Toolbox

Nicolette pulled herself from the flaming wreckage of the Greyhound bus, snaking her way out of one of the top portholes and landing facedown in sand. Brushing the course grains off of her purple t-shirt, she brushed her hair out of her face and spat. Turning around, she was greeted by the hissing of burning plastic and the shriek of twisting metal. That was quick. I was only on the bus for, what, 3 hours? The girl sat on the beach, fingers nonchalantly drawing figures in the sand, watching the fire. After a while, she lost her interest in the flame, and looked out to sea. It was a calm day, and cloudless, and the blue of the ocean stretched on forever, until it met the blue of the sky. A seagull cawed and swooped and glided overhead, harshly breaking the beat of the softly pounding waves and crackle of fire. Nicolette stood up again and walked back toward the road, climbing up a short but steep slope of thick and hardy grass until breaking through the growth to the point where the bus had breached the road barriers. Thick black belts on the cement showed where the bus had swerved off the road and flown off the short drop, landing in just the right awkward position to ignite the gas tanks and kill every passenger aboard the long haul bus. Except for Nicolette, of course.
She wondered what the driver had swerved to avoid. She saw no stray farm animal, no oblivious 6 year old, no clues as to what caused the accident. She swung her raven-haired head left and right, searching for the culprit, and found it sitting across the highway, looking at her. It had been so still, she had missed it the first time. A little black kitten, half emaciated, glowing eyes watching her.
I thought cats eyes only glowed at night. As she thought this, the kitten crossed the street to her, and began nuzzling against her legs.
She had always heard that it was a bad idea to pet strange animals. You could get fleas, or even get bit and catch rabies, but these held no fear for her. She reached down and picked up the pitiful creature, and it gave a soft mew. She held it to her chest, and scratched it behind the ear.
"So you're the source of all this trouble? That's a lot of trouble for such a little kitty. Do you have an owner, I wonder?" The lack of collar or license seemed to speak for itself. "A black cat. I guess it's true about it being bad luck if they cross your path. But maybe that's the best kind of luck, if you want to come with me." It was the first time the thought of taking the cat with her had crossed her mind, but it seemed a wonderful idea to the small girl. She popped the tiny black ball into the hood of her windbreaker, where she could feel it squirming into a more comfortable position.
Nicolette looked back up the road to the north, the way she had come on the bus, then turned and began walking south along the shoulder of the road. She stuck her thumb out, though it seemed like this stretch of road was rather unused. As she walked, she would occasionally reach back and scratch whatever part of the cat she could reach best. It was nice, for once, to have a little friend. Hopefully it would last longer than her other friendships.

An old beater careened down the highway, rattling like a creature in its death-throes. No man alive, no matter how great a mechanic or knowledgeable an enthusiast, could have told you the make and model. They would have referred to it perhaps has "A rusted out junker" or the always eloquent "Old piece of shit."
It shook, knocked, and heaved its way along the beach-side road, a big black truck strapped atop it, the kind of trunk you assume Jimmy Hoffa is sequestered away in. The man inside the car had his windows down, which may not have been his choice, as thick nylon straps running through the windows was what kept the trunk in place. Nonetheless, the weather was especially friendly to open-window driving, and the ocean air felt clean.
The man looked nondescript. Average, you might say. Not the unnoticeable kind of average, the kind of person you could never accurately describe, just normalish. He always thought that perhaps his normal appearance could be negatively affecting his business, but there really wasn't much he could do about it, without letting some man with a med-school diploma and a knife cut his face to shreds. Sometimes, you take what you're dealt, and make due.
Normally, he would be listening to the radio, but for going on 20 miles now he had got nothing but static. After 10 minutes of leaving scan on and getting constant hissing, he just gave up. Take what you're dealt, and make due. If anything was his motto, that was it. His mother had told him it was something his Grandfather had used to say a lot, and he certainly took after his Grandfather. He'd never met his grandad, of course, he died the day, down to the very minute, that he was born, but he'd followed him in business, and in looks, and even drove his Grandfather's car. "Jack," his Grandmother would say to him, "if you aren't just your grandad down to the hair, I'm going senile." Looking at old pictures, Jack couldn't see the resemblance.
