Lost Soul

by E. A. Copen

  I have to get those other pieces, and soon, I thought as I searched the aisles. I turned a corner, and a large woman with a broom stepped through me. The feeling of her body passing through mine almost made me sick. She stopped after a few steps, shivered, and muttered something about the air conditioning being too high in there before continuing to sweep.

  I found what I wanted in the aisle closest to the checkout and stood in front of the display of snack cakes, wondering how I was going to move them from the shelf.

  “How many do you think we need?” I asked Jean.

  He shrugged. “This is probably enough. How many Twinkies can a one-eyed god eat?”

  “Famous last words.” I glanced around the gas station, settling on the clerk stocking the nearby shelves. “So how do we get them from point A to point B?”

  “Observe.” Jean wiggled his fingers, squinted as if concentrating, and reached out to grab one of the packages with slow, deliberate movements. His fingers slowly wrapped around one of the packages and he lifted it with a big grin. “All you have to do is concentrate really hard. Focus entirely on the boundaries between your spectral form and the Twinkies.”

  I tried to copy what he’d just done, moving slowly, putting my hand around the package, closing my fingers, and… My hand went right through, forming a fist without affecting the Twinkies.

  “So close! You move like you’ve been a spirit for at least six months instead of six hours.”

  “I need for this to work now, dammit.”

  Jean grabbed another package from the shelf. “You’re still thinking like a human. Imagine you’re more like gravity, all force and will.”

  I tried again. My thumb slipped right through the outer packaging and squished into the creamy center of the snack cakes before stopping.

  “Close,” Jean said. “Think less about grasping and more about the boundaries between you and the object.”

  I pulled my hand free. Somehow, the cream filling had stuck to my fingers, but that was it. Ghost physics were weird.

  “What the hell?” The store clerk who’d walked through me earlier leaned over, wide-eyed, and blinked at the mess on my hand. To her, it must’ve looked as if the cream filling had just floated out of the Twinkie wrapper and suspended itself mid-air.

  Jean turned, and she shrieked at the two packages of snack cakes floating mysteriously toward her. She swatted at him with the broom, managing only to knock the packages to the floor. Another swing, and she tipped over the whole display and started whacking the packages flat with her broom.

  I sighed. “Dammit, look what you did, lady. Now I’m going to have to go to the back and find the supply box, and it’s going to be even harder to move.”

  She didn’t hear me, of course. Only someone attuned to ghosts and spirits would’ve been able to hear or see me, someone like me. The clerk just continued to beat the innocent Twinkies into a creamy yellow paste.

  “Well, then!” Jean puffed himself up. “Let’s do this the hard way.” He zoomed forward and pushed his way into the gas station clerk.

  She immediately stopped beating the snack cakes like a wild snake and stood up straight, back rigid. Her right eye twitched, along with her upper lip.

  “Uh, Jean?” I poked the woman’s shoulder or tried to. I still didn’t have the hang of touching things.

  The gas station clerk turned her head to look straight at me. “Yes?”

  I squinted. Not that it helped. I didn’t have my Vision powers anymore. “Jean? Are you…possessing this poor woman?”

  There was a slight pause while he looked himself over. “Yes, I believe I am. Oh, don’t look at me like that. You need a box of snack cakes to get Odin’s attention? Getting a human to do the heavy lifting is the fastest, easiest way, especially since you can’t lift anything. She won’t be harmed.”

  I sighed. “I guess, as long as nobody gets hurt…”

  Jean forced the clerk’s body to lumber awkwardly toward the storage room. After a few steps, he bumped into a display of beer cases and tumbled over them.

  “I said, as long as she doesn’t get hurt!” I floated over him while he tried to coordinate the woman’s limbs to push himself up.

  “It’s not my fault. I’m not used to being in a body, you know. Not only do I have to make the limbs work, but she has to breathe. It’s very awkward after not having to do any of this for two hundred years.”

  I slapped my face. Hey, my hand didn’t go through me, at least. “You’re telling me you haven’t ever possessed a body before?”

