The City of Lost Fortunes

by Bryan Camp

  And then he tucked it away in his pocket and eased his shirt back on, already moving forward, already trying to think of how he could use what he’d just learned.

  When he left the bathroom, the door to the ladies’ room across from him was the Red Door to Dodge’s card game.

  Waiting.

  By the time he made it back to his stool, Sal and Renai had finished eating, and the psychopomp was polishing off a slice of pie of his own. When Jude saw it, he felt a lurch, impossibly, of his hunger returning. He took Dante’s teasing in stride, making a joke about the bathroom being off-limits for a while, and asked for a refill on his coffee. Renai was trying to ask him why he’d run off like that, but Jude’s attention was drawn to the young asshole at the other end of the counter. As Dante served him his sandwich, he held up his index finger and reminded the waiter that he’d ordered cheese fries, too. “How hard is it to serve a whole meal at once,” he said to the woman next to him, not really a question, not at all concerned with the fact that Dante was still within earshot.

  A spike of the anger Jude had felt when the loa were threatening a defenseless Renai coursed through him, less intense, but no less righteous. Something in that raised finger, that privileged, unspoken demand, seemed to Jude to be everything that was wrong with this city, with people in general. He reached out again with that part of himself he’d always tried to hold back, and suddenly everyone in the room seemed filled with light.

  The asshole white kid glowed brightest; even the air around him seemed incandescent. Compared to him, most everyone else in the diner seemed a bulb on a dimmer switch, but a couple of the patrons—one of the cooks and one of the tourists lined up at the register to pay—looked like candles at the bottom of a well. Just by focusing on them, Jude’s gift whispered to him, like it had evolved somehow into something more. The tourist, though he looked reasonably healthy, had profound blockages in his arteries, would be dead before New Year’s. The cook’s younger brother had dropped out of school and fallen in with their cousin, slingin’ and bangin’, and would lead to their house getting shot up and the family tearing apart, which would cause him to lose his other job at a repair shop, which meant he and Cherise, his girlfriend, would default on her student loans, which meant the speech therapist degree she was in school for would sink them further in debt long before it had a chance to pull them out of it. It was then that Jude realized that he was looking at their fortunes: the better and worse for most of them, the institutionalized benefits and harms for some.

  Seeing with the eyes of a Trickster.

  His hunger yearned toward the welding torch glare of the wealthy kid, and as he had with his physical hunger, Jude let it off the leash. He drew in the excess luck burning off of the man until he felt swollen with it, something like breathing in and something like drinking down but as different from them as they were from each other. He took and took until he could take no more, until his strange new hunger was, at last, sated.

  And then he reached out in a different way and twisted.

  He diverted some of the glowing stream of good fortune into the dark wells of the tourist and the cook, pouring and pouring until he felt like he had enough juice, until they each shined a little brighter, just enough that he could see down the twists and turns of destiny that lay ahead of them, both the choices they could make and the unavoidable impacts that could swoop in from outside. He couldn’t touch their choices, but the things beyond their control, everything from the flat tires to the genetic predispositions, those felt flexible to him, somehow. Mutable.

  The tourist, Charles, was relatively easy. Jude gave him a little push as he made his way out the door, and a few weeks from now at a company basketball game, instead of a sprained knee he’d tear his ACL. The injury would require surgery, which would reveal his blocked arteries, which would save his life.

  The cook—also named Charles, but named after his father, so everyone called him C.J.—took far more effort. It seemed like every twist or change Jude made only briefly impacted C.J.’s life. It took a split condom to make a drastic shift: if his girlfriend Cherise got pregnant, C.J.’s sister would be working an extra shift to try to help them pay for a crib instead of in her room when the family home was attacked in a drive-by, wouldn’t be paralyzed, wouldn’t turn C.J. against his younger brother. Even that drastic shift wasn’t a huge change: C.J.’s brother still ended up in and out of prison, C.J. and Cherise still struggled, but it made things better.