So he drove in silence, with only the sound of the swell and the caw of seabirds to listen to. Not bad, all told. There's people who pay good money just to hear recordings of this as they go to sleep. "The Soothing Sounds of the Sea." The shit people will buy.
The car rounded a turn, and with the change in angle came a view of a purple and black splotch far down the road. Squinting, Jack could make out that the figure was short, had long hair, and needed a ride. Jack wasn't one for picking up strangers, but this was a lonely bit of road, and his was the only car he'd seen for a long while. As he got closer, he realized that the hitchhiker couldn't be more then 13. What in hell? The fuck is she doing way out here? Her age only solidified the notion that he should give her a lift.
As he approached her, he slowed, and leaned over to unlock the passenger-side door.
"You heading south?" said the girl.
"Yeah. Jump in."
She jumped in.
Weird little girl. Is she from around here? He looked at her crosswise as he sped back up to cruising speed. Shiny black hair drawn back behind her ears fell to her shoulders, and framed her pale face. Not a sickly pale, just an absence of tan, in a sort of porcelain doll manner. Her dark purple shirt hung loosely off her down to the waist of her black jeans, with no curves yet to give her any shape. Twiggy, perhaps, was the best word. Or perhaps slender was better, as twiggy implies frailty, and frail was certainly not a word suited to her. She had a sort of street toughness, like she'd seen the worst and could be hurt no more.
"You do know it's dangerous to take rides from strangers?"
"I've heard it."
"For all you know, I could be a psycho killer, with the bodies of 3 other girls in that trunk up top."
"Are you a psycho killer?"
"No."
"Then I guess I have nothing to worry about." All said very calmly, and very thoughtfully, as if she had worked out all these answers beforehand.
"Just because I wasn't a killer, doesn't mean the next guy you get a ride from won't be."
"I guess I'll just have to be careful."
Jack shook his head. Fucking kids. Think they're goddamn immortal. "I'm serious. There are some real sickos out there, people that would call you easy prey."
"What, you mean like rapists and child molesters?"
This conversation was quickly becoming uncomfortable. "Sure. Them." Time to change topics. "Where are you headed, anyway? Do you live around here?
"No, I'm going to visit a friend of mine. He's sick." All said in the same, lazily uncaring voice.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
No response. An awkward silence pervaded the car, neither the passenger or driver saying anything, just looking at anything but each other. Shit, I'm no good with kids. Maybe that's why no one hires me for birthday parties anymore.
"Y'know, I think I see something in your ear..." Spontaneously, he reached over to head, and before she could make a move, pulled a coin from behind her ear. He held it out to her, proudly.
"Ta-da." She picked the quarter out of his fingers, placing it in her palm. It was new, the glare off the polished surface told him that, and for the first time, she smiled.
"Neat. Where is it from?"
Jack gave her a puzzled look. "From? Whadaya mean, from?"
"I mean what country. It's got a bird and a face, but it's definitely not an American coin. See?" She held it out to show him.
There was certainly a bird, and not an eagle. If pressed to describe it, Jack would have said the bird looked like a phoenix taking flight, though he wouldn't be able to say why he thought this.
"Huh. I dunno where it came from. Must've picked it up somewhere." Come to think of it, where the hell did the strange coin come from? He hadn't had a coin in his hand when he reached over, and he seriously doubted that the girl kept loose change behind her ears.
"What's your name, by the way? I'm Jack. Or Fantastic Jack, professionally.
She was silent a moment, as if thinking of what to tell him. "Nicolette, and what do you mean, professionally? Are you a magician, or something?"
"Yes, actually. I guess the 'Fantastic' bit gave it away? Or was it the astounding feat of conjuring I just demonstrated?"
"The name. And if the coin trick was your best one, you're not a very good one." She grinned again, finally seeming a bit more child-like, poking fun at him.
If Jack knew how to harumph, he would have, instead making another indignant noise. "That, madam, was harsh and mean-spirited, and I would thank you to know that I am a most excellent magician, performing feats to 'astound and confuse.' or so the posters say." He really was a top-notch magician, but an awful showman. He could perform the tricks like he was born to do so, and could befuddle even the most hardened magic debunker with his sleight of hand, but had no skill at the witty patter, the jokes and the speeches and grand announcements that go hand-in-hand with the tricks.
