by Bryan Camp
With a soft plink, a newly minted coin of Fortune fell to the tabletop. And the goddess who’d created it tossed the coin into a nearby chest full of them, a pirate’s treasure of destinies.
The artisan stretched to her full height, turned her attention to the psychopomps once more, and smiled. “Now,” she said, wiping her soot-stained, spark-burned hands on the hem of her leather apron as if it were a washrag, “what can I do for you three?”
For a long, terrible moment, no one spoke, and Renai panicked, thinking it would be up to her to break the silence, certain only that she had no idea what to say. And then Salvatore—bless him—hunkered low to the floor, like he was bowing or kneeling, and began, in a stilted, formal voice that was almost a moan, “Many thanks for your attention, oh most Kindly Ones—”
“Please,” she said, holding up a calloused, powerful hand, “call me Grace.”
It was so genuine and so equally absurd that Renai coughed up a laugh. Thankfully no one, especially not the seemingly omniscient being that she’d just laughed at, called her on it. And that gave her the courage to speak. “We’re here because one of the deaths I was supposed to collect has disappeared, even though that shouldn’t be possible. We were hoping you might have some guidance for us.”
Grace frowned, and the simple fact of having disappointed this being made Renai want to cover herself with the ash of this place and never speak again. Grace reached into an apron pocket and pulled out a pack of American Spirits and, just when Renai imagined she would have to watch a pregnant uber-deity smoke a cigarette, blinked into the youthful version of herself. It was only slightly less unsettling when she leaned over to her hearth and casually used the energy radiating from a supermassive black hole to light it.
“So, let me get this straight,” she said, blowing out a long plume of smoke. “You’ve lost one soul among the literal billions that I’ve forged just this century, and you stopped by so I could tell you where you left it?”
Next to Renai, Howl made a little gasp of dismay and started stammering an apology, just as Sal started cursing, but Grace couldn’t keep up the pretense for long. Her frown cracked into a wide, affable grin. “Awww, I’m just screwing with you guys,” she said. Her smile faded when no one else seemed amused, but only a little. “Sorry,” she said, “I couldn’t resist. Don’t get many unscheduled visitors down here, you know?” She took another drag and pointed with the fingers holding the cigarette. “Tell you what, you’ve got my undivided attention until I finish my smoke break. I presume you’ve already seen the angel about this wayward lamb of yours?”
“We, uh—” Renai began, freezing when she realized what she was about to say. Sal rescued her from having to accuse the Gatekeeper.
“This particular soul is a real tricky little bastard,” he said. “This wasn’t the first check they managed to skip out on payin’.”
“Ah,” Grace said, “you got one of those.” She plucked a loose bit of a tobacco from the tip of her tongue and flicked it away. She was silent for a moment, pensive. “That makes things a good bit harder for you, I’m afraid. If this was just your garden-variety twist of fate, I could point you right to ’em. But I can’t really tell you where somebody’s supposed to be if they’ve gone and wandered off the path I put ’em on. Frankly, this soul of yours could be anywhere.”
“How is that even possible?” Renai asked, proud that she’d managed to speak to this being without her voice betraying her.
Grace tilted her head and pursed her lips, a how-do-I-even-begin-to-answer-that gesture. “There’s a reason I shape Fortune into a coin. Doesn’t matter if you’re a mortal or a spirit, a god or whatever else, you spend your Fortune, little by little, until the only bill you can afford to pay is the final one. And just like any other commodity, it can be stolen.” She shrugged. “Or you can spend it all at once on something big, the moment of your death included.”
Howl hissed and Sal said, “Fuck me,” like Grace had just told him he had a tumor.
“What?” Renai asked, looking down at the psychopomps that had brought her here. “What does that mean?”
“It means Ramses St. Cyr has made a deal,” Howl said, her tail lashing back and forth.
“The sell-your-soul-to-the-Devil kind,” Sal said.
“Sure,” Grace said. “Any ol’ devil will do.”
