The City of Lost Fortunes

by Bryan Camp

  He had to whisper open to both a padlock and the front door, but once he got into the dim, empty cathedral, he finally began to relax.

  Within, the cool silence was a blessing. Christ, he wanted a drink. He grinned a little at the minor sacrilege of his thoughts, moving from the vestibule farther into the cathedral. He paused for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the relatively weak light granted by the multitude of windows throughout the church, large arches of glass along the galleries above him, and smaller, rectangular ones set near the beginning curve of the vault. The floor was a gleaming checkerboard of black and white just like the one in Mourning’s office; Jude wondered which of them mimicked the other. Flags hung from the balustrades, one side depicting the countries that had governed New Orleans at various points in its history, while the other bore papal crests, which made the center aisle between rows of pews a representation of the seam between the secular and the sacred authorities of the early years of the city. Twin marble statues flanked the aisle, a cherub holding a seashell so large it took both hands, which served as a basin for holy water. Biblical scenes and moments from the life of whichever King Louis gave the cathedral its name decorated the walls and the highest peak of the vault, Jude knew, but it was too dark for him to see. He thought a remnant of incense hung in the air, but he could have been imagining it. He sat in one of the pews near the altar, maroon carpeted steps leading up to an edifice of white and gold, its sculptures indistinct in the darkness. An errant ray of light illumed the phrase in Latin that graced the top of the altar: Ecce Panis Angelorum.

  Behold the Bread of the Angels.

  Jude sat in the dark and the quiet for a long while, just trying to come to terms with all that had happened to him in the last few days. The gods, the deaths, the revelations about his own life. Nothing he’d discovered felt like it made a damned bit of difference. Every answer only led to more questions, each more profound than the one before. The last few days felt like a jigsaw puzzle that refused to make sense, not so much because he was missing a piece of the puzzle as it was he had no idea what image he was trying to construct.

  Even with his gift returned to him, he couldn’t seem to find the right direction, like a drowning man who couldn’t tell which way was up and wasted his strength and air swimming deeper. He looked up at the altar, the statues of Peter with his key and Paul with his sword, the tower of angels uplifting a crucifix. “Why?” he asked. “Just tell me, why drag me into this? What the fuck do you want me to do?” He leaned onto the pew in front of him, dropped his head onto his hands. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. The silence of no one answering was deafening.

  It was then that the scent of cinnamon filled the air.

  Part Three

  Chapter Eleven

  They are intermediaries between mankind and the divine, descending from the heavens on outstretched wings. They appear all throughout history, delivering guidance to the lost, rescuing those in mortal peril, bestowing luck to the unfortunate. The ancient Greeks poured out the first few drops of wine in honor of Agathos, a Eudaemon. Timbaru was the chieftain of the Gandharvas, the name by which the followers of Hindu know them. Chitragupta records the actions of all Sikhs, whereas Kiraman and Katibin do the same for Muslims, one recording good works, the other misdeeds. Jophiel, wielding a flaming sword, expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden. Samael is with a person at the moment of death. Uriel guides them to their destiny. Their names are more than identity: they are their purpose, their existence. God Heals: Raphael. The Strength of God: Gabriel. Messenger: Angel.

  The angel from Dodge’s card game stood on the back of a pew, balanced on the toes of one bare foot with the effortless grace of a dancer. The messenger wore gray linen pants, loose-fitting and tied at the waist like hospital scrubs, and a Kevlar SWAT vest, midnight black and Velcroed tight. A name tag on the vest said “HI, MY NAME IS” along with a symbol written in black marker: ה. It took Jude a second to recognize the shape from his training with Eli Constant, but when he did, he understood the coughing “hey” sound Dodge had used to name the angel: Hē, the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

  Steel greaves and bracers guarded Hē’s shins and forearms, ornately made and polished to a gleam; gold bangles decorated the angel’s sleek, firm biceps. A look of bliss graced Hē’s face, the countenance of one who had achieved enlightenment. That, or one who had partaken of an epic dose of some really good shit. That face, like every other aspect of the angel, was perfectly androgynous: delicate cheekbones, a sensuous mouth, thin hips, broad shoulders. When Hē spoke, it was—like in the card game—with a haunting echo of Jude’s own voice.

