Gods of Manhattan by Al Ewing Read Free Book Online

like a fun idea at the time, but let's face it, it's starting to get a little tired.
    The Devil, according to Marcel, was a man of certain iron habits. He liked games of chance and chess, he liked a good trade and a better haggle and he liked to tell an incomplete truth, which is easier than a lie and a good deal more fun. He was easily reached, if you knew your way around a chalk circle, and always willing to let a fool bargain something precious away for a trinket he thought he wanted. Marcel was one such fool.
    His tragedy had been a simple one. He would never be anything in the kitchen, not even a dishwasher. He could not use a knife without slicing open a finger or thumb, his palette could not distinguish a jalapeno pepper from a clump of mud, and his nose, constantly thick with cold, dripped regularly into any pan or open container he happened to lean over. He was mal carne, bad meat. And yet he wanted nothing more, in this life or any other, than to be one of the great chefs.
    Of course, he could not sell his soul. What is a great chef without his soul?
    Instead, he sold his reflection.
    Nobody else could see it. Just him. But slowly, his deteriorating appearance, his lack of grooming and his hissed arguments with mirrors made him persona non grata in the restaurants of Paris. He was indeed a great chef, one of the greatest in the world. But when your best chef starts to have a blazing row with his own meat cleaver, he has to go, no matter how good the terrine is.
    Marcel drifted, passing through the great culinary meccas of the world as he went, landing work as a line cook, or a pastry-chef, or a saucier, or any one of a hundred jobs far beneath his true talent. The cycle was always the same - he would come into a new kitchen and dazzle his fellow workers and the customers with his incredible culinary skills, and the bosses would look on him with favour. They would sample his fresh-baked bread or his reductions and state that they were never letting him go, that they would be fools to dismiss this wonderful man as so many others had. And then, one day, the Devil would say just the right thing from a mirror or a shiny piece of cookware or the back of a spoon, and Marcel would snap and rage against him at the top of his lungs, and it would all come out.
    Who wants to employ an obvious madman in a place with knives? Marcel had to go.
    Over time, his hair turned white, and the word spread, and even the smallest doors were closed to him. He ended up sprawled under a sheet of flat cardboard in a filthy alley, drinking bathtub gin and bursting into tears whenever the rain left enough of a puddle to see the Devil's face.
    That was where Doc Thunder found him.
    The circumstances were complicated.
    Lars Lomax, the most dangerous man in the world, had attempted to use him as a guinea pig, understanding that he would not be missed. In the aftermath of the whole affair, as the emergency crews attempted to clear away the wreckage of Lomax's gigantic steam-powered Robo-Thunder, Doc had turned to him, laid one large hand on his shoulder, and asked what he could do to help.
    "Let me cook for you," said Marcel. And Doc Thunder did. It was the best meal he had ever tasted.
    Marcel had told Doc his story, and - rather than laughing or shaking his head in disgust or simply making a quiet call to the local sanatorium - Doc had done what he could. He'd had a new kitchen built, without reflective surfaces, and stocked it with cookware that would, likewise, not reflect, much of which he designed himself. And Marcel cooked, at first for the Doc, and then as time went by for Monk and Maya as well, and slowly he began to mend.
    Occasionally, he would still catch sight of the Devil in a shop window or a puddle, and the Devil would only shrug. What was there to say? He had other games, and Marcel just wasn't that much fun anymore.
    Maya had met the Devil herself, of course. You didn't get as old as she had without running into him sooner or later.