Watching the artisan flick away ash from the tip of her cigarette, Renai had to restrain herself from asking for one herself. She breathed in deep, the scent comforting. Mundane. Grace must have seen the question on her face, though, because she shook one free of the pack and held it out to Renai. When she took it, though, Grace didn’t offer her a light. I’m definitely not going anywhere near that forge, Renai thought.
There were so many questions to ask that it felt impossible to choose, much less figure out how to put one into words. Did Grace know who Ramses had sold his Fortune to? Or what he’d gotten in return? If Ramses no longer had a coin for Renai to deliver, did she even need to bother searching for him? Or should she be looking for his coin, instead?
All of these options, and what slipped past her lips was: “If immortality is that easy, why doesn’t everybody do it?”
Grace turned her full attention to Renai, that knowing, inescapable gaze. “You know that answer better than anybody,” the goddess said. “You died before you were supposed to, which left you with an excess of Fortune. You spent that on someone else’s behalf, so now your needle has well and truly hopped out of its groove. Every breath you take isn’t a part of the destiny I mapped out when I forged your coin.” Her smile, when it came, was sad. “So why doesn’t everybody do it? How’s it working out for you?”
Renai opened her mouth and closed it. The most powerful being she’d ever met had just told her that she no longer had a destiny. That her existence no longer had an expiration date. That knowledge ought to be liberating. Empowering. But all it did was explain why she always felt so empty.
Grace stubbed out the last remaining embers of her cigarette on the anvil and flicked the filter into the abyss of the hearth. “Wish I could give you three some more of my time,” she said, “but my wheel is always kinda turning, if you know what I mean.”
She slammed closed the lid of her chest full of Fortune coins and hoisted it, effortlessly, onto one shoulder. A blink, and the middle-aged, pregnant version of Grace carried the weight, rapping a knuckle on the side of the wooden box. “There’s a whole bunch of creation deities waiting for these babies.”
Because Grace seemed to be waiting for it, Renai forced a polite chuckle, which Howl echoed. If the expression on the pregnant deity’s face was any indication, it hadn’t been convincing.
“And people say Fate doesn’t have a sense of humor,” Sal muttered.
Renai winced, but Grace only smirked at the psychopomp’s insolent tone. “Do they now?” she asked. “That’s funny. After all, I’m always the one who gets the last laugh.”
And then she was gone, taking all the light in the world with her. Neither Sal nor Howl stuck around long in the vast, empty darkness Grace left behind; Renai felt their passage out of the bottom of the Underworld like they kicked up a breeze as they passed by. But Renai waited, some detail or unresolved question nagging at her, despite her wings trembling in their desire to carry her out of there.
After a few moments her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she realized that Grace must have left something behind, some source of illumination that allowed her to see. She thought, at first, that the slight glow must be leaking through the seams of the kiln, light spilling out of the melted-down Fortune left simmering there, but then her pupils dilated a bit more and she saw that it came from the thin sliver of the shattered coin that Grace had broken on the anvil. Renai had crossed over to the shard and reached out for it before it occurred to her that this whole setup might be a trap.
As her fingertips touched the slender needle-sharp sliver of Fortune, a shock ran through her. A single thump of a pulse; an ins
tant of sudden, intense pain; a long, drawn-out exhale; a last flicker of thought before sleep. The psychopomp within her recognized the sensations for what they were: a single moment. A crucial one. A final one. A death no longer connected to a lifetime’s course, no longer tied to any destiny.
Renai picked up the sliver of Fortune, careful—oh so careful—not to prick her finger with the point. She whispered a little prayer of gratitude to Grace and, after a moment’s consideration, pressed the sliver of Fortune into the cigarette, rolling it between her fingertips so that it drilled deep into the tightly packed tobacco leaf, sharp end first. When the Fortune was completely embedded in the cigarette, she tucked it behind her ear, equal parts hiding place and safety precaution.