  Then Jude turned his attention to the rest of the room, tossing out twists of good fortune like Mardi Gras throws, a twenty-dollar bill found in a pocket here, a job offer there, a string of good tips, a chance meeting in a bar, a left turn instead of a right, a last-minute bump up to first class. He pulled good fortune away from one person and lit the room up like a Christmas tree.

  Then he went to work on the asshole, sending him a string of bad luck over the next couple of weeks that would make him think the universe had suddenly turned against him, which, in a way, it had. Jude took a certain amount of sadistic pleasure chipping away at his pride: a flat tire that led to him getting mud splashed all over his favorite designer shirt, a misunderstood order that cost his boss a lucrative contract, a drunken stumble that chipped a tooth, a mild case of food poisoning that lead to diarrhea on a first date, and—when Jude remembered that he had to pay for the meal the three of them had just eaten—a lost wallet.

  In the same way that Jude couldn’t make a significant, positive change in C.J.’s life without following him around and pouring lucky breaks into him for the next few years, Jude couldn’t ruin the asshole’s life, either—not without following him around like a curse. The machinery of the world was too well greased in his favor, a reservoir of good fortune that he thought of as the life he deserved. But Jude wouldn’t have destroyed him, even if he could have; the guy wasn’t evil, just a dick.

  Still, when Jude slipped a hand into his satchel and took a hundred out of the prick’s lost wallet, most of which he’d leave for Dante, Jude didn’t bother to hide his smile.

  He’d always been a little bit of a bastard.

  Alone in his apartment a few hours later, after he’d given up on trying to sleep, Jude considered his next move. After they ate, Jude had animated a car with a Shem from his collection and sent Renai and Sal across the lake to his mother at the abbey. He’d lied to the psychopomp and told him that he had one more piece of his soul to track down before they could go back to the Underworld, but needed his help in keeping Renai safe; lied to Renai and told her that he wasn’t really sure they could trust the psychopomp, and wanted her to keep Sal out of his hair while he did some digging.

  In truth, he wanted some time to think without Sal hounding him, literally, about returning to the grave, and he didn’t trust himself to spend the night in his apartment with a determined pretty girl who he knew had the hots for him. Especially one who wouldn’t hesitate to use the “but it’s my last night alive” argument against him. The Trickster in him was pretty pissed he’d sent her away on his last night alive, but then the Trickster in him had a few thoughts about the whole “last night” thing as well.

  So he’d gotten down the El Dorado from the high shelf, drank the twenty-one-year-old rum straight from the bottle, tried not to scratch his healing stab wounds, and considered his options.

  Option One: the Thrones. He’d given his word to return to the Underworld and put his heart on the scales. If he did it now, he ensured that Renai would get the final reward that she’d earned, would go on to a blissful afterlife. Even Sal hadn’t known what would happen to her if Jude screwed up that deal. It also meant that Jude’s fortune would be, ultimately, average.

  He’d found his cards in the satchel, unsurprised to find that the fourth one, the one that showed his turning point, his moment of truth, was THE TRAITOR, which depicted a man hanging by one foot, a nimbus of light around his head. Only one card remained.

  If Jude’s fate was merely to die before the gam
e ended, before the gods at the table ripped him apart for their promised pound of flesh, well, then, that was that. He’d just be dead. He’d forfeit a soul he no longer owned, would be beyond anyone’s harm. If that happened, maybe Dodge would win, restoring him to life and his role as the Luck of New Orleans and returning the city to what she’d been before the storm. But somehow Jude didn’t think so. He thought maybe one of the other gods would claim that title. Regardless, option one boiled down to give up and die.

  Option one sucked.

  Option two: the Red Door. It waited for him right there in the living room in what had always been a closet. He was glad it had stopped trying to ambush him and decided to be patient. He was less happy about using words like “decided” to describe the actions of a door.