  “A few times.” He finally made it back to his feet. “But I don’t normally move around this much. It’ll be fine.”

  Judging by how difficult it was for Jean to steer the body into the back room, finding all the missing pieces of my soul within the six-day window was going to be tougher than I’d initially imagined. He walked into two walls and another shelf before he made it back there. There was an unopened box of Twinkies on a low shelf thankfully, meaning he didn’t have to get on the ladder. All he had to do was grab and lift.

  “Where do you want them?” he asked, box in hand.

  I looked around the tiny stock room. There wasn’t much empty floor space, but there was just enough near the exit to the dumpsters. “Right there is fine.”

  Jean took a step and tripped over the clerk’s shoelaces. The box smashed to the floor, and Twinkies scattered everywhere. At least most of them happened to land inside the space I’d indicated. Close enough. Now to just draw the circle.

  I realized the problem with my plan as soon as I thought it. To draw a circle, I needed to be able to hold a writing implement. Not only that, but I’d need a drop of blood to close the circle. “I really hate being a ghost.”

  “What’s the matter?” Jean asked, picking his borrowed body up off the floor.

  I explained my problem.

  “What if we used her blood?”

  I shook my head. “Won’t work. The blood needs to hold the spark of magic. We need a new plan.”

  He sank down to sit, shoulders slumped. “Maybe there’s another way to summon Odin?”

  “I hope so, or we’re screwed.” I reached to help Jean up in his new body.

  He tried to grab my hand, but his slipped right through. He turned and reached to grab the metal bar next to the counter to pull himself.

  “No, Jean! Don’t! That’s—”

  Too late.

  As soon as his fingers closed around the bar, the body went rigid. He made a strange sound and the poor clerk fell over, limp but breathing.

  I floated over the body. “Jean?”

  No answer. I just hoped the iron hadn’t zapped him away for good, because I really needed the help.

  Someone started whistling a familiar tune on the other side of the gas station’s back door. I floated through the wall. A big metal dumpster sat out back in a wooden enclosure. The whistling was coming from outside the enclosure, so I passed through the wood and found myself in an empty grassy lot between businesses. Baron Samedi stood just a few feet away, shoveling piles of dirt out of a hole and whistling.

  “You know this section of the city’s not zoned for burials, right?” I shouted at him.

  He didn’t break his stride. “This city’s sinking at roughly an inch per year, you know? With all the hurricanes, the construction, dirt’s shifting faster and faster. And not everyone’s bones stay where they’re supposed to. Sometimes, they slide in the mud and wind up someplace they shouldn’t be. Like you.” He glanced over his shoulder at me.

  I looked up into the sky, searching for any signs of Reapers. “You saying I should be dead?”

  Samedi stuck the shovel in the dirt and leaned on it. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, boy. Isn’t right for a body to go on without a soul, and you’ve made no progress in putting yourself back together. Perhaps I should be digging your grave next, no?”

  “I’m trying. You know, this’d all be a lot easier if you’d call off the Reapers hunting
me. I keep trying to explain to them that I’m not dead, but they don’t seem convinced.”

  He grunted, lifted a red handkerchief from his pocket, and cleaned sweat from his face. “I wish I could, but that’s not my department. It’s because you shouldn’t be. Nobody knows what to do with a man who’s neither dead nor living, particularly a Horseman. Soul like that is valuable. The Powers That Be will want it back in circulation as soon as possible.”

  I took a step closer as he went back to digging. “So, if it’s not you sending them after me, who can I talk to so I can make this all go away?”

  He stopped digging long enough to stroke his chin. “The boss of the Reapers, eh? That’d be Thanatos, but good luck convincing him. He’s a fanatic. Doesn’t like it when things break the rules.”

  I massaged my temples. “But medically, I’m alive, right? So I’m not breaking any rules. No more than any of the millions of coma patients all over the country are, right?”

