Divine Ruin E-Book

Margot Douaihy

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 418

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

'Divine Ruin is fearlessly inspired' Gillian Flynn It's a steamy, restless end of the school year in New Orleans. Sister Holiday is busy teaching music classes and preparing for her permanent vow ceremony, a pivotal moment in her journey of faith. But when one of her favourite students is found dead of a fentanyl overdose, Sister Holiday and her partner-in-PI, Magnolia Riveaux, are launched on a mission to track down the drug dealers. As students continue to fall prey to this sinister drug under her watch, Sister Holiday becomes more and more desperate to stop the epidemic. All the while, she must contend with her own past with addiction, a demon that is never too far. As she goes deep undercover with a local gang, Sister Holiday's darkest and most shocking case yet will test the limits of her faith-and her sanity.

Leseprobe

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praise for the

SISTER HOLIDAY MYSTERIES

“Douaihy’s poetic prose and incredible voice shine as we rejoin our indomitable sleuth, Sister Holiday, in her hunt for the truth, and find it is every bit as grisly and profane as it is beautiful and sacred”

GILLIAN FLYNN

“[A] showstopper”

NEW YORK TIMES

“Skilfully plotted, propulsive”

DON WINSLOW

“A searing journey through faith, fire, and female rage”

ELIZABETH HAND

“If you're looking for a queer edgy Agatha Christie-type read, then this is one for you”

GAY TIMES

“If you're not sold by a punk rock nun solving mysteries then can your soul even be saved?”

ELECTRIC LITERATURE

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For nurses, carers, and nuns

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Contents

Title PageDedication12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637AcknowledgmentsAvailable and Coming Soon from Pushkin VertigoAbout the AuthorCopyright

1

NO,I’VE NEVERBEENafraid of the dark. Not even as a kid, huddled inside my Scooby-Doo sleeping bag. It’s the light that wrecked me. When I could see everything, everyone, full blast, full on. The light’s the true terror, revealing every seam and shortcut, all the stains and breaks. When you can see the ghost under the mask that’s started to slip. Because every façade cracks. It’s not a matter of if, but when. The light makes demands. I’d take darkness any day.

Before you throw scripture at me—me, of all people—you know as well as I do that life isn’t hell or heaven but both. God isn’t only good or bad but both. And the Word isn’t one word, it’s every end and beginning. The alpha and omega. Winged lions and firestorms and angels of ruin. God gave us choices, then damned us when we chose.

It’d be a banger of a punch line if it wasn’t so fucked.

And, yeah, I signed up for it when I joined the convent. Joke’s on me.

When the plague struck and my students began to die, even after I touched their cold skin, I knew they weren’t gone. Not completely. They’re with us in the darkness that’s always existed. 2A realm that’s as real as the Holy Spirit and just as impossible to capture. Whoever we love and lose returns in dreams, visions so pure and real they coat us in smoke. We wake choking, utterly convinced we saw them.

It’s simple, really. Energy’s neither created nor destroyed, right? Atoms swirl and reassemble in these borrowed containers, in this borrowed time called life. Maybe it’s a cheap comfort. Maybe it’s bullshit. But I’ve planted my ripped flag in the fact that we all meet again in the dark, behind eyelids. The dead find other ways to speak.

But here’s the problem. My kids left the earthly plane too soon, and they died because we failed them. Because I failed them. Too busy searching for divine signs, I missed the signs of students in crisis. To waste away like that, waiting for help that never came. Not realizing the strength of the spell. To die alone after scoring. Their gaping mouths, the cheap drugs inside them. Chemicals so unworthyof their inner worlds. Their wobbly teen bodies stuck between childhood and adulthood. No chance to step into their future selves. No chance to be haunted by lost dreams.

Drugs promise rebirth, but they lie.

That’s why I had to do it. To hunt evil and inch so close to the devil I could feel its hiss in my eardrum, at the base of my spine. To stop an influx—any infestation—you have to crawl into the nest and kill it at the source. Creep into the viper’s den like dusk and neutralize it. End it. End its offspring too. No mercy.