"I'll take your word for it. Where are you going anyway, Jack?"
He saw no reason to lie to her, after all, she was just a hitchhiker. "I'm heading to an old lighthouse, about 50 miles down this road." Truth be told he had nothing better to do, and going just seemed right at the time, the only way to move his life forwards.
Nicolette fell silent again, and reached into the inner lining of her jacket, holding something for a while. Eventually, she spoke up again.
"Jack," she said, "I wasn't telling the whole truth. I don't have a sick friend. I got this a few weeks back." She pulled an envelope out from her coat pocket, and waved it at Jack, who could see the red seal with the large H pressed into it. Its twin currently resided in the glove compartment of the beat up car. "It told me that I have an important message from my parents waiting for me there."
"That sounds like less of a mistruth and more like a lie. Why would your parents leave a message for you at a light house?" For that matter, why was someone blackmailing him to come to the same lighthouse?
"They wouldn't. For one thing, they've been dead for 12 years."
"Oh. I'm... sorry? I guess?"
"Don't be. I got along fine without them. Obviously my parents didn't leave a message for me, however," she tucked the envelope back into her coat pocket, "I figure that anyone going through the trouble of trying to convince me they did must be worth meeting."
"That's some interesting logic there. 'They tried to trick me into coming to see them, so I guess I should go and see them.' Makes perfect sense."
"You're going, aren't you?"
To this, Jack had nothing to say. He just gripped the wheel a bit tighter, and pressed down on the gas just a bit further. There really seemed to be no fazing this girl. She was well and truly set on reaching that lighthouse, as was Jack. No point in trying, and company is always welcome with the radio emitting nothing but fuzz. It was still about two hours until the lighthouse.

Then suddenly, there was the lighthouse. It stood, monolithic, on a tiny spit of land jutting into the water like someone bumped the table while the coast was being drawn up. The anomalous spit angled steeply up, until suddenly dropping off into the only shore cliff for miles in any direction. It looked to Jack like the kind of scene out of a cheesy swap-meet painting you find gracing the hallways of someone with no children to display, too idyllic and plain, a scene with no soul to it. Until he came closer to the lighthouse itself...
It seemed angry, that building. Perhaps it was angry at being so out of place in the area, or maybe it was angry at whoever designed it to have a faux-gothic feel. It was made of hunks of large grey stone and the top was ringed with gargoyles, like a tower straight out of medieval times. Other then the stone creatures, there was little ornamentation. It didn't belong in this century, let alone along this lonely shore.
But none of this seemed particularly relevant to Jack at the time. It was an odd lighthouse, nothing more. More interesting then the lighthouse was the tiny parking lot at the foot of the long incline, filled with more cars then it was built to contain. Some were parked on the shoulder outside the lot, while others waited dormant on the course grass. And cars of all kinds: trucks, sedans, Jeeps, Lexuses, even a few limos. Whatever kind of group had shown up here, they were obviously an eclectic bunch, from every social and economic strata.
"I guess we weren't the only ones invited." said Nicolette, eyes roaming the lot.
"Guess not." He pulled over to the shoulder, parked, and got out. He walked over to the sign near the entrance to the lot. "Historic Wainshead Lighthouse. Tours by appointment only. For information, call Nancy at 555-4251." Nicolette joined him.
"This is it, then." As if there had been any doubt. The kitten in Nicolette's hood squirmed, and she reached back to touch it. Jack noticed the movement, but assumed that she was simply stretching or scratching.
"After you, madam." With an elegant, over-the-top bow, he followed her up the dirt path to the lighthouse gate.
The large wooden door was slightly ajar, and an unhooked rope barrier hung loosely to the side. The pair walked inside, massive door gliding silently on its hinges, and found themselves in a bare room, grey and sterile, capable of comfortably filling nearly any role. Why such a room existed in a lighthouse was beyond Jack, and the dimensions seemed wrong compared to the size of the lighthouse from the outside, but it seemed rather average. It was the sort of room a hotel could provide for both a business meeting and wedding reception with no big hassle. At the moment, it could have been either.