  “Wrong.” He went back to digging. “They still have their souls. People like you and that pirate you’ve associated yourself with, you’re neither living nor dead, but since you don’t adhere to the rules of the living, it’s easier for everyone to just assume you are dead. As I said, there’s nothing I can do for you there.” His shovel struck something solid. Samedi knelt to brush some dirt from whatever it was he’d hit and smiled. “Ah, there you are, my friend.” He stood, holding a bleached human skull.

  I gestured to it. “Who’s that?”

  “No one of importance to you, that’s who.” He set the skull aside and continued digging, removing more bones on occasion as our conversation continued. “Now, I can’t do anything about the Reapers hunting you, but it seems to me you’re having other problems.”

  “Damn right.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t know where any of the pieces are or how to find them, except for maybe one. I know Odin has my shadow. I was going to try to call him using his favorite food, but I can’t really construct a working summoning circle in this form. Being a disembodied soul kinda sucks.”

  Samedi’s white smile gleamed. “You want to talk to the Allfather? That’s a tall order, but he’s taken a special interest in you, so perhaps it can be done. The best way to reach him is to catch one of his Ravens. He has them watching the city, you know.”

  “Okay, how do I do that?”

  He shrugged. “How should I know? I’m only a humble gravedigger, after all. But, if I wanted to trap and speak to a bird, I’d feed it.”

  I thought for a minute. That made sense. I mean, I was going to use food to attract Odin, and food was generally the surest way to make sure anybody showed up. But I didn’t know much about Odin’s Ravens aside from their names. “Huginn and Muninn, right? What do they eat? Worms?”

  Samedi chuckled. “If all you have to offer is worms, you will be sorely disappointed, though worms and Odin’s Ravens do have a diet in common. Both feast on the recently dead. If you want to summon the Ravens, you need carrion. Then simply speak their names and wait.”

  I looked around again. In downtown New Orleans, there wasn’t much roadkill, and I’d seen crews moving around during the day to collect anyone who’d died during the shutdown of the French Quarter. It was going to be slim pickings if I needed a fresh kill, but at least that wasn’t impossible.

  “Thanks for the tip,” I said. “Anything else you can offer?”

  He knelt and started placing the bones he’d collected in a sack. “Not as far as Reapers and Ravens go. However, there is another problem you should be aware of.”

  I knew what he meant even before he said it. “Mask.”

  Samedi nodded. “You may have won the battle for New Orleans, but Mask still has a foothold in this world. As long as he controls Faerie, he can come back without much trouble at all. If you truly want to save this place, you will need to drive him out of Faerie as well.”

  “I can’t do that as a disembodied spirit, now can I?”

  He shrugged. “Just because you are out of commission doesn’t mean the fight has to end. I strongly suggest you check in on your friends and encourage them not to sit around and wait for you. Time is not on your side.”

  Time. Odin had suggested it was my ultimate enemy. Mask had had eons to prepare his assault on New Orleans, and he’d failed. It couldn’t have been his only plan. Even I wouldn’t have made a move without some sort of backup plan on the table, which meant he wasn’t gone. He was just regrouping for another assault.

  I would never have the time to see this from every angle, not with my physical body anyway. But as a disembodied spirit, I could see more, be places, and do things that I couldn’t otherwise do. I might not have been able to lead any battles, but I could use the daytime downtime to conduct a little recon and maybe learn a little about how to fight my enemy better.

  But first, I had to find some roadkill.

  Chapter Three

  Finding Twinkies was a lot easier than finding a freshly dead animal. You wouldn’t think so, but even on a normal day, New Orleans was good about keeping most of the French Quarter clean. It had to look good for all the tourists posting pics to their Instagram. With the roving packs of violent infected though, you’d think there’d be all kinds of dead things in alleys, except the cleanup crew had already made it through.

  I had to go down by the river to find anything viable. There, I floated around until a dead fish washed ashore. To make sure the tide didn’t pick it up and pull it back out into the water, I tried to grab it. As with the snack cakes, my fingers wound up inside the thing. Given the choice, I would’ve chosen cream filling over fish guts any day, but at least I had hold of it. I dragged it back several feet and pulled my fingers free.

