question really mattered. “My last card,” Jude said, “what should I turn over? What fate do I need to win?”
If she hadn’t just endured Mourning’s gloating, preening joy, she might have believed the expression of sorrow that twisted across the bright-eyed god’s immaculate face; it was that good. For once, Mourning spoke without ornament or elaboration.
“You can’t win,” he said. “Losing this game has always been your fate.”
Jude clenched her jaw to stop the laughter that threatened to bubble up from deep within her, the desperate, panicked kind that wouldn’t end if she let it even start.
The deck was stacked. The game was rigged. As it always was. Jude felt a part of herself shift, stretching muscles long unused, relaxing a clenched fist to reveal the old Jude, the bastard who always came out on top and didn’t give a fuck who got burned in the process. The old Jude grinned.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said.
Not waiting or caring for a response, Jude snatched up the trumpet on her way out the office door. It dumped her out into a restroom—bleach struggling to overcome urine and harsh fluorescent light—in the Aquarium of the Americas, just a few minutes’ walk from where she’d left Leon. She passed through the entryway where a two-story fountain murmured—a trickle of water spilling over huge, overlapping bronze scales belonging to some metal leviathan—out into the heat and the view of the Mississippi, her steps quick and her thoughts whirling.
She found Salvatore waiting with Leon, the dog-shaped spirit lying at the zombie’s feet. “This is so bad,” Sal said. “Legba’s gonna shit fire. Do you know who this is?” The psychopomp didn’t look up until Jude snapped open the case and showed him Leon’s trumpet. When he saw it, the dog leaped to his feet. Leon just stared, head still bobbing back and forth. “Where was it?” Sal asked. “How did you get it back?”
In a swift, self-deprecating rant, Jude caught Sal up on all that had happened in Mourning’s office and what it all meant. Sal turned one dark eye up toward Jude and sighed. “You just can’t win for losing, can you?”
It was worth it, Renai thought. If it saves High John, you didn’t lose. Not really.
Don’t play any game you can’t win, Jude thought, quoting Dodge. But Mourning and everyone else said it was her fate to lose. So how could she avoid playing? Just like that, the answer—or at least the beginnings of one—rolled through Jude’s mind.
It wasn’t a plan so much as a trick—and Jude couldn’t do it alone.
Sal made a high-pitched, anxious whine and tugged at the trumpet case, reminding Jude of what she’d come here to do. She’d hoped Leon’s personality would return as soon as the zombie’s fingers touched the brass of his trumpet, but aside from a long, gasping shudder, Leon showed no reaction when she pressed the horn into the musician’s hands. Even bending stiff fingers to the buttons and raising the mouthpiece to his lips had no effect. Jude turned to Sal, hoping the psychopomp might have some advice, since souls were his area of expertise, but one look at the pacing, whining dog told Jude he wouldn’t be any help.
He needs the music, Renai thought.
I know, Jude thought, I’m trying, but—
No. Renai seized control of her body once again, casting Jude to the side as though she were no more than a passing thought. Which, in a way, she was. Renai dug through the duffel bag and came up with the MP3 player, said a little prayer to Legba when she saw it still had some battery left, and twisted the buds deftly and gently into Leon’s ears. She scrolled through the menu until she found Leon’s first album, Sweetwater, in a playlist of New Orleans artists labeled, simply, HOME. She cranked the volume all the way up and hit play.
Long, low notes drifted from the headphones’ speakers, muted by Leon’s ears. A flicker of recognition passed across the zombie’s eyes, a shift that could almost be felt in the air around them. Sal must have felt it, too, because he stopped pacing and dropped to his haunches.
Leon’s fingers twitched on the buttons, his tongue trembling across cracked and swollen lips. The first notes he played were hoarse, discordant, the death rattle of some wading bird. Leon bent low and tried again, this time managing a weak, hesitant riff. The musician rose to his feet, cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders and shaking the headphones out of his ears. He closed his eyes, and where Jude expected to see pleasure or relief, the look on Leon’s face was one of pure determination. The zombie drew in a long, deep breath, pursed his lips against the mouthpiece, and blew a note the angels on Judgment Day would envy. Fingers stabbing the buttons, cheeks puffed out as taut and round as baseballs, Leon leaned into his horn and played. As his song grew louder and stronger and more intricate, Jude felt a weight from her heart vanish, unsure if it belonged to her, or Renai, or both of them. Leon Carter played himself back from the brink of ruin, and the sound of it was pure joy.
When Leon finished, Jude looked down at Sal, who was, for once, speechless. After a few long moments of silence broken only by the sounds of the city around them, the corners of Sal’s mouth tugged back into a doggie grin. “So,” he said, “you guys wanna go and see a dead body?”
Chapter Twenty-One
He is traveling on a road that will become famous for his experience: blinding light, scales falling from his eyes, and a conversion to aid those he once persecuted. He is preparing for battle, weighing the necessity of fighting against the honor of making peace, when he realizes that his chariot driver is, in fact, the embodiment of the universe. He is meditating beneath a tree, withstanding the onslaught of the demonic army sent to distr
act him and the lust spirits sent to seduce him in order to achieve true Enlightenment. He returns from the mountaintop with the Law burned into stone tablets by Celestial fire, his hair turned snowy white by the shock of what he has seen. She bites into the fruit that the Serpent convinced her to taste, and immediately knows what is good, knows what is evil, knows that she is naked. He is hunting and stumbles upon the goddess unclothed; he is a stag pursued and then devoured by his own hounds. Knowledge can come suddenly, or gently. A light from on high or a voice from within. It can transform or destroy or condemn or embolden. The only thing an epiphany cannot be is denied.
From the street, Audubon Park seemed filled with ink. The lights had been shut off, and the oak canopy overhead blocked out any of the weak moonlight that managed to penetrate the clouds above. The summer air was sticky and cloying, even at night. By day, the park spread itself open, a bright and verdant garden. Once twilight fell, though, it became a pool of shadow in the bend of the river, a dark place for doing dark things.
Jude thought of her mother’s depiction of Scarpelli’s New Orleans, the shadow with teeth, and shivered. The vampire’s mansion, or what was left of it, was just at the end of St. Charles; the park was practically his backyard. Behind her, as though designed for contrast, Loyola University’s front lawn shone like the dawn, floodlights burning away the night, illuminating a statue of Christ, his arms thrown wide, comforting.
On the streetcar ride Uptown, Sal had told Jude and Renai that he’d found the corpse of Jude Dubuisson, alive and refusing to talk, hanging from a tree deep in the park. Before Jude could ask if Sal had seen who had taken the body, Sal told them that he’d fled as soon as he saw the corpse, not wanting to take the risk of getting caught. His exact words were “Screw discretion and valor—running away was the better part of staying the fuck alive.”