by Bryan Camp
Sal’s long, pointed ears flicked, as if shooing away a fly. “What makes you say the dead we’re here for is black?”
Renai rolled her eyes. Even though the gesture made her feel like a teenager, she couldn’t stop herself. “There’s pictures of Ramses all over this house.”
Sal tilted his head to the side and watched her, long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable. Renai almost spoke but got the impression that’s what he was waiting for. “Maybe,” he said at last, “we should talk about why you came here in the first place.”
Since the moment Sal had caught her at a death where she didn’t belong, Renai had been building an answer to this very question in the back of her mind. She’d woven a hopefully convincing lie around an initial knot of truth, planning to say that she’d simply gotten tired of the monotony and had chosen to collect a violent death just to experience something new, the rules be damned. It wasn’t entirely untrue—it just wasn’t the whole truth. But when she opened her mouth to let the lie unravel, it occurred to her that Sal was both a full-fledged psychopomp—which meant she had no idea what he was truly capable of—and her only friend in this life—which meant if she couldn’t trust him, she was well and truly alone. Not to mention the fact that if they had any chance of figuring out what was going on with that hole in reality where Ramses’ death should be, Sal would need to know the whole truth.
So she gave it to him, all of it. Her meeting with Seth, his unusual offer, her boredom and frustration and confusion, the tickle of familiarity that came with the name St. Cyr and how she and the dead—or at least, the supposed-to-be-dead—were connected. “And I don’t know why he wanted me here,” she said, feeling a little off balance, as if she’d been carrying this secret around for way longer than a few days, “that’s the truth. I don’t know if he thought I’d convince you to let Ramses live, or if my being here is what changed things—”
“Ah, you ain’t done a damn thing wrong,” Sal said, more weary than angry, though not without a certain measure of pissed off. “I mean, you let some shit-for-brains deity lead you into the briar patch and then thanked him for the fuckin’ thorns, but you ain’t had nothin’ to do with that.” He nodded toward the empty chair, then wrinkled his upper lip, as if he smelled something foul. “C’mon, let’s get outta here. This is beyond my jurisdictional parlay, if you know what I mean.”
I think you mean purview, Renai thought, but didn’t say anything other than the ghost word so she could slip through the door as he led her back out onto the street. She pulled the hood off as soon as they were outside, and her sudden return to visibility spooked a large bird perched in the oak overhead. Renai caught a glimpse of wide pale wings as it took flight. A prickle that had nothing to do with the jacket’s magic ran along her flesh, unpleasant and cold. A wisp of memory flickered in her mind like a single frame of one movie spliced into the film of another. The thing that killed me had wings, she thought.
She didn’t have long to dwell on this memory, though, since Sal hadn’t stopped walking, hadn’t even seemed to notice the startled bird. Renai caught up to him just as he reached the stretch of sidewalk where Kyrie leaned on her kickstand. “I’m gonna need to bum a ride from you,” he said, “unless you got some other plans.”
“I’m free as a bird,” she said, easing onto her seat on Kyrie.
Sal made a noise that was half grunt and half chuckle. “Speaking of which . . .” He hunched down on all fours and gagged, jaws gaping wide and fur rippling like a dog about to vomit up some grass. Starting at his back hips, the psychopomp’s flesh sagged and went limp, as though the bones and meat within had simply vanished. A dark and glistening shape wriggled in his throat and stretched down the pink curl of his tongue. Bit by bit, Sal’s dog-skin collapsed in on itself until nothing was left, nothing but the raven that strained and clawed and cursed his way out of the dog’s mouth to stand spit-soaked and black-winged on the grass.
“Where are we headed?” Renai asked.
Before he answered, Sal spread his wings and wiped the saliva from his feathers on the rapidly decaying fur that had once been his dog-shape. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but we gotta visit that piss-blind drunk at the First Gate, see if anybody brought in our lost soul by mistake.”
Renai let out a huff of breath. “Sal, be straight with me. How bad is this? What’s going to happen to Ramses?”
Sal launched off the lawn with a flutter, staggering through the air to clutch at a perch on her shoulder. He shuffled around until he found a position he liked. Once he settled in, Kyrie rumbled to life, her headlight piercing the darkness. Renai pushed off and they rolled into the street, making a slow turn on Washington and heading back down the way they came.
“The kid who was supposed to die?” Sal asked, his voice raised over the growl of Kyrie’s engine. “Ain’t no question. He’s gonna die, if he ain’t dead already.” Renai turned her head to look at him, and he dipped his beak down in his raven’s shrug. “It’s us and taxes, Raines. What can I say?” Renai guided Kyrie into a turn onto St. Charles. “It’s this Seth character that’s a concern to me.”
And then, when Kyrie kicked it up a couple of gears and really got roaring, Sal muttered to himself, maybe thinking Renai wouldn’t hear or maybe not caring, “Fuckin’ Hallows caca starts earlier every year.”