  “Peace be with you,” Hē said. Jude couldn’t tell if the angel was mocking him, or if that’s how his own voice always sounded. Hē came closer, stepping from the ledge of one pew’s back to the next with a sure-footed bounce, almost skipping across them.

  “Somehow I doubt peace is what your boss has got in mind for me.”

  The angel stopped at the pew closest to Jude, staring down at him with eyes of empty, perfect white. “You approach a messenger of the Most High with doubt in your heart?” Hē asked. “Apostasy does not suit you.”

  “Neither does blind faith,” Jude said.

  “You are in need of guidance,” Hē said. It was not a question.

  “Guidance is what you give tourists looking for a good place to get gumbo. I’m looking for a little truth.”

  Hē folded into a crouch, a seemingly effortless swoop that brought the angel’s face uncomfortably close to Jude’s own. The reek of cinnamon was almost overpowering. Jude fought the urge to sneeze. “Seek,” the messenger said, “and ye shall find.” Hē’s lips curled back into a wide, childlike smile. The angel burst up from the pew and, with a negligent flicking of wings, floated toward the ceiling, chuckling.

  The angel was fucking with him.

  Hē swooped a lazy circle overhead before perching, wings folding and furling out of Jude’s sight, onto a nearby pew. The angel dug in the various pockets and pouches of the SWAT vest, eventually finding the corkscrew wire and tiny earbud of a radio headset. Once the earbud was seated in place, Hē’s attention returned to Jude. “Ask, and it shall be given you.”

  A dozen questions warred for his tongue, but, ultimately, one was more crucial than all the others. Barren hadn’t known the answer, but Hē just might. “Who murdered Dodge?”

  The angelic head cocked to the side, listening, and then Hē’s mouth twisted into a frown. “You did,” Hē said.

  Jude’s legs went weak. There was that gap in his memory between fleeing the game and waking up in his bed, that strange sense of guilt when he and Regal had summoned the door to Dodge’s card room. Could the angel be right? Was he even capable of killing a god? Nothing in his satchel was that powerful. He thought, of course, of the thunderbolt, but—no. He’d seen Dodge’s body. The thunderbolt wouldn’t have slit his throat, wouldn’t have left a body behind.

  But then, if the satchel held a thunderbolt, who knew what else might be pulled out of it?

  “No,” Jude said, more to himself than expecting a response. “That’s impossible.”

  The click of a tongue. “You asked for truth, son of man, and yet you turn away from it.” Both hands opened on empty palms, as if to show Jude that the messenger had nothing else to give him. “Your presence and your actions led directly to the death of the fortune god known as Dodge Renaud. As it was not originally his fate to die that night, his killing was unnatural, undestined, and thus . . .” Hē said a word that sounded like “murder” but was slurred somehow, a lisping sound instead of the hard “d.”

  Relief swept through him, mingled with annoyance and anger. “You said I killed him.”

  “I made no such claim. I said you were responsible for—” Hē broke off and pressed a finger against the earpiece, like an agent of Heaven’s Secret Service. “Ah,” the angel said, “I see my error. You meant murder, not morðor.” A shrug. “It can be difficult to translate a
language only a few thousand years old into the Word. My apology.”

  What I wouldn’t give for a burning bush or a couple of stone tablets, Jude thought. He tried to bite down on his frustration. Letting his temper loose would get him nowhere. “The question is still who murdered Dodge,” he said, emphasizing his enunciation, “I need to know who killed him.”

  The angel held up a single, perfect finger. “I think perhaps you have misunderstood to whom you speak. Do you really expect me”—a thumb pressed against the chest of the SWAT vest—“to ask”—a hand waved in the general direction of the ceiling—“to repeat Himself?”