The mission chose me or I chose the mission, not sure. Avenge or revenge, does it matter? Not that anything could chip away at the everlasting human need of addiction itself, squirming inside like a rabid thing. An un-immaculate conception. And for queer 3people, addiction’s a trapdoor. In a world that hated us, getting high was a precious escape. Relief from the torment and dread. Until refuge became its own prison.

I knew because I got high more times than I could ever count. I’d felt death close in, felt my limbs die one by one. Big toe. Ankle. Pinky finger. Ten years ago, back in Brooklyn, when it was really bad, I did so much heroin I became pure light, until I felt my jaw die. A slack I couldn’t pick up. I went too far, almost bit it a hundred times. Some days, I wished I had.

OD’ing is what addiction wants, but maybe I could buy us some time. Though time was one of the few things that could never be bought or sold in this town.

Me and Riveaux, we’d both felt the grip of addiction, and we’d used it to our advantage. Riveaux survived a ladder fall in the line of duty and was introduced to a brand of pain barely dulled by narcotics. Of course, her pathetic ex-husband proved to be the more dangerous poison. But Private Eye Magnolia Riveaux had beaten them both, and her sleuthing obsession was as gnarly as mine. At least it kept us on the righteous path.

Riveaux ran Redemption Detective Agency. She was an ace mentor—with the nose of a Paris perfumier and the investigative chops (and octogenarian fashion) of Miss Marple. At the top of her game, she became the first Black female arson investigator in New Orleans, before demons chased her into a corner. She’d fought her way out, though. We both had unlikely comebacks, but only mine included a nun’s uniform, with gloves and a scarf to hide back-alley tattoos. Me and Riveaux, we’d both learned to hone it—that raw ache. We’d track down the sidewinders who brought fentanyl into our city, my school, my home.

Fentanyl. A strangely beautiful word for all its horror. A swan song inside one word. It made my tongue work—fentanyl—gave 4my mouth shape, gave me purpose. A synthetic drug a hundred times more potent than other opioids, a higher high, with a grieving need that fully devours whoever tries it once. Just once and you’re hooked. Or dead.

5

ON THE HORRENDOUS DAYwe lost Fleur Benoit, my morning began with cleaning the convent bathroom, wondering how a gutter dyke like me ended up as a Sister of the Sublime Blood. Five years ago, if you’d told me I’d be marrying religion for life, preparing for permanent vows as a nun, bleaching a convent john, and teaching kids how to play “Wonderwall” on an acoustic Fender, I would’ve spit in your face and decked you for insulting me. Teaching music to Catholic schoolkids, channeling young souls through power chords, was equal parts education and exorcism. What a fine line between nurturing talent and wanting to bash my skull against a cinder block wall until I saw stars.

Though, self-harm and fine lines were art forms in which I’d historically excelled. I’d reinvented myself, but old habits die hard.

So, picture me in that fairly ordinary start to a terrible, terrible Monday. My body a tuned instrument of God, as I swept and mopped, scraped and clawed. Sweat soaking through my rough uniform, I cursed at the nature of dirt itself. How it shows up, we disappear it, and it settles right back in. Rinse, 6repeat. Purgatory lived in many forms. Baptizing the bathroom was a bitch, but it was gloriously absorbing. No thought, just grout scoured to oblivion. Any nun, any mystic, any witch would surely testify that worship is a verb, suffering an offering. Transcendence lives inside humility.

The gift is in the doing.

There was a knock at the bathroom door, then Sister Laurel poked in her head. Her smile was a familiar surprise. “Good morning, Sister Holiday!”

“Morning.”

“You have a rehearsal tomorrow, dear, and the announcement will go to press next week. You feeling good, feeling ready?” Her veil bobbed as she hunched her bony shoulders over and gave me a quick, birdlike nod, as if answering for me.

I nodded too. Yeah. Sure. Test-driving my permanent vow ceremony. Rehearsal with Father Nathan. The moment that had me in its crosshairs for two years. And I’d even moved it up on the calendar to get it over with. It was the day I’d been yearning for and stressing about since taking a provisional vow with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood. The ultimate commitment to the convent. A lifelong membership with an enticing bonus—a backstage pass to the afterlife.

It wasn’t the God part that tripped me up. I was all in with God. It was the forever part. Forever is forever. It never stops. Never ends. No wiggle room. No exit.