Along one side of the room ran a table layered with conference foods. Finger sandwiches, some sort of meat product skewered on toothpicks, and a vegetable and dip platter prominent additions to the selection. In the back of the room opposite the door, a low stage thrust out from the wall, and a few rows of padded folding chairs were neatly arranged facing it. People milled about the room, nervously talking to one another, each feeling the others out to varying degrees of success. One man stood closer to the door then the others, refilling his red plastic cup from the punch bowl. It was to him that Jack spoke. "Excuse me, but do you know who's in charge here? I got this invitation, and I-"
"Want to know who sent it? There's few in here that'll admit it, but it's what we're all trying to answer. I don't know. I'm just waiting for something to happen. We'll find out then."
"Do you know how long we'll wait? How long have you been here? How long has everyone else been here?"
The man at the punch bowl grinned, a toothy, brilliant smile. "I don't know, about an hour, and I don't know. But it can't be long now, you don't call all these people together just to leave 'em in a room for hours." That grin pissed Jack off. It was too personable. It possessed too much charm, and a strength to back it up. Punch bowl man didn't impress people with his smile, he didn't try to act confident; Punch bowl man's smile impressed people, and he simply was confident. Cocky, even. He had a look about him that guaranteed he was strong, tough, and bold. Jack didn't like him. Jack might even have hated him, and mistrusted him on sight.
He bent down, filled punch glass in hand, to Nicolette's height, and said, "Now, what are you doing here, missy? Did you come here with your dad?"
"He's not my dad. I got an... invitation too. Not that it's your business." She dealt with it all the time, but she could never get over the patronization most adults threw her way. It's not like she had supported herself for the past 8 years, or anything. She didn't like this man much, either. He had a look in his eye she'd seen before, and learned to avoid, something menacing and sick. He had the look to him, and she decided that it would be best not to find herself alone with him. "And I think that 'something' you were waiting for is about to happen."
A man wearing a dark suit had appeared on the stage, and was setting his briefcase down gently, almost reverently, on the table. He paused, looking at the black case, as if thinking something over, before turning to the crowd that had just begun to notice his presence. "Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "if I could ask you all to please sit, we can get down to today's business."
The gathering shuffled around, filling in the seats starting at the front row, until only the back seats remained for the trio gathered by the punch bowl. The number of seats was exactly the number of people requiring seating, but that was to be expected, as they all had been expressly told to come here. After sitting, Jack realized exactly just how varied the people here really were. Just in the row in front of him, he could see a man with the white collar of a catholic priest, a corpulent, well dressed man sneering at the uncomfortable seats, a fellow who's stench and raggedness of clothing suggested homelessness, and a woman, rather plain, but decked in jewelry and what Jack could only assume was designer clothing. 'Random' didn't even seem to cover it.
"I'm sure you are all wondering why you're here," said the man on the stage, the bright lights glinting off his hair, oiled to the point that you could signal to a pilot with his head, "and we will come to that soon enough. For now, however, I think it best to tell you a story."
Angry murmurs quickly escalated into a few angry shouts. A woman several rows ahead, older, and dressed conservatively, stood and yelled, "I didn't come here to hear a god-damn story! I came here because I got a letter telling me that if I didn't, my nephew would die. I want to know what the fuck you've done with him, and now!"
"Ma'am, I have to ask you to wait for just a few minutes. I will address your letter then. All of your letters." He waited for the crowd to quite down. Throughout it all, he had remained perfectly calm, never lifting an eyebrow or shifting in uneasiness. The rest of the group shifted nervously. They were threatening to kill someone? They weren't given much time to dwell, as the man quickly began.
"The story begins a very long time ago. Long enough to make millennia seem an eye blink, and for the entirety of human history nothing more than a brief moment. A long time ago, even in terms of the age of the universe. I will assume that though you cannot truly comprehend what that length of time means, you understand the idea of what I'm saying?" He paused for a few nods of acquiescence. "Good. Now, this extremely long time ago, a man, or something analogous, had his mind set on creating a vast and complex mechanism, and though he had the capacity to build it, it would eventually grow to a complexity and vastness that he would not be able to handle unaided. So he developed a set of tools to help him manage and manipulate his creation, a simple set of 21 different mechanisms, which could be applied to several different processes in varying ways. These tools could be used both to manipulate his machine and to give readings back to him on the current state of the system."
