Book Six, Chapter 33: The Gambler

“I want to say that the Mobile Omen idea must have been yours,” Lucien said, looking at me. “Is that what you were plotting when I sent my little greeting?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer; he just continued talking in a casual, overly friendly way, as if he couldn’t recognize any reason for hostility between us.

“My staff were telling me that I needed to stock the casino with the biggest and baddest Omens to prevent you from waltzing in here, to put you in a bad way, make you desperate so that you would agree to anything I asked.” He looked at each of us and stopped when he saw Daphne. “But I told them the casino has defenses of its own… Pretty girl, how in the world did you swing that?”

It was a good question. Daphne was beautiful and smart. I wondered how I ended up with her every single day. It would get pretty annoying if everyone commented on it.

“She didn’t have a lot of options,” I said. “I figured I’d better shoot my shot before we rescued somebody too handsome.”

Lucien laughed.

“Women have a way of making it all worth it, don’t they? But of course, they also have a tendency to break your heart. I’d watch out if I were you. But I suppose introductions are in order, even if they are kind of hollow at this point. Lucien Graves is my stage name. You can call me Lucky. I’d tell you my real name if I remembered it. It starts with an H, I think, I have it written down somewhere.”

Calling him Lucky sounded a little too informal.

No one reacted. People in this group had stared down werewolves, mutant bed bugs, and serial killers, but it was this man, this seemingly average man, who paralyzed our tongues.

“Ohh, come on, people! I even dressed down to try to seem relatable. What has Riley here been saying about us? No harm will come to you if you speak to me, I assure you of that. Is it the dinosaur thing? I was going for playful.”

Playful? Terrifying us and killing dozens of NPCs just to send a cute little greeting was not playful.

“We came here to hear a pitch,” Antoine said.

“But shouldn’t we begin by getting to know each other?” Lucky asked. “Follow me. I had some food prepared, though you may not want to eat too much if you’re going to fit into your tights.”

Antoine suddenly lost his nerve.

Lucien, or Lucky, waved us over to a table that looked like a craft services table, lots of sandwiches and finger foods.

“Come on, at least pretend to be friendly,” he said. “You’re supposed to be fooling me into believing that you might accept my offer, surely? To what end, I could hardly say. But, in Carousel, we commit to our charades, by god.”

He was trying to read us.

“We just want to know the options,” I said.

“Of course you do,” Lucky responded.

Still, even with his pushy yet still technically friendly insistence, none of us got any food other than Lucky himself.

Except for Jules, who filled up a plate.

I wasn’t exactly sure if she knew what the Narrator was, or if she was even able to know, but if she did, she didn’t seem to care one way or another.

Daphne was almost petrified, which was very unusual for her, as she was usually so confident and charming.

I put my arm around her and whispered, “It’s okay. If he were going to kill us, he would have done it already.”

She looked at me, confused.

“We’re meeting with a Narrator,” she said, almost in disbelief.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “Why do you think we ran this Storyline?”

She seemed to think on that, as if she hadn’t really believed it would happen.

Lucky found one of the many chairs that populated the auditorium and sat himself down, gesturing for all of us to do the same. It wasn’t exactly the perfect place for a meeting, but if we were being informal, it would work.

He gave the impression of a cool college professor with no respect for rules or propriety.

“Let me introduce myself, then,” he said. “I was born in a world a lot like yours. A bit earlier, though. I was a merchant seaman, I think. I usually tell people that I was a gambler on a riverboat, but I don’t remember if that’s true or not. It’s funny how memory works. You can hardly trust it sometimes. Best to go by what you see in front of you. But I certainly worked at sea, worked in the water, because it was on one night, when I was alone on deck, staring at the stars and contemplating my future, that I came across the Barker.”

He turned to me very quickly and said, “You have told them about the Sweepstakes, right? This isn’t going to confuse them?”

“They know,” I said.

“Good, good. Well, the Barker, he asked me for a whole month’s wages. Mind you, the Barker had not been in my world for long, and I had no idea what kind of bargain I was striking. But I’ve always been the type of man who says yes, and a month’s wages wasn’t much to lose. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t regret it. I still don’t know if I was right. He gave me some tickets, trifles, mostly, but among them was the most important ticket I have ever received in my many years.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

He pulled from thin air an elaborate, golden ticket on a bone-white background and held it up for us to see.

And what I saw, I did not expect.

The title on the ticket was A Touch of Destiny. I was expecting something like Congratulations, You’ll Live to See the Extinction of Everyone You Love.

“A very rare ticket,” Lucky explained. “You see, it didn’t just grant me immortality, it granted me immortality until my destiny has been fulfilled. Most people wonder about their fate. Mine is written in ink. And as the years passed, I haven’t aged. Not even a day. All the while, I have been guided by the hand of fate in all of my dealings, blessed with extraordinary luck. The path carved for me by the Sweepstakes has led me here. I aim to find my destiny, to find the ends that justify my means. And I believe that they exist in Carousel.”