“Can’t wait,” I said.

The most effective lies are cousins of the truth.

Sister Laurel, the eldest yet newest nun in the Sisters of the Sublime Blood, had become my ally in the wake of Sister Augustine’s death and Sister Honor’s perpetual hatred. She joined our Order from Ascension Parish with her kind eyes 7that looked like she was, at any time of day, low-grade buzzed on brandy. But she was just high on life. On living. The kind of grace you find in vacant lots where wildflowers punch through concrete. She loved to play bingo at the local community center, where she’d become known for her victory dance, a gentle sway she called the holy shuffle. Sister Laurel often covered for me during my smoke breaks and midnight PI prowls with Riveaux. There’s no commandment against a thirty-four-year-old nun moonlighting as a private eye.

“Class is starting soon, dear, so do get a move on,” Sister Laurel pleaded. “Sister Honor’s in a rather peppery manner this morning.” She offered a wink, harmless, mischievous even, but inside the wink was a warning: Fall in line quickly before Mother Superior ignites a consecrated wildfire that’d have Moses saying no thanks.

I caught my groan before it fully developed in my throat and turned it into an “of course.”

Sister Honor, head nun and a scold in humanoid form. A rotting carcass had more humor. We’d reached a truce after the meltdowns of the past year. Pain and loss brought us together. It was a shaky peace, though, and I was always one mistake away from her wrath.

But I was committed. Or I would be, after my permanent vows.

I threw my disgusting apron in the hamper, stowed the mop, bucket, and supplies, and washed my cracked hands. No time to make fresh coffee. No grounds left either. So I drank the dregs in the convent’s pot, which tasted like an ashtray left out in the rain since 1982. But some caffeine was better than none at all. The rush, the return of life inside veins. Every cup of coffee a mini resurrection. 8

As I walked from our convent to school across Prytania Street, I took in the flowers and flowering trees. Magnolias. Oleander. Bougainvillea. And they seemed to regard me too, to notice me and size me up. The sun kept climbing, spilling me into a long shadow. Our shadows change us the way an idea changes us. For a quick moment we see how we could be—our softer, longer, more fluid angels. Silky as air.

And, yeah, I’ve heard what they’ve called me. What they’ve said behind my back. Twisted Sister. Lesbi-nun. Sister Holigay. Folks never knew what to do with me, what box to keep me in. I was the youngest nun in our Order by forty years. Tattoos. A gold tooth. I was a novelty, even in New Orleans, a place where streets have names like Desire, Piety, Religious. Where languages intersect and every word has two meanings. The town where the dead sleep not below ground, but above, in villages of stone. The city that spins you in a Lindy Hop before she slips a shiv between your ribs. My kind of gal.

“We treat our dead better than our living,” my brother, Moose, said once as we walked through the Saint Louis Cemetery. He moved to the Big Easy two months ago. An army vet, he’d started as an EMT two weeks after he’d arrived. After I realized I couldn’t get rid of my baby brother, I was glad. With him close, I had one less thing to worry about.

We walked and talked a lot on Saturday evenings. Moose’d buy me coffee at the diner and tell me gory details about work. Or I’d watch him in agony as he drank a hazy beer at a café on Magazine Street. My vows: chastity, obedience, poverty, sobriety.

Eight minutes until the start of class. On the sidewalk in front of school, I saw the noodge, Ryan Brown, texting and smoking. Real cigs. No vape pen BS. The floppy-haired student hadn’t yet 9mastered the vital art of concealing contraband. A shortage of cunning I regularly exploited.

I strode up to him. “Mr. Brown,” I said, “you know smoking’s prohibited on school grounds.” I plucked the lit cigarette from his fingers.

He started to stammer some hilarious half-baked excuse, which I enjoyed cutting short. “Run along to class now.”

After Ryan scurried off, I savored his Dunhill in the alley. The morning heat circled me like a loan shark—fanged threats and a bad attitude. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

One cigarette. One last vice before I put the day into a headlock. Cheeks caving as I took a long drag. My neck went rigid until the nicotine hit and, suddenly, everything was perfect. I was a living circuit. Fingertips sparking. The tobacco tasted like dark chocolate, leather, and a stolen kiss. Exquisite smoke too, the way it fluffed around me.