Here he stopped to ensure that everyone was still on board, then continued. "After a long while, the original creator became bored with managing his machine, and so left. Over time, however, the tools he had made became so interconnected with everything in the machine that they actually integrated themselves into it.. What had once only influenced from the outer edges now became a part of the system itself, and without the guiding hand of the creator, became hopelessly entangled within the intricate and massive mechanism. It started influencing them, and they influenced it, until it was difficult to say where the tool ended and the machine began." Confused faces, Jack's included, stared back at the storyteller. "Of course, the original creator is what some people would call 'God', and the machine the universe." Stated in such a way that only a fool could possibly think otherwise. Of course it made perfect sense. The man had said it with such authority.
The fat man in the row in front of Jack stood. Jack had started giving names to the people in the room, and had taken to calling the very fat man Mr. Alice, after a short story he had read about a rich fat man. It looked like Mr. Alice was going to pass out just from the strenuous activity of hauling his carcass out of his seat. "Boy, if you don't get to the part where you say, 'Now here's why you're here,' then I'm going to get to the part where bad things start happening to you." He was loud and blustery, and sounded stereotypically Texan. "I'm a busy man, and don't have time to listen to your cockamamie theories about creation."
Again, the Slick Man (as Jack was beginning to think of him as) was entirely nonplussed by the spiel. "I was just coming to that. As I was saying, the tools used to manage and observe the universe were a set of over-arching themes and patterns, ones that do not entirely translate into human thought. However, certain humans have the brain function to intuitively process the patterns and paradigms overlaying reality as they know it, though they think of it as a sensitivity to something occult. Nonetheless, over the years a primitive physical rendition of the tools were made, and were recognized by many as a means to gauge the universe."
He opened his briefcase and pulled something out. When he held what it was up to the onlookers, they saw that he held a deck of old painted cards, with symbols Jack could recognize.
"What are they?" asked a man near the front. More a boy then man, really, with his arm draped over the girl next to him. Romeo seemed to fit him, with the woman as his Juliet.
Jack spoke up, "Tarot cards. Fortune telling stuff." As a magician, he had been exposed to the things on occasion, but had never found any interest in them. He figured the fortune telling was what the Slick Man was getting at, for whatever reason.
"Yes," said the Slick Man, "they are. They are man's sorry attempt at recreating the themes and patterns of the original tools, filtered down for the human psyche to understand. However, only what are called the Major Arcana, the ones with proper names, are based off of the original tools, so it is those that we will focus on." He dropped a majority of the deck on the ground next to him, careless of the mess they made. He fanned the remaining twenty or so cards out, and held the faces toward the reluctant audience. "For every card I hold there is, in this room, a corresponding individual."
The lady who spoke up at first, creatively dubbed Granny Tight-Ass by Jack, again stood. "The more you talk, the more I figure you for a nutjob." The woman, able to pass as somebody's grandma, pulled a large handgun from under her coat, and pointed it right at the Slick Man's chest.
The woman next to her stood up quickly, putting her hand on Granny Tight-Ass's gun arm. At least, she looked like a woman from behind. Now that he had a better look, he wasn't sure if it was a woman. It was just that... it. It seemed neither female nor male, it still retained feminine and masculine qualities. "Now hold on! I don't really think you need to resort to violence!"
Without taking her eyes off the Slick Man, patiently standing with his hands folded in front of him, Granny Tight-Ass said, "Honey, I answer kindness with kindness, trust with trust, and violence," she held up her letter, "with violence. Now, where is my nephew?"
The Slick Man looked at her for a moment, and for the first time, showed an emotion other than boredom. The grin was not an improvement. "Adelaide, your nephew is back in L.A. He never left. Now put the gun down so we can return to tonight's business."
The gun stayed trained on his chest. "Well you see, I'm afraid I'm not sure I believe you." How do I know he's okay, hmm? How do I know you don't have my Jed locked in a room somewhere upstairs?"
The Slick Man reached inside his suit jacket, and Granny Tight-Ass raised the gun higher. "Get your fucking-"
"You wanted proof, correct?" He pulled out a cell phone, dialed a number, and threw it to her. She snagged it out of the air, her dexterity belying her age. "That's Jed."
