I say. “If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else.” I glide forward, kicking aside a brick and watching half of it disintegrate to dust. Determination takes root in my bones. I stand tall, my eyes blazing. “All that matters is that none of our family was harmed. Jacques’ can be rebuilt. But I refuse to lose someone else I love.”
Odette nods, her gloved hands—the fingertips stained pink with blood tears—slipping into her pockets. “I come here every night. Perhaps it’s because I keep hoping I’ll find something in the rubble.” She sniffs. “Or perhaps it is merely an excuse.”
“And the Brotherhood?”
Odette looks around. “They must see this as retaliation for the death of Antonio Grimaldi that night in the cemetery.”
“Have they attacked since then?” I press.
She shakes her head. “None of their ranks have been seen since the fire.” Her nostrils flare. “Believe me, we’ve looked.”
My eyes scan the rubble, taking note of anything unusual. But all I see are the burned tapestries, the piles of fine linen blackened by smoke, the shards of glass glittering in the twilit moon.
Celine pauses before the remains of a crystal chandelier, the brass partially melted, the crystals covered with soot. Her smile is wistful. “The first time I saw this place, I thought it was magic.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“It felt like I’d crossed into another world.”
Odette rests her head on Celine’s shoulder, her sable hair shining. “And you did, mon amie,” she said. “And I’m happy to see your memories have returned.” She glances my way and extends her right arm. In her hand is my father’s gold pocket watch.
“Thank you, Odette,” I say as I take it from her. “I would have mourned its loss.”
“I did not go back for it,” Odette says. “Jae did. He left it with the front desk at the Hotel Dumaine.”
I nod once, a knot gathering in my throat. Despite what Jae has done, he will always be my brother. I pause to pry open the lid of the watch with my thumb. It has not been wound for an age. The times I wore it in recent years, it was merely a decoration. On the inside, I read the inscription:
IL Y A TOUJOURS DU TEMPS POUR L’AMOUR.
—PHILOMÈNE
There is always time for love.
My mother gifted this to my father on their wedding day. I close the watch and place it in my trouser pocket, the knot in my throat pulling taut.
“It was unpardonable of you both to be gone so long,” Odette says, her fingers lacing through Celine’s.
I move closer to them, my eyes continuing to scan the ashes of our former home. For an instant, I think I hear whispers of tinkling glass and catch a glimmer of silver service dishes. Of Kassamir clapping his hands, the servers standing at attention like soldiers.
“If you could do it over again,” I say to Celine, “knowing what you know now, would you have crossed the threshold of Jacques’?”
She takes a sharp breath. “A wise woman would say no. But I can’t regret it, because this is the life I chose. It is mine and no one else’s.”
“Even if Celine hadn’t crossed that threshold,” Odette says, “I think she would have found her way to us. She was as inevitable as the dawn.”
I take a breath of the soot-tinged air. The heat of a New Orleans summer evening has begun to thicken around us, the cicadas droning in the trees. As I step over another pile of rubble, my foot brushes a stack of discarded paper. “Far be it from me to—” I stop short, the air knocked from my lungs.
“Bastien?” Odette blurs toward me, her eyes like sharpened daggers.
I say nothing as I stare at the ground. At the sheaves of scattered paper, their corners curling upward. At the unmarred sheet in the center, anchored by a white marble rook.
A piece of my uncle’s chess set.
The rook. A carrion bird that feasts on the dead. A word synonymous with swindling.
Celine reaches for the piece of pristine paper. I do nothing as she stands, her expression quizzical. She unfolds the note.
“‘Mon petit lion,’” she reads, “‘our family left me to burn. Consider the favor returned.’” She pauses, her eyes going wide. “‘If you ever wish to see our uncle again, find us on the Crown Jewel of the Mississippi. Yours in life and in death, Émilie.’” Shock settles on her face. “Émilie?” she breathes. “Isn’t that your—”
“Sister,” I say, the world beginning to