Though she’d been kept at arm’s length from the Hallows over the years, Renai didn’t have to ask Sal what he meant. They were the days when the physical world of the living and the many worlds of the dead and the spirits overlapped. This stretch of time went by different names: Samhain, the Parentalia, the Zhongyuan Festival, Día de Muertos, Allhallowtide. Different cultures celebrated or revered these days at different parts of the year and for varying lengths of time. In New Orleans, the Hallows lasted for the three days starting with Halloween and ending on All Souls’ Day. The dead visited the living, the living honored their dead, and sometimes those on the edges of things used the blurred lines of an otherwise rigid system for their own ends.
It was a busy time for psychopomps.
She did wonder why Sal had jumped to the conclusion that Seth had anything to do with the Hallows, since it didn’t start until Halloween, a couple of days away. As far as she knew, the boundaries between worlds were as impenetrable as always. Could Ramses’ disappearance be a part of some larger plot? Did Sal know Seth’s true identity? She chewed on these questions as she rode Kyrie down the wide stretch of St. Charles that ran through the Garden District, past the columned entrances of mansions-turned-into-hotels and the neon lights of bars and restaurants, around the tight loop of Lee Circle and its hateful Confederate shadow, through the looming high-rises of the CBD—that congested, snarled area of the city full of office complexes and condos—and out across the noise and hustle and blaring lights of Canal Street. No matter how she turned the situation around in her mind, the only thing that mattered was finding Ramses. That’s my true North, she thought, waiting for the light to turn so she could cross Canal, whether he’s alive or dead, in this world or the next, I’m going to find Ramses.
“I’d appreciate it if you did the talking,” Sal said, while she was waiting for a break in traffic to be able to cross the street. She turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “Just ask him to tell you about the ’pomps he’s let through recently,” Sal said. “I’ll track ’em down on the other side.”
“So this is why you had to ‘bum a ride’ even though you got wings,” Renai said. “You need Oussou’s help, but the way you treat him, you know he wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. Is that it?”
“Be like gasoline, much as he drinks,” Sal muttered, just as the light changed.
Renai laughed and guided Kyrie across the streetcar tracks. “You see? It’s shit like that. What’s he done to you to make you hate him so bad?”
“Long story. Will you help or not?”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to him. But you owe me one.”
Sal didn’t answer her.
Nor did he say a word when she parked the bike, just hopped down to Kyrie’s handlebars and left her to cross Rampart alone. She practically had to jog across the street to keep from getting clipped by some asshole cabbie going at least ten miles an hour over the speed limit. Oussou took one look at her and grinned. “Decided to come visit without that shit-bird shepherd of yours, huh?” he asked.
“He’s, uh, occupied. With something else.” Nice recovery, Raines, she thought, in Sal’s droll voice.
Oussou was too busy hauling his drunken self to his feet to notice her lack of composure, though. He pulled his cuffs straight and ran a hand along his do-rag, making sure it lay smooth. It was then that Renai realized what this must look like, what he must think she’d come here for. She considered playing into it, flirting a little and playing coy until he’d tell her anything she wanted. How far you really gonna take that, though, her mother asked, and the disappointment Renai imagined in her tone was all the answer she needed. Besides, he was Ghede and she was a psychopomp. She shouldn’t have to play games to get the information she needed.
And loa or not, god or not, sparing his fragile male ego wasn’t in her damn job description.
When Oussou turned his eyes to her appraisal, Renai kissed her teeth. “You kick that game at somebody who’s got time for it,” she said, fighting the smile that teased at the corners of her mouth when the expression on the loa’s face shifted from pimp to punk. “You know damn well I ain’t here for all that.”
“Damn, it’s like that?” Oussou jerked his head away and muttered some curse, but when he looked back at her, his mouth was twisted in wry amusement. “So what you want if you ain’t buyin’ what I’m sellin’? You need me to open the Gate?”
“No. I just need to know who you let through already. Sal’s got me checking up on something.”
Oussou nodded to himself, his attention now on the cars passing by on Basin and the bottle he raised to his lips. “Wasn’t many,” he said. He scratched his chin with his thumb and then counted them off on his fingers as he named them. “Link. Azreal. Dar. Howl. Flyboy. Lil’ Tee. Big Riley.”
Renai nodded as he said each name, though she didn’t know if these were nicknames or true ones. She hadn’t met many psychopomps other than Sal, and most of them seemed either unwilling or unable to speak to her. Some death spirits, Sal had told her, had about as much personality as those suckerfish on the inside of aquariums. They just traveled back and forth, performing their function without question or thought. “And the dead they were guiding?” she asked when he finished his list. “What do you remember about them?”
He shrugged, cleaning off a tooth with the tip of his tongue before answering. “You know how it is,” he said, “after a while, the dead all kinda look the same, you feel me?”
Renai didn’t. Not at all. She could remember her dead distinctly, their names and their faces when they’d died and the faces they’d chosen when they’d stood at the First Gate. Maybe things would be different if she’d seen as many dead as the loa must have seen. She doubted it. Instead of calling him out, though, she said her goodbyes and left, waiting until she was in Kyrie’s seat and rolling away before she said anything to Sal. She repeated Oussou’s list, then asked, “That all you need?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks. I’m gonna head over to the other side and look up these ’pomps. See if they know what’s what.” They rode in silence for a moment, Renai heading back to her empty apartment out of habit. She knew what she wanted him to say next, but she didn’t want to ask. Knew she’d go behind his back again if she had to. “If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow, why don’t you try to track down this kid topside? Might be he’s still alive.”