Unnerved by the now-absolute darkness, Renai unfurled her butterfly wings and let them carry her out of this place, trying to decide whose destiny-less life Grace intended for Renai to end. Because if Grace was right about Ramses—if he’d sidestepped his death by giving up the entirety of his Fortune—one poke of this needle and Ramses’ next moment would be his last.
But then, since Renai also lacked a destiny, it could also do the same thing for her.
Chapter Twenty-one
When Renai rose to the next higher level of the Underworld, the one she’d always thought was the bottom of everything, she found Salvatore waiting for her, pacing and alone. He whirled to face her as soon as her feet touched the damp earth. “Where have you been?” he asked, his tone somewhere between incredibly relieved and pissed-as-hell.
Renai’s first impulse was to take his concern for her well-being as sweet, if unnecessary, but when she hesitated for a moment, trying to think of how to explain her impulse to remain behind, he ruined it by saying, “The truth shouldn’t be that hard to come up with.” Growled it, really. And suddenly his worried big brother act was just him being a presumptuous asshole.
“First,” she said, hearing her mother in her voice, “I don’t appreciate that tone. I’m a grown-ass woman. Only man who gets to speak to me like that is my father, and you don’t look like Charles Raines to me, my dude. Second, I would really like to know where your habitually tardy self gets the damn nerve to come at me over a few minutes of—”
Sal made a noise that was half-laugh and half-trying-not-to-choke. “A few minutes? You kept me here waggin’ my own fuckin’ tail for over an hour!”
“No—” Renai began, drawing the word out, but she broke off when the truth occurred to her, when she saw her realization echoed in Sal’s eyes. She glanced down at her watch, at the top of the screen where a single LCD dot marked the day of the week. It was days further along than it ought to be. “No,” she said again, though this time in quiet disbelief.
Sal’s ears swiveled around, like he was trying to pinpoint the location of a strange noise, and then he squinted up at the moonless, starless night sky. “Sheeeee-it,” he said, when whatever he saw there confirmed his suspicions. “I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.” He glanced over at her, his eyebrows drooping. “Sorry. For, you know, jumping your shit.”
Renai felt haughty threaten to twist her face and tightened her lips into a thin line instead. “Yeah, well, thanks for saying so. I’d have been pretty pissed too, I guess.” She was proud of herself for not mentioning that Sal had done this very thing to her more than once. “Guess that’s why Howl bounced, huh?”
Sal chuckled, but sounded more nervous than amused. “No, she took off when she figured out where Grace sent us.”
“Which is?”
“Come and see for yourself,” he said, nodding for her to follow him into the flat, poorly painted trees. Renai followed, even though she wanted nothing more than a long shower and an even longer sleep. She’d been awake for so long that she was starting to get that fuzzy, disconnected feeling that came midway through an all-nighter, her eyeballs tight and dry in their sockets, her body and especially her head increasingly susceptible to gravity. But they only had a matter of hours before the Hallows began. She’d just have to tough it out.
Following Sal through the cardboard cutout forest of the deep Underworld, Renai tried to piece together everything they’d learned about Ramses, but it all felt too slippery, like she only had part of the story. At least she was too tired to be nervous about the fact that she never remembered the three-day span of the Hallows. Right now, a three-day nap sounded like a gift. Then the Underworld version of Orleans Parish Prison came into view, and Renai reconsidered her earlier thought; now she wanted nothing more than a reason to stay out of that place.
Built like a fort and carved from a single block of black ice, the prison smoked and steamed in the relatively warm air, but never seemed to diminish in size. It rose high above the tops of the false trees, its solidity among artifice making it even more imposing. Not that it needed help. Every surface of the prison was sharp or hard or both, as though its architect had only used thorns and broken glass in its construction. Worst of all, the prison’s entrance stood open, a wide, gaping maw that wasn’t so much a sign of welcome as it was a statement of authority. Whoever ran this place had so much confidence in their security that they didn’t even bother locking their door.
“Welcome to the Oubliette,” Sal muttered. “Talk about ‘abandon all hope,’ huh?”