  Going through the door now would trigger a paradox, according to Hē—although Jude didn’t really trust anything the angel had told him at this point—and would trigger his downfall according to pretty much everyone else. Of course, that’s what they said; the gods had all told him he couldn’t win, and then did everything they could to force him to quit, which were the actions of worried players.

  Except, that wasn’t entirely true. Legba hadn’t told him to quit; he’d tried to keep him out of the game entirely. In fact, now that he thought about it, the loa almost seemed to be on Jude’s side. He certainly didn’t seem to be playing to win like the others. Jude checked to see how much rum was left—curiously little—and thought it would have been nice to share a drink with the old loa before the end. You could never tell which version of him would show up, though: Legba or his dark twin, Cross.

  Which, he realized, explained why Legba didn’t seem to want the title at all. He didn’t. He just wanted to keep Cross from getting his hands on it.

  Option two was better than option one, but it still had way too many variables.

  Option three: the Dagger. Jude got no sense of loss from the thing, which meant that Regal had given it to Criminel, which meant she’d had some part to play in his murder. With a bit of magic, he could use the traces of herself Regal had left on the dagger to track her down. To ask her some of the questions he’d kept to himself these past few days. To get a little vengeance before he died.

  It would take the better part of a day to gather the ingredients and work the spells, though. Which meant getting revenge would be literally the last thing he did, and force him into choosing from options one or two. That was assuming she’d stayed within the city, of course. If she’d fled to Peru already, he’d never find her in time.

  Option four: the Magician. Eli Constant’s name kept coming up—the revolver Scarpelli had in his display case, the deal for two hundred years of service with Mourning, his role as part of the city’s soul along with Dodge and the journal of maps—but the man himself was suspiciously absent. Jude kept expecting him to turn up spouting all the answers in that infuriating, didactic tone he’d always used back when he’d been Jude’s mentor. But if anyone would have valuable insight into this whole mess, it would be Eli. Then again, there was also a reason Jude hadn’t gone to see him yet, why he’d avoided him since the storm and for years before that—a reason he was Eli’s former student. If he chose option four, there was a chance that Eli would take one look at him and send him straight back to option one, involuntarily.

  Jude realized, as he put the cork back into the neck with one swallow of rum left in the bottom of the bottle, that he’d made his choice. It’s been almost twenty years, he thought. The old man has to have forgiven me by now. But easy as it had been to deceive Sal and Renai, he couldn’t lie to himself. He’d stolen a summons intended for Eli, back when he’d been his student. That’s how he’d met Dodge, gotten the satchel, and become the person he’d become. By betraying his mentor and sneaking his way into the ranks of the powerful. Why should Eli forgive him? He’d never really forgiven himself.

  He stumbled toward the bathroom, hoping a hot shower might be enough, along with the booze, to put him to sleep at last. After all, he had a busy day tomorrow, a day of reconciliation, or maybe one of reckoning.

  Or maybe just his last day on Earth.

  Part Six

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They are the ones who live in the hut on the edge of the village, or in a cave deep in the forest, or at the summit of an isolated tower, or in the deepest basement of a nondescript building on a street that has no name. They have always been with us, as the tenders of fire, or the keeper of tales, or the healers of the sick. During the daylight hours, they make medicines and aid in childbirth, they tell us when to reap and when to sow, and they teach us how to give honor and how to mourn. In the night, they interpret our dreams and keep the darkness at bay if we respect them, invite it in if we do not. They keep our secrets, whisper misfortune on our enemies. They see that which would blind us, do what we can’t bear to do, learn what we dare not know. We call them shaman or bruja, magus or bokor, kalku, onmyōji, magician. We revere or revile them; we beg them for help or burn them alive. We fear them, not because of their power, but because of their humanity. They are what we could be if only we had the courage, or the madness, to pay the price—and there is always a price.