Vice, my great delight and scarlet mark. A fall from grace, like any fall, intentional or not, dialed the adrenaline to eleven. Maybe as a forever Sister I’d choose more wisely. I shouldchoose more wisely. But, there and then, I had a duty to confiscate Ryan Brown’s contraband, and wasn’t waste the more sinful option? What a delicious responsibility.

The rickety AC droned in the classroom I shared with tight-ass science teacher Rosemary Flynn as I handed out chord analysis exercises. It was the last week of school before summer break. What genius thought high school should run up to Memorial Day, into the hellmouth of humidity? No divine intervention in our academic calendar. Panicked seniors scrambled to make 10up missing assignments, and the worry of final exams already loomed heavy in the air. Sweaty kids with greasy hair, greasier faces, sopping armpits, complaining about the callouses from all the guitar exercises I lobbed at them. Two or three parents harped on me to show leniency. Not a chance, but nice try.

If the students’ midterms—each drenched in senioritis and Axe body spray—were any indication, finals would be catastrophic. I recalled slashing through their pathetic drawings of the four clefs with my red pen, disappointed by so much mediocrity.

Except Rebecca Ansett. She strummed on her guitar with ease to demonstrate perfect fifths, and the sound hovered in the sticky air. I side-eyed Ryan Brown as he folded his worksheet into a paper airplane. The disdain in my eyes was enough to make him unfold the plane and get to work.

Prince Dempsey was MIA for the eleventh day in a row. After a month of gold-star attendance with a bizarre lack of back talk, the kid vanished again. I had a stack of notes from his doctor, but something was majorly off with him. Our eighteen-year-old super senior with PTSD and type 1 diabetes who I’d baptized in the Mississippi River just a month ago on Easter. And often wanted to throttle. That kid with a combustible temper and eyes like propane flames. We had a nuanced relationship, me and Prince. He was too familiar, too much like the hell-seeker I used to be. Or still was.

As the students scribbled, Rosemary Flynn’s voice grabbed my ear. She had sidled up to my desk, her posture stiff and proper. “Sister Holiday,” she said. “I need to chat with you.” Her eyes darted to the students, then back to me, indicating this wasn’t for their ears. 11

“Let’s step into the hall,” I said. As we moved toward the door, I called out to my class, “Keep working. God has decreed thy sheets be done when I return. And, yes, I can feel the waves of enthusiasm from here.”

In the hall, I took a deep breath through my nose before facing Rosemary. She was dressed to kill, in an academically appropriate way. Her red lipstick was too loud for her marble complexion, which could’ve made her look fatally ill, but instead was precisely on trend. The crisp pink blouse strained against her chest, so taut that I could imagine the exact position of each nipple. Her biceps chiseled through the sleeves. Was she lifting weights? At a gym? At home? Her pencil skirt gripped her obscenely. She seemed like the type of woman who’d make someone brush their teeth, gargle, shower, shave, and wax before she let them into her bed. But then she’d fuck them so hard they woke up in the next zip code. For all of my sleuthing skills and two years of knowing Rosemary, she had an X factor I couldn’t unlock. Which made me want to investigate every inch of her. With her strawberry-blond hair intimidated into a bun at the crown of her head, I could see the full length of the porcelain column of her throat.

She looked good. Eye-wateringly good.

“What do you need now?” I kept my voice heavy as the old stapler on her desk. She stared me down like I owed her fifty bucks.

Rosemary Flynn had returned to her job after crying wolf on Easter, a dramatic charade of quitting. Back to school the next week, like a moth to a cashmere twinset. Back to teaching science in her corner of our overheated shared classroom. Back to the electric, unnameable chemistry between us. 12

“We need to talk about this ‘arrangement.’” She finger-quoted and moved closer.

“What arrangement?”

“Sharing a classroom again next year.”

The arson jamboree at the beginning of the school year had forced the unholy alliance between the science and music departments. I’d drawn the short straw when it came to roommates. That’s what it felt like. Punishment.

“It’s not an arrangement.” I dropped my voice lower, safe from student ears. “It’s our desperate reality.”