Casting a suspicious glance at the Slick Man, she raised the phone to her ear. "Hello? Who is this?" Relief washed over her face. "Jed. Are you okay? Thank God." She waited, listening to the voice on the other end. "No reason. I have to go now. I'll come see you in a few days. Lots of love." She snapped the phone shut, and tossed it back to the Slick Man.
"Satisfied?"
"He tells me that he's been with his friends the past few days. Apparently you never did anything with him." While she talked, she edged closer to him, inching her way between chairs. "However, you threatened someone in my family. If I start letting threats go unanswered, who knows what ideas people might get. They'd see me as weak. And in my business, the weak die. So I hope you'll understand that I can't let a conniving, greasy piece of shit like you live." She thumbed the hammer back. "Any last words?"
"Yes. Put the gun down."
"Shitty last words."
"Adelaide." They way he spoke now sounded different. No, felt different. Jack felt the world tilt, like suddenly gravity was pulling at a slant, and he felt dizzy. "Put down the gun."
Adelaide stood there, shaking, gun still pointed at the Slick Man's chest. Then she lowered her arm, and let the gun fall to the floor. She stared the Slick Man in the eye.
"Good girl. Sit down, and don't interrupt again."
She walked, smoothly and confidently back to her seat, but with rage apparent on her face. A murderous rage. Jack made a mental note not to piss her off.
The Slick Man walked back to center stage, and looked out into the crowd, staring the whole audience down at once. It seemed to Jack that he was looking right at him, challenging him to make a move. In fact, it seemed to everyone present that they were the ones being looked at. Nicolette shifted nervously.
"As I said, each individual here corresponds to a card. Each card represents certain ideas and themes that were originally part of the tool the card takes the place of. The corresponding person, therefore, also represents those themes. I will demonstrate. Jack," Jack jumped at hearing his name, "you have a familiarity with these cards, do you not?"
"Um..." he cleared his throat nervously, "Sorta. I picked up a bit from an ex of mine, but not enough to do a reading, or anything." Sheila had in fact tried extensively to teach him, but never succeeded in keeping his attention.
"I think if you try, you might find you'll remember more then you realize." He pulled a card out from the middle of the stack, and showed it to the crowd. "Do you know which card this is?" The card he held up was obviously from a different deck then Sheila had, but the picture showed an angel playing a trumpet, and the dead rising, which was close enough for him to recall the name.
"Judgment."
"And what does it mean?"
"I don't remem-"
"Try. Hard."
"Fine, fine. Uh..." he strained to move time back seven years, to when his girlfriend held the same card in her hand like a flashcard, grinning at his attempt to recall the divinatory meanings of the card. She was the only woman in the world who could devise a game of "Strip Tarot."
"It represents Judgment, obviously, and rebirth," those were easy, shown right on the card, "and... renewal."
The Slick Man nodded approvingly. "Those are some of the meanings, yes. It can also mean absolution, or redemption, or endings. Andrew, if you would stand, please." He looked at a man in the second row, off to the right, without having to scan the crowd. The man creaked out of his seat, ancient visage wrinkled as a tree trunk, and leaned on his blackthorn cane. The man had to be at least 100, maybe older.
"Thank you. Andrew, could you tell us your profession?"
The man called Andrew licked his thin, cracked lips, and croaked out a response. "I'm retired. I was a Federal Judge a ways back, though."
"Yes. You have also been present at an inordinate number of births, have you not?"
Andrew's eyes became even squintier, if that was at all possible. "Well, maybe more than some people. Women have a habit of popping around me."
"Oh, don't downplay it, Andrew." the Slick Man said, scolding like a child a man obviously decades older than him, "Nearly 300 women have 'popped' as you so elegantly put it, in your presence."
"Now, wait a minute. How do you know that?"
"Just because you stopped counting after the 50th doesn't mean nobody else was keeping track. Jack," he pulled another card out of the deck, "which card is this?"
An eight-spoked wheel sat in the center of the card, covered in runes and surrounded by winged creatures. He searched his mind. "The Wheel of Fortune."
"Meaning?"
Again a pause as he thought back, then "Destiny, fate, and possibilities."
"Celie," he looked at the woman decked in jewelry, just ahead of Jack, "how does a poor girl from rural France come to have such fine and expensive garments?"
She stayed seated and stiffened, and after several moments whimpered, "Me?"
"Yes, you."