  I put my hands to either side of my mouth, thankful that my sense of smell wasn’t heightened. “Huginn and Muninn! Here, birdie-birdie-birdies!”

  Only the water hitting the shore and the distant thump of a helicopter answered.

  “Huginn, Muninn! Got a nice, tasty, dead fish for ya! Come on, guys. I could really use a win right now.”

  “You shouldn’t shout at the sky. It makes you easier to find.”

  I turned around. The Reaper who’d spoken to me in the parking garage stood on the muddy bank a few yards away. He took two steps toward me before pulling back his hood. He had pale blue skin and glowing ice-blue eyes ringed in black, like a mask made of soot.

  “Come on, man. I’m not dead.” I stepped back from the dead fish.

  “Nor are you living.” He advanced toward me, trying to circle me back toward the water. I stayed where I was until I was almost in reach of his scythe and then inched away. “Or whole.”

  I threw my hands up in the air. “I’m trying to fix that. Can you guys give me a few hours where I’m not hiding from the sun or running from you?”

  “That’s always the story, isn’t it, Necromancer?” He stopped circling. “Your whole purpose is to raise the dead, to subvert the natural order of nature. You’re like a faded stain on a new carpet. I might’ve been able to ignore you if you hadn’t been brought to my attention, but now that I know who you are and what you’ve done, you must face judgment and punishment.”

  “It’s not my fault I have these powers,” I said, waving my hands in front of me. “I didn’t ask to be what I am. I don’t even want to be a Horseman.”

  “Liar!” he barked and slammed the butt of his weapon into the mud before pointing a bony finger at me. “You may be able to lie to yourself, Lazarus, but you cannot lie to me. I see your heart. You like your power, you crave it, and you abuse it. One need only look around at the devastation here in New Orleans to see that much.

  I pretended to push my sleeves up. If this guy wanted a fight, I’d give it to him. He might have me with reach and his fancy scythe, but I’d already been through my fair share of scraps. I wasn’t about to back down from a fight with a bully. “I don’t know who you think you are, pal—”

  “Thanatos, son of Night and Darkness, the embodiment
of Death and the Reaper King.”

  “That’s quite a title,” I said, “but there can only be one Death, and that’s me. Afraid this town’s not big enough for the two of us.”

  “I am done talking.” He gripped his scythe and prepared to swing it.

  I tensed, ready to fight.

  A big glop of white dropped from the sky onto Thanatos’ shoulder. He turned to look at it, only to have a waterfall of bird shit pour down over his head. Two huge Ravens cawed and dove toward his face. Thanatos swung at them, but they drove him back. They might’ve been big birds, but they were too small for him to target with such an awkward weapon. The Ravens grabbed his clothing with their beaks, pulling him one way and then the other. When they could, they pecked him directly. Not enough to injure him, but certainly enough to be an annoyance.

  Thunder boomed in the sky above, despite a cloudless sky. A wave of nauseating power swept over the area, and in an explosion of light, Odin appeared between Thanatos and me. He wore a simple gray tunic and a long cape bearing holes and bloodstains. With his helmet and a sword at his side, he looked like he’d come dressed for battle, but he didn’t engage Thanatos. He simply extended an arm and whistled, inviting his Ravens to land.

  Thanatos sneered at Odin. “Step aside, Allfather. That soul is mine.”

  Odin scratched one of the Ravens under the beak. “Not today, it’s not. I am placing the soul of Lazarus Kerrigan under my protection until the sun rises. You might as well move along to collect other prey.”

  Thanatos’ hand tightened on the grip of his scythe. “You have no claim here.”

  “But I do.” Odin unfurled a fist, revealing the swirling ball of black that was my shadow. “I am part-owner of this man’s soul. As such, I have a vested interest in collecting the rest, should I choose to do so.”

  “That wasn’t in his file.”

  Odin closed his fist and the shadow disappeared. He shrugged. “I’m not big on paperwork. Last I checked, I didn’t have to clear every decision I made through you. Off with you!” He waved his hand at Thanatos, prompting the Ravens to take flight again. “Let Lazarus and me conduct our business in peace.”