  “Not when you put it that way.” Jude pressed his palms against his eyelids, trying to squeeze out the headache that was building there. Too much excitement, not enough sleep. He was running on caffeine and desperation, and not even God would tell him why. Except maybe He had, in His own mysterious way. “Can you at least explain what that word you said means? Tell me what I did that led to Dodge’s death?”

  “Everything has a beginning, an end, and a path to travel from one to another. When everything goes according to plan, we call that fate. But any rule has its exceptions. Morðor is the death that should not have happened. It is a wound in the world.”

  Jude remembered the vision of Renai’s lost future that his gift had shown him. He’d thought that since his own destiny was in question, he’d merely seen one of the many potential lives that Renai had lost. If he understood Hē correctly, though, most people had a clearly defined fate, and Renai’s killer had committed this morðor, had stolen from her what was supposed to happen. Somehow, this felt like an even greater violation.

  “You impacted the outcome of the game,” Hē continued, “merely by attending. By escalating the stakes, you increased your influence on events. But it was through your choice to play your own fate that the outcome was altered significantly. The fortune god’s death, then, is one of the consequences of your actions.” A spread of the hands, a “there you have it” gesture.

  That much of the puzzle Jude had put together on his own. He’d extended the game until his own fate was revealed, which held the prize just out of reach. Someone was trying to influence his cards by influencing his fate. Apparently, as far as destiny was concerned, that made him partly responsible.

  He frowned. Great. As if I don’t have enough sins of my own on my conscience. How do you make something like that right?

  “You cannot,” Hē said, which meant either Jude had spoken aloud without meaning to, or the angel could read his thoughts. Either possibility was sobering. “What has been done cannot be undone.”

  “Says who? My hand is still being dealt. Doesn’t that mean—”

  “It merely means that you have created a paradox,” Hē said.

  The messenger’s words cut him open and let all his hope come spilling out. He hadn’t realized how much he’d believed in the possibility of his own salvation until a hole had been poked in that faith. He found it hard to breathe, and though he tried to hide it, the dismay showed on his face.

  The tips of Hē’s wings drooped, and the angel moved toward him, stepping from row to row once more, this time without any buoyancy to the movement, still graceful but solemn. Reaching Jude, the angel sat on the back of the pew, legs folded into a lotus pose. “Did you not wonder why your fate was taking so long to be revealed?” Hē asked.

  Jude found it very strange to be comforted by his own voice. The angel waited, but he had no answer to give.

  With two fingers pressed against the throat, as if checking for a pulse, Hē spoke in Dodge’s voice.

  “The game tonight,” the messenger said, “is Fortunes.” Hearing a murdered god’s words come from Hē’s mouth made the hairs on the back of Jude’s neck rise. “You make the best or the worst fate you can.”

  Above them, the cathedral’s bell began to toll the hour. Hē looked up, held rapt and silent while the bell rang. When it finished and the echoes faded away, the angel trembled, head shaking and wings twitching, before turning back to Jude, speaking once more in an echo of his voice.

  “Your best possible fate? Winning the game. Taking the prize for yourself.” One hand was raised palm up, one half of the scales. “But if you were capable of doing so, your cards would have shown it. You cannot win because you were never supposed to win. Your destiny has always been to lose.” The other hand joined the first. “In balance, however, is the fact that you’ve put all your markers on this one turn of the cards, so the worst possible outcome for you would be to lose. The other players will take pieces of you until there is nothing left.”

  Despite the despair squeezing Jude’s chest and clinging to his stomach, what Hē was trying to tell him clicked. “And having the worst fate would give me the best hand, so I’d win. I’m damned if I do; damned if I don’t.”

  Hands joined together with a soft clap. “Paradox.”

  “So what, the game just goes on forever?”

  A smirk. “Only the Highest is eternal,” Hē said. “Which brings me to the guidance I have been sent to deliver. It may not be possible for you to win or to lose, but there is a third option. You can forfeit. You can stop playing before your fate is revealed.”