"Um..." she began chewing her lip, contorting her face and sending it from simply plain into the realm of ugly. She definitely wasn't a trophy wife. "I'm a gambler. That's... uh... how I make my money." For apparently being French, she did a fantastic job hiding her accent. "I win a lot."
"Oh, so you are a very skilled card player. Perhaps a master of Texas Hold'em? Maybe you count cards at Blackjack. Which games do you play?"
"I play... Roulette, slots, things like that. Like I said, I win a lot." But something was off about the way she spoke...
"In fact," said the Slick Man, "you win so much at games of chance, you have been blacklisted by nearly every casino and gambler's den in Europe. Yet no one has yet caught you cheating. Lucky you."
"But I don't cheat!" Mais je ne triche pas! There it was. She was speaking French, but he was hearing it as English, like it was superimposed over what she was really saying. His ear could hear the French, but his mind heard otherwise. "I'm just lucky!" Her mouth made the shapes for the French he could barely make out.
"Actually, I believe you. You are lucky. You win, without trying, at any game of chance you try your hand at. Even when you aren't gambling, the odds are skewed towards the improbable. Coins land on their edges a hundred times in a row. An entire city will win the lottery at once. Such things are common around you."
She flinched with each word. "How... how could you possibly know all that?"
"You people seem to think that the details of your lives are secret. I advise you forget that assumption." He pulled the next card off the top of the deck. It showed a skeletal figure, armored in black plate, riding a white horse and holding a banner amidst a field of bodies. It was one of the most famous cards, and not hard to remember at all.
"Death." said Jack, before the Slick Man even had a chance to ask. "It represents Good-byes, endings, transitions and, well, death." The information really was coming back to him, apparently.
"And it appears you have already met her. Hasn't he, Nicolette."
She just looked at him.
"Would you be so kind as to tell us about your parents?"
Nicolette simply stared. Not happy, sad, angry, scared, or any discernable emotion. She looked as if she was disinterestedly watching television.
"I thought you might not, so I will take the liberty of doing so for you. You were born 14 years ago to a middle-class family, and named after your grandmother. For two years, they lived happily with you, until a fire caught in their apartment building. Everyone in the building died, except for a two-year-old girl who was discovered miraculously unscathed after the flames had died down. There were plans for a fireman and his family to adopt you, but the whole family was killed by a drunk driver. You were in the car as well, but again survived unharmed. You were dumped in an orphanage, a ward of the state, until the orphanage was struck with a bizarre case of Bubonic Plague, and you were again the only survivor. You have been present at countless disasters and accidents over the years, and anyone who has spent more than a few days near you is guaranteed to die, although it has been known to happen after only hours in your presence. You have traveled across the country, alone, for the past nine years, and left innumerable dead in your wake. Did I leave anything out?"
Jack looked at her askance, and eyed the slight girl. She wore the same emotionless look, but he knew that the Slick Man had been telling the truth. Just his luck. Try to be a good Samaritan and help a little girl, end up giving a ride to Death herself.
"I thought not. Now Jack, how about-"
"If you know so much," Nicolette said, "about what happens to people when I spend time with them, why did you come anywhere near me? And why did you invite all these people? You know that their being here puts their lives at risk. Are you some kind of sick bastard with a death wish?" Her face and her voice may be childish and innocent-sounding, but her words carried a weight greater than her age could carry.
"Now, Nicolette. It is improper for a child such as yourself to use such language. But in answer to your question, I do not fear you killing these people as I plan on them dying long before your unconscious power does the job."
The room erupted. Calls for the Slick Man to perform acts of heinous sexual perversion upon himself and strings of epithets referring to his mother echoed through the lighthouse. Jack grabbed Nicolette's arm, and dragged her over to the door, where a large portion of the audience members had gathered. The door was locked. The anger in the room rose, and Adelaide and several others in the front row attempted to get up on the stage, and found their way impeded by an unseen force. They shouted at the Slick Man, and he smiled back at them, safe from their fists and the various projectiles they lobbed at him.
One of the people at the doors was Punch Bowl Man, his cocky smile gone and replaced with a frightened visage. When he saw Nicolette, he grabbed her away from Jack.