Renai was so relieved that she decided not to give Sal any more grief about his inability to get along with the rest of the Underworld. She didn’t have to sneak around, didn’t have to lie again. By doing what Sal had told her to do, she’d be doing what she’d intended to do anyway. She’d worry about the decisions she’d have to make if she found him alive when she came to that particular bridge.
“Ramses,” she said. “His name is Ramses St. Cyr.”
“I know,” Sal said. “I ain’t forgot.” And then, in a pounding of wings, he was gone, and Renai was alone once more.
Later, back in the apartment where she slept, she realized that, for the first time in a long time, the place seemed emptier than just its lack of furniture. She felt cut-off, unnatural. Maybe it had something to do with the crawling sensation she got whenever she pictured the empty space where Ramses was supposed to die. Or maybe it was the presence living inside her, that storm surge of hate and rage that had almost broken loose; she always had a kind of hangover when she had to wrestle the flood back into its cage. Maybe it was as simple as her role as a psychopomp finally touching a remnant, however insignificant, of the life she’d once had, forcing her to take a good long look at the hollow shell of a life she’d curled up in. Whatever the reason, that night as she lay awake waiting for sleep, Renai once again felt that strange, tenuous connection to the Underworld.
Laying there in the dark timelessness on the edge of sleep, Renai saw the Third Gate as a cemetery filled with bookshelves. The cemetery itself wasn’t one that she recognized; for all she knew it was an imagined combination of Holt and St. Louis No. 1, with the expected aboveground tombs of brick and mortar and plaster along with a handful of concrete slabs about half a foot tall that marked belowground burials. The shelves—identical towers of smooth, white-washed wood ten feet tall and only a few feet wide—seemed designed for the books they held: a uniform collection of volumes thick and tall and bound in brown leather, with gold lettering on the spine indicating a year and a span of letters, like encyclopedias or dictionaries.
At the center of this eerie archive of the dead, behind a massive lectern that looked like it belonged in a Gothic cathedral, sat the Gatekeeper of the Third Gate, an angel named Plumaj. Their task was to collect the Name of the recently departed so that the soul could move on with all their deeds recorded. The angel was also, Renai knew, the voice on the other end of the Deadline. If only I could cross over like Sal, she thought, Plumaj might know why Ramses’ death went so wrong.
For some reason, though, the thought of actually speaking to Plumaj filled Renai with a panicky, fluttering dread. She’d flirted with gods and bargained with Death, but picturing an angel made her want to crawl out of her own skin, and she had no idea why.
Dying, it turned out, really fucked you up.
It took her almost an hour to calm down enough to slide into sleep. When she woke the next morning and turned the radio on, more out of routine than actually seeking a soul to collect, the Deadline played nothing but hissing dead air.
Chapter Seven
A series of playing cards, the symbols and values assigned esoteric meanings, shuffled into randomness and drawn in ignorance, arranged into a pattern and interpreted. A shape seen in the billowing clouds, in the erratic flames, in the sprawl of stars across the night sky. Questions answered by stalks of yarrow and animal bones, by coins and cowrie shells, by graven stones and sticks of bamboo, tossed into a bowl or scattered in a circle or dropped onto a white cloth or spilled from a cup. Mirrors and numbers and the letters in the Name of God. Decisions made by an animal’s feeding habits, or flocking patterns, or by the entrails ripped from its flesh. Identity confirmed by the creases in one’s palm, by the shape of one’s skull, by the ridges on the tips of one’s fingers. Fear in a handful of dust; truth in a spray of blood. Cartomancy and forensics, astrology and meteorology and Ifá: all are just nonsense unless one has the ability to read the signs. Just chaos, unless one has the eyes to see.
Renai leaned against one of the palm trees that grew in the neutral ground across Basin Street from St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, hands stuffed down in the pockets of her leather jacket, chilly even though the temperature would hit the seventies by noon, humming along with the music bumping in her earbuds. André 3000 told her
that she didn’t need to panic even though the sky was falling.
Kyrie sat parked a little ways away, but Renai couldn’t decide if she should wait or leave. Part of her wondered how far the bike would carry her, if they could escape this city entirely. It’s not like she would starve. Between her aura of disinterest and the ghost word, she could take anything she needed. Anything she wanted, really. Of course, that was assuming the jacket’s powers would work if she abandoned the duties the Thrones had given her. But given the general trajectory of the last couple of days, it might be a risk she had to consider.
First, Seth had appeared out of nowhere to offer her some cryptic deal. Then, someone slipped free of their destined death, which she hadn’t even known was possible. Then the Deadline went silent. Now this: even though she’d been watching for almost half an hour, Masaka wasn’t in their spot at the First Gate.
“Ain’t no time to panic, my ass,” she said, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until she heard a woman’s laughter, high and tittering, louder than her music. Renai pulled out one of her earbuds just in time to hear the voice speak.
