Obligatory mumbo-jumbo: I don't own anything you recognize from the book El Club Dumas or the movie, The Ninth Gate, nor do I claim any rights to Neil Gaiman's excellent novel, American Gods. Please don't sue me, it would be an expensive waste of time.

If you haven't read the other stuff, you're obviously a masochist who enjoys being confused. Go for it.

Thanks as always for reading and reviewing, hope you enjoy it!

vanillafluffy

Chapter Five

Of Gods and Shadows

"What was that about?" Corso asked as they drove away from Cerridwyn's house. "You knew her already?"

"Never met her before today," Shadow said truthfully. "But remember when she said I reminded her of someone?"

"No. When was this?"

"When we got there...you were still pretty out of it at that point.... I thought it was just a come-on or something, but we were talking later while you were out having a smoke and it turns out she knew my father. She thinks he's an asshole." Shadow negotiated the on-ramp to the interstate.

"Maybe you take after your mother," said Corso dryly. "Do you know anything about these people we're going to see? Where the hell is Cairo, Mississippi?"

"Lower corner of the state, at the delta of the Mississippi River. The next town over is called Thebes."

"MapQuest?"

"No, I've been there before. I know these guys. My father got me a job with them a few years ago. They're who I would've suggested going to see next if she hadn't."

Corso pushed his glasses back on his head and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I told you about what happened to me last year," he said after several miles had rolled away beneath their wheels. "I didn't think my life could get any more strange and screwed up. Now I'm really starting to wonder."

Shadow knew the feeling.

"That--that woman--do you know--do you have any idea what she really is?"

"Yes." His passenger made a noise of strangled frustration that earned him a scolding from Jinx. Shadow took pity on him. "I'm not saying I know everything," he said quietly, "but let me fill you in on what I do know." Shadow's explaination about gods and goddesses transplanted to America, a land where gods didn't flourish, lasted for fifty miles, punctuated by Corso's incredulous questions.

"If all these gods exist," he finally asked, "how do you explain what happened to me? I mean, where does Lucifer fit in?"

That seemed fairly obvious to Shadow. "There are people who worship the devil, aren't there?"

Corso shuddered. "That's true."

The rode in silence, broken only by the whoosh of passing cars and trucks. "What's the story on your dad?" The book dealer looked over at Shadow, raising an eyebrow. "He knows her, he knows them...who is he?" There was an underlying suspicion in the man's tone, and Shadow couldn't blame the guy.

"To begin with, I was raised by my mom. He was never my 'dad', I didn't know anything about him, never even saw a picture of him. The first time I ever laid eyes on him, I was thirty-two, and I was hurrying to catch a plane to my wife's funeral. He wound up in the seat next to me, called me by name, and offered me a job."

"With these guys we're going to see?"

"That came a little later."

"And your dad--sorry, your father--your father is--?" prompted Corso.

"When I met him, he was going by the name 'Wednesday'."

"Wednesday?" Corso's forehead furrowed, but Shadow waited. The man was educated; he'd figure it out in a minute. "Wait--Odin? You're telling me your father is the Norse god Odin?"

Shadow sighed. "Basically, yeah."

"You're serious?"

"Is that any stranger than having...breakfast...with Cerridwyn?"

That shut Corso up, at least for a few minutes. "That crazy fortuneteller was right," he said after a while. "I thought she was a scam artist, but damned if she wasn't right about everything."

"Fortuneteller?" Shadow said incredulously. Corso didn't strike him as a New Age, have-your-cards-read-and-your-chakras-rotated kind of guy.

"A couple of months ago, in Paris, I was having a few drinks in a cafe--okay, I was tying one on after having Doctor Number Five--or maybe it was Number Six, tell me that his EEG didn't register a thing when I had a grand mal seizure in his office." Corso sighed. "Now, I don't know if it's because he was an idiot and didn't have it hooked up right, or if it was some Twilight Zone reason."

"The fortuneteller?" By now, Shadow was curious.

"This woman was sitting at one of the back tables. She had a deck of tarot cards, and when I walked past, she said she'd give me a reading if I'd buy her dinner. What the hell, I had enough money, I could've bought her the restaurant. I sat down, and she said I'd be rejected by an old friend--and I was, about a week later. Girl I knew from college, backed away from me like I had cooties--which I guess I do, in a way--but she's the one who gave me her e-mail."

From his stress on the final pronoun, Shadow figured Corso was refering to Cerridwyn.

"She also said I was going to meet a god, or the son of a god. Then she stopped and said all she saw was shadow. See what I mean when I said my life just keeps getting stranger?"

Shadow exhaled. "Yeah, that's something. Were you dreaming about that on the plane?"

"I don't remember, why?"

"Because all of a sudden you said 'Shadow' and woke up."

Corso looked thoughtful. "And there you were. I told you the whole story and you didn't even blink. I shouldn't trust you, but I do."

"That street runs both ways." Shadow concentrated on the Winnebago he was passing. "I don't know if I trust you, but I think I'm supposed to be helping you. I don't know why; I don't know you from Adam and I don't owe you squat. Any ideas?"

Keying his window down, Corso fired up a cigarette. "No ideas. I'm grateful to have you along, though, because I probably shouldn't be driving, and flying--when I think of how many frequent flyer miles I've racked up without thinking twice, I could laugh. I must've crossed the Atlantic twenty or thirty times, never thought twice about it....yesterday, all I could think of was, if the plane crashes with everyone on board, it's going to be my fault. I'm just asking to get all these people killed along with me." His voice was shaking. When he spoke again, Shadow could hardly hear him over the hum of the engine. "I don't want to die. I don't want to go through those Gates. Ever."

Giving the man false hope would be wrong; Shadow would've liked to tell him that there was at least one other way after death, but there might be--likely were--factors he didn't understand about the whole thing. No, it was better for him to get the answers from Jacquel and Ibis directly. After all, they'd been in the funeral business since 1863...B.C.