"You! You're the one who's gonna kill us!" He hit her, and she fell to the ground, so he began to kick. Some of the others saw what he was doing, and joined in, panicked and mad. Jack started punching into the mob indiscriminately, trying to reach her, but someone threw a stronger punch then he could have mustered and knocked him flat. On the ground, he could see Nicolette through the throng of feet, bent into fetal position to try and protect herself, but no amount of covering could provide protection against that onslaught.
Jack watched, paralyzed with horror, as the mob kicked the 14 year old girl to death.
A light flashed from the area of the stage, and the murderers looked towards it. Jack couldn't look anywhere but at the bruised, battered, and broken form of Nicolette, her purple sweatshirt stained darker in patches with blood. As he gazed at her corpse, he could hear the footfalls of someone walking towards her. He raised his head, and saw that it was the Slick Man.
The mob parted in front of him, and he knelt at her body. He reached out his hand, and touched his fingertips to the center of her perfectly still chest. When he lifted it away, it held a card about the size of his hand, with the image of the skeletal horseman on it. But as he looked at it, it wasn't a card. It shifted as he watched it, drifting in and out of focus. It was as if he could catch different views of it as he shifted his focus further away, or maybe further into, it. It was a gemstone, a brilliant light, a god, a man, a mountain, and an entire galaxy. It was every death, every ending, every pattern and idea and theme that could be associated with deaths that his mind could comprehend, and an infinity more that it couldn't. As he watched it, the Slick Man put it -- her -- into a carved wooden box. Then he stood, and turned to Punch Bowl man, and repeated the process, pulling another one of the things out and putting it into the box. As the card-thing, depicting a chariot, left his chest, he collapsed. Dead. The Slick Man turned to the next in the crowd.

He approached Jack last, box nearly full of cards. No-one had moved to avoid him. They stood or sat where they were, looked him in the eye as he drew out their card, and fell dead to the ground.
"Can I assume, then, that I am The Magician?"
"I think that would be fairly obvious." The Slick Man sat on his heels, looking down at Jack. "I still don't understand how you all came to have consciousness of your own. You were never built to exist without somebody wielding you." He didn't look like a greasy businessman anymore. Point of fact, he didn't really seem to exist much anymore, seeming insubstantial and wispy. If you looked long enough, you could even see through him at parts. Even so, he exuded power. Not the kind a president or something has, but raw, energetic, move mountains with a thought kind of power. "I suppose this universe has just outgrown me. It's why I made you in the first place, I guess. It was just an experiment, you see, a kind of stretching of legs, to see what I could do. So I made something, and it was just a simple little thing, easy to control and to shape. But I let it grow and grow, until I couldn't handle it. I made the lot of you to help, but it eventually came to be too much. I've moved onto better things."
He reached out his hand and touched his fingertips to Jack's chest. "But I could always use a good set of tools." He lifted his hand away, and Jack was dead.

Faint footsteps echoed up the staircase. Faint not because someone was treading softly, but because the feet that made the sounds were faint. The Slick Man was still opaque, but just barely. He climbed the stairs towards the top of the lighthouse. He could have simply been at the top, no climbing or walking, but he felt that the occasion called for an observance of the rules. They were, after all, his rules. He made his way to the top and turned towards the giant light. He opened his wooden box, only one card away from being full. He reached into the massive light, and drew out a card depicting a tower being struck by lightning, with people jumping out. He placed it in the box, and shut it. With that, he disappeared.
The lighthouse began to shake, and started to groan. The shaking became a tottering, then a collapsing, and the groaning became a wailing then a shrieking of twisting metal and shattering stone. The lighthouse crumbled to the ground.
When the noise and dust had settled, the sun had nearly set. The sea and the sky were smeared with reds and pinks and purples, and the last gulls of the day hovered in the slight sea breeze, as they do. A bit of movement stirred in the rubble, a tiny shifting. A small black face poked out of a hole, and mewed quietly. It shimmied its way out of the little crack, until a tiny black kitten was revealed, dusty and tired and scared, but unharmed. It looked back at the pile of crumbled stone and broken glass, and mewed again. Then it turned its back on the pile, and padded down past the parking lot and along the road, until it found the beach. It watched as the sun slowly sank into the waves, golden eyes impassively watching the light fade. When the golden orb was finally fully concealed for the night, and the first stars showed in the east, the little cat set off along the shore.