  “But Dodge said I can’t fold. Are you saying I can break the rules?”

  “No. I’m saying one must be alive to play a game.”

  It took Jude a moment to realize what the angel was implying. “And here I thought suicide was a mortal sin.”

  “There is a universe of difference between self-harm devoid of purpose and sacrificing oneself for the greater good.” The angel’s wings stretched with a sharp crack and lifted Hē onto a cinnamon-scented wind. Glowing with an inner light, the messenger spoke louder, to be heard over the sound of feathers pounding against the air. “There is much you might accomplish with your final act, a choice that will allow you to redirect the course of destiny in accordance with the Highest’s divine plan. When it presents itself, fear not. You shall not be alone.”

  That said, the angel Hē burst into a flare so bright that Jude had to look away. When his vision recovered, he saw that the messenger had vanished, leaving him to sit in the empty cathedral for a long while, the scent of spice fading long before the echo of Hē’s words left his thoughts.

  Jackson Square was bustling when Jude left the cathedral, tourists and street workers alike flooding in now that the rain had passed. He wore a mask that he’d pulled out of the satchel, a nondescript scrap of burlap with rough-cut eyeholes and a potent confusion charm stitched into it. If its magic held, anyone who looked at him would look right past him, would dismiss him as an unimportant part of the crowd, even if they were looking for him. Hopefully, it would be enough to lose the shadow tailing him long enough to speak to someone without putting them in danger.

  It was long past time he learned the rules of the game he couldn’t win and couldn’t afford to lose.

  Fortunately, the tarot reader he hoped to find was working, turning the cards for two middle-aged out-of-towners. Opal Brennan was one of the few people in the Square that Jude had more than a passing acquaintance with, the only one who walked that fine line between too cynical to believe magic might be real, and too unbalanced to be trusted. She wore a tank top that showed off the tattoos of roses and briars that twined around her arms from shoulder to wrist, her graying hair pulled up in a tight bun, save a few tendrils that had come loose. The magic of the mask let Jude walk right up behind her without Opal or the tourists noticing. He dropped a note into her purse, written on the back of a donation envelope he’d taken from the cathedral.

  Meet me at Lafitte’s in half an hour, the note read, it’s important. It wasn’t until he scribbled his name at the bottom that it occurred to him how similar the note was to the text he’d gotten from Regal just a few days before.

  Difference is, he thought, I’ll do everything I can to keep Opal out of trouble.

  While he waited for the tourist couple to snap pictures of each other
with Opal and pay for their readings, he turned the pink cell phone back on and deleted all the messages he’d exchanged with Regal and, decisively, her number. He couldn’t be sure she was actually tracking the phone somehow, nor that doing so represented some kind of betrayal, but it felt that way, and he knew he couldn’t entirely trust her either. So once the phone was clear of anything that would lead back to him or to Regal, he dropped it into the empty seat of one of the pedicabs waiting at the edge of Jackson Square for a customer, trusting that the fit young man rocking back and forth on his bike’s pedals—whose shirt clung to his back in a way that distracted Jude for a moment with other thoughts—would take the phone on a nice tour of the Quarter once he picked up a fare, and eventually leave it in a lost-and-found somewhere.

  Jude watched Opal discover the note he’d left for her, watched her scan the crowd for him and shake her head when she couldn’t find him, even though he stood among a crowd watching a street juggler just a few feet away. She looked back down at the note, pursed her lips, and asked the caricature painter who occupied the table next to her to keep an eye on her table for a while. Jude made sure she scooped her tarot deck into the lockbox where she kept the day’s cash when she gathered her things.

  When she left the Square, annoyance in her gait, and headed toward Lafitte’s, Jude went too, keeping pace about a half block behind her, making sure no one followed. That strange sensation of being watched was gone. He felt a quick flutter of voyeuristic thrill at being able to move unseen and unknown through the crowd like this, a pleasure that was quickly tamped down by the thought that his shadow probably felt exactly the same way when it was stalking him.