  Jude stepped out of a borrowed Cadillac on the corner of Dauphine and France into the squeezing heat, squinting against the sun’s glare. After telling the Caddy to park across the street and wait for him, he turned in a slow circle, trying to get his bearings. It had been a long time since he had been in the Bywater, and something about having his gift yanked out of him, stuffed into a doubloon, and then shoved back into him had played hell with his sense of direction.

  He frowned, realizing just how long it had been since he had been out here, thinking of the obligations he had let slip. Surely he could have made some effort to reconnect with Eli, especially in the storm’s wake. Death—or resurrection, or some combination of the two—gave him a new perspective on how he had acted since the flood, made a mockery of his self-imposed exile. Regal had been right, back in the Clover Leaf. He’d been hiding, from everything.

  Speaking of which, Jude thought, and pulled on the burlap mask whose magic let him hide in plain sight that he’d used to sneak to the meeting with Opal. No sense leading Hē straight to Eli if I’m still being followed.

  He recognized the house with the lime-green siding on the far corner and, like a wandering compass finding true north, he knew where he was. As he walked, he saw yards with waist-high grass, the homes beyond dark and abandoned. Here and there a spray-painted X remained on the wall next to the front door despite the efforts to cover them: a date in early September 2005, the number of bodies found. He checked every time, unable to stop himself. Mostly they were zeroes. Far too often they were not.

  The scent of hot pavement seemed to wash out all others, as did the sound of rushing traffic on St. Claude just a few blocks away. Halfway to Royal Street, Jude stopped next to a white shotgun house, glanced down at the short concrete steps that led up to the front door. He found the pentagram etched into the stone riser, just as he’d remembered it, its dual points aimed down. Aimed up, he’d been taught, signified evil, the horns of the devil. Like this, it meant protective magic.

  A small gate of wire-link fence separated him from a long walkway into the backyard, bordered by the house on one side and a high wooden fence on the other, overgrown and dark. He could walk through the shade and the grass and into the back, where an ancient swing set rusted, empty chains dangling, its rubber seats long since rotted away.

  Families had lived in this house for generations and never met their neighbor, never even seen his house. Jude closed his eyes and spun in a circle three times, whispering the invocation with a measured cadence. He reached out, just so, and grasped a wooden latch. He opened his eyes, his hand clutching something that he couldn’t see. He lifted and pulled, and the gate swung open, taking with it the image of the yard and the grass and the trees overhead. Even at his most jaded, the wonder of this never ceased to amaze him.
A front gate that was a hole in the world.

  Beyond lay cypress trees and a clapboard house, a path formed from single planks of wood raised over the swamp, and a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. This had been the edge of New Orleans once, and within this seam of magic it stayed that way. Jude had never quite understood how this ground avoided being drained when the land around it was all developed. The impossibility of it, he’d been told, was what made it work.

  He pulled the mask off and stuffed it back in the satchel as he stepped through the opening. If Hē had followed him in here, there was no hiding from the angel, and if the mask fooled Eli, the magician wouldn’t react kindly to a stranger finding the way to his home.

  Of course, Eli might not respond well to the sight of Jude, either.

  Jude found Eli’s shack just as he remembered it, the precarious walkway over the duckweed and the cypress knees, the Spanish moss twisting and wispy as a cartoon witch’s hair, the towering pines stretching back to a time when this was where civilization ended, the seam between a newborn city and virgin wilderness. It stank with the rich, living rot of a bog in summer. The song of cicadas threatened to drown out his thoughts, a continual, droning rant-rant-rant like a living car alarm bellowing from every tree.

  Hanging from the cypress nearest the front porch were bottles, dozens of them—maybe as many as a hundred—glass tinkling softly against glass, a rainbow of colors shimmering amid the leaves. Jude stared for a moment, puzzled. He couldn’t remember them being there before, but it had to be a problem with his memory, he thought. In all the years Jude had spent under his tutelage, Eli had never changed anything about his home, had insisted that consistency was necessary for his magic to work right. He had refused even the modern touch of a doorknob.