“I thought Hell was one of the Far Lands,” Renai said, unable to make herself speak any louder than a harsh whisper.
“It is,” Sal said, matching her low volume. “This is just a piece of it. A little slice of eternal damnation right here in the Underworld.”
“Like an embassy?” She was only talking to keep her mind busy, she knew, trying to distract herself from how swiftly they were drawing closer to the prison, almost to the entrance now.
“More like a tumor.”
Renai glanced down at the psychopomp. He seemed off, distant. His movements were hesitant, almost timid. Not in pain, exactly, more like he anticipated—dreaded, even—some agony yet to come.
“Why are we here?” Renai whispered. When the psychopomp didn’t answer, she repeated herself, and this time she didn’t lower her voice. “Salvatore. Why are we here?”
Her answer came from the direction of the prison when a rough, deep voice she recognized and wished she didn’t said: “I was wonderin’ the same damn thing my ownself.”
The young black man who had spoken leaned against the wall just beside the open door, his hands tucked into his pockets and one bare foot crossed over the ankle of the other, as if the frost and the razored edges didn’t bother him. They probably felt like home. He wore a three-piece suit of dark red fabric tailor-cut to his broad shoulders and his narrow waist, without a tie and with his dress shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. A pair of horns jutted up from his forehead, as sharp and cruel as the prison itself. His otherwise handsome face was marred by the tears of tar that bled from his eyes.
Whenever a voodoo priest began a ceremony, the first loa they called on was Papa Legba, the ancient, benevolent god of the crossroads between the world of the living and the world of the spirits. Nibo and Plumaj and all the others had charge over a single Gate, but Legba—the opener of the ways—controlled them all. The loa that waited for them here, his insolent smirk as unsettling as the black tears that streaked down his face, was the Petwo side of Legba—the Shadow of his soul if he were mortal. He was pride and rage and lust. He closed the paths that Legba opened, locked them so tight only Legba or the Hallows could reopen them. He called himself Cross.
Renai had forgotten just about all the details concerning the circumstances of her resurrection. She knew that Jude Dubuisson had tricked her into giving up her afterlife for him. She suspected that an angel had been the one to kill her. And even with those memories firm in her mind, it was Cross’s face who visited her nightmares.
“Speak of the devil,” Sal said. “You’re just the loa we were looking for.”
“The fuck you were,” Cross said, lurching away from the wall and swaggering toward them. “
Don’t talk no caca-shit at me, boy.” He waved one long-nailed finger at Sal, like he was chastising a puppy who had piddled the carpet. “I ain’t your podna, me.”
“Sal, what’s he talking about?”
Cross curled his whole face into an elaborate, overwrought sneer. “‘Sal,’” he repeated, in a whiny, mimicking voice, “‘what he talking about?’” He spit on the ground. “Like you ain’t got no part of this escape.”
Shit, shit, shit, Renai thought. The deal with Mason. Cross knows. Her heart started hammering in her chest, and before she could stop them, her wings unfurled. They swept her into the air, reaching up for the next level of the Underworld and—
Nothing. She hovered a few feet off the ground, but she could ascend no higher. Her first panicked thought was that the Oubliette had hold of her somehow, but then she heard the loa’s harsh, humorless laughter and, remembering his role in the Underworld, realized what had happened: Cross had locked the Gates.
All of them.
Renai forced herself back to the ground and folded her wings away. Her mind raced, but she could see no way out. Maybe that explained why Sal just sat there, ears flat against his skull, tail tucked between his legs. Cross reached down and clutched at himself, adjusting his crotch before stuffing his hands back into his pockets.
“Go ahead,” Cross said, “say you don’t fuckin’ know nothin’ again. ’Cause tryin’ to fly away ain’t made you look guilty at all, no.”
“We really don’t,” Renai said. “We’re tracking down a lost soul.”
“Peculiar-ass place to be doin’ that,” Cross said.
“You know as well as I do that lost souls end up here all the time,” Sal said. “It ain’t just the ones who deserve it in there.”
