The Fortune Master

Chapter 5

It was three days before March 30th, and Connie was once again on her way to the cafe that seemed to be a hub for everything that concerned this sudden shower of tragedies and cheer. She was killing her flats again, and her sides kept feeling continuous irritating pain as she heaved her fastest through the streets. Birds happily chirped around her and the sun glowed golden around everything, which didn't seem right considering her mood. It was five in the morning, and once more, she was on the road.

It would've been so much easier to take her car, but once again, Mary and David had gone out to the casino. Maybe one day she'd hide it somewhere and see how they liked running twenty-four blocks to get to where they had to go.

Connie was still breathing heavily and the roots of her golden-brown hair were slightly sweaty, but not wet. Her cheeks were rose-gold and she almost collapsed -- running was not Connie's specialty. Connie was able to cool down by the time she'd gotten to the Starlight Cafe because Theresa Jones and her cousin's co-worker hadn't arrived. Connie ordered a glass of water, still amazed that the waiters, chefs, and cashiers weren't all home sick by now. It was almost as though the cafe protected them.

Connie was all cooled down by the time Theresa had shown up with her cousin's colleague. He looked kind of like her, somehow, except that his skin wasn't chocolate but more like a tanned marshmallow, and his eyes were brown. Other than that, they had the same nose, same eye-shape, and the same facial expression: a sense of dread, and she could see that they both wished they'd never known about it in the first place -- but she could also see that they were extremely curious about what Connie had to say. Which reminded her -- what DID Connie have to say?

She didn't just call a meeting with a popular blogger and a random man to tell them she had no idea what was going on, did she?

As Theresa and the man walked closer, Connie inwardly freaked out. What was she going to say? How was she going to do it? Why did she call this meeting without being prepared? Would they say the first sentence in the conversation? Would they even HAVE a conversation? Would they believe her?

It was a full-fledged adult freak-out.

"Good morning," Theresa said. "Connie, right? I don't remember, so much weird things are happening.

"Yeah, I'm Connie," she said. Her fear and anxiety were slowly swallowing her from the inside out, starting with a boiling hot bubble of dread in her stomach. "I take it this is your cousin's colleague?"

"Cameron," he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.

Connie froze. She didn't want him to feel how sweaty her hand was getting, so she shook it as quickly as possible and pulled it back to herself. It was noticeable -- and awkward, so she realized from the look on Cameron's face -- but she had to be professional about this. Sweating and stammering wasn't professional. If he knew she was freaking out -- for no reason, might she add -- it just wouldn't help flow the conversation along.

"OK, so the reason you guys are here is because we all know something very strange is happening," she told them, PROFESSIONALLY, after they sat down in front of her. "Everything crazy about this whole luck thing, right? You guys are getting lucky, too?" They confirmed it. Connie relaxed -- nothing was going TOO badly. "Well, last week I found this note--" She fished it out of her pocket and handed it to Cameron. "Read it. I think it's for all three of us, because we've been lucky."

"I heard there was a note..." Cameron muttered to himself. Theresa and Connie watched Cameron's face as it morphed from blankly confused to terrified and creeped out in a matter of seconds. He handed back Connie the paper so fast it was almost as though he were scared of the note, and she completely understood him. Even if its words weren't so ominous, there was still something eerie about the page -- something that made it almost possessed. And for all Connie knew, it could be. If someone could make the whole world unlucky, but make the three of them super fortunate, then there could be something ... maybe something supernatural involved. Some act of a being larger than luck.

Cameron ran a confused hand through his hair. "I really don't understand this. 'Something so powerful it doesn't belong in a world like this.' What do they mean? A 'world like this.' It's not like there are other worlds."

"How are we supposed to know that?" demanded Theresa. "I mean, isn't this whole thing kind of like magic? Isn't it like someone whisked a wand and whispered a spell to make the whole world unlucky, except they missed a few blotches in Astryl? That's what's going on, so how do we know it isn't because of some magical person?"

"Exactly what I was thinking!" agreed Connie. "But it just so happens that we have an entire world to search -- not to mention the other worlds, if we're right."

"Not an entire world," Cameron told them with a shimmer of realization in his Ben-And-Jerry's-chocolate brown eyes. "We have a note. That HAS to narrow it down somehow. Theresa, you brought something so that we can completely scrub this note clean for any sort of hidden clues or messages, right?"

Theresa dug around her jeans' pockets. "I did... Oh, here's one." She pulled out a very small flashlight, but when she turned it on the light was purple.

"What's that?"

"A blacklight. Most flashlights show you what's in the dark -- blacklights show you what's hidden in plain sight." Theresa clicked the button again and shone it over the page. Nothing unusual was showing up. The paper was completely clean. Theresa groaned. "I really thought that was going to work."

Cameron's eyes focused on the note and Connie could almost see cogs spinning around in his mind. "I think it does work," he told her. "Give it to me." He took the flashlight from his colleague's cousin and flipped the paper around, shining it there. Right in the middle, in big, white letters, it said: "51.50642, -0.12721"

"Great!" said Cameron sarcastically. "I figure it out and we get random numbers."

"How'd you know that?"

"On the page, the numbers zero-three-three-zero-one-eight-zero-zero are flipped around backwards with a line separating them. I wondered if that meant we'd have to FLIP around the page," he said.

"Cameron, that's genius!" squealed Theresa. "Now, all we need to do is figure out what those numbers are -- the ones that are backward, the NCG numbers, and the weird stuff on the back."

Connie sighed. "Yeah, we know a lot, don't we?" she groaned sarcastically.

"Wait!" said Theresa. "Those aren't any regular numbers on the back. They're coordinates!" She pulled out her phone and jabbed the keyboard so hard Connie thought she might have cracked it. "They're the exact same coordinates for London, England."

"No way," Cameron said. "That's crazy. Are we going to LONDON?"

"Seems like we have to," she told Cameron. "But it's fine. London's really close to Astryl, so it'll probably only take two to three hours to drive there. But that's not the biggest issue here." Connie and Cameron frowned at her. "Look at how it says 'First' in all caps on the front page. That means we have to do whatever this is before that. And the sentence says 'FIRST, YOU are the perfect type for this.'"

Theresa looked ahead, past Connie and Cameron, her azure blue eyes trembling like they were the first time Connie had ever seen them. Now they were filled with dread and were even slightly shiny, like they were wet, but she wasn't going to cry. Theresa swallowed. "For this, I'm going to need to face my fears." She rubbed her eyes. "Come on. Let's go to the hospital."