Rosemary leaned in, her perfume dismantling me. She smelled like a fresh bar of handmade rose soap and dried apricots. Her freckles were violently adorable against her unsmiling face. Like they were painted there by an elf committed to my undoing. I tried to focus on her words and not imagine the surprisingly strong back muscles that might be rippled with sweat if she were ever to lie on top of me naked. My vow of chastity rang in my mind like an off-key cathedral bell. Loud, annoying, impossible to ignore. A symphonic cockblock orchestrated by the Almighty and signed by yours truly.

She rested the backs of her hands on her hips and said, “I’m finishing up the Diocese grant application today for proper equipment.” She closed her eyes and inhaled. “Nine workbenches with compound microscopes”—I swear she swooned—“Bunsen burners, an eyewash station, and—”

“So interesting.” I cut her off. “Why should I care?”

“Sharing is caring. And your little guitar circle will have to tighten up,” she said. “I need that space.”

A message on the PA jolted us from our sexy duel.

“Sister Holiday to the gym now.” It was Shelly. Our school’s secretary, an index more reliable than a calendar, with an 13agelessness that defied logic. Shelly sounded so clipped on the PA, I hardly recognized her voice.

“Watch my class,” I said to Rosemary, and she shot me a look that promised more sparring to come.

Why the gym? That breathless nowfreaked me out. I sprinted into the hallway, down the main steps, and outside where the morning sun bore down and the heat fit like a kidnapper’s hood. I had to readjust my gloves and scarf. Even my eyelids dripped.

“Hurry!” Shelly stood outside the main entrance. “Bernard found her, called 911. He said you’d know what to do.”

“Who’s her?” I said into the back of Shelly’s cat-themed cardigan, which felt mildly dangerous in the New Orleans heat.

“Just hurry!”

Oh good, a surprise.

“There,” said Shelly, who loped ahead like she was dragged by an invisible rope. She led me into the gym where dozens of people had gathered. I saw the back of Bernard Pham, my pal, fellow musician, fellow rebel, school custodian. The students were quiet as we crossed the basketball court, and I studied their faces. Every face tells a story if you look close enough. A parents’ marriage on the rocks. Bullying. Depression. New love. All right there. It was my job to notice, read the tells.

“What the hell?” I elbowed my way through the crowd.

Bernard stepped aside, and then I saw it. Rather, I saw her.

A body was cement still, lying on the lowest row of the bleachers.

It was Fleur Benoit, a senior. Popular girl, the rare breed with a good heart and a quick wit. She practically owned Ensemble 1 last semester. One of my favorite students, though we’re not supposed to have those. But who was I to disregard her God-given gifts? She looked submerged with that blue skin. 14Like she’d been replaced, redacted. Nothing like the firecracker Fleur I knew.

“She’s out cold,” Bernard said. “I called 911 and said a student fainted or something.”

“She didn’t faint, she’s blue.” I roared into Fleur’s face. “Hey!” I searched her neck for a pulse, then her wrist.

Nothing. I feared I knew what this was.

“Who has Narcan?” I asked the crowd. “Bernard, Narcan? Shelly? Get it now.”

“The bishop banned it,” Shelly said breathlessly. “Said Narcan promoted drug use.”

The fucking Diocese, warlords in the war on drugs. Last month, they fired Nurse Jenny in a budget-cut bonanza. No nurse. No Narcan. What’s next? No fire alarms? No first aid kits? No school?

Fleur’s eyes were locked open as she stared upward, past me, at heaven.

Mary,MotherofGod,bringherbackrightnow.Onemoremiracleandwe’resquare.

I blessed myself out of reflex and hope and started CPR. Push push push. With the heel of my hand on her chest, I pressed and pressed. Time hiccupped and the world narrowed on this one rhythm, this one song, and it felt so right it had to work. It was working, I told myself. Yes. Yes. Yes. Except, no, it wasn’t. Fleur wasn’t moving. I pushed and pushed as my arms burned.

My vision tunneled and every inch of her was so unimaginably still it felt like I had detached from reality and floated up, up, up, to the ceiling.

Her pupils were like needle jabs as I gave her two rescue breaths. Two puffs trying to jump-start her breathing. 15

“They’re coming!” Bernard said, and I felt the sirens in my spleen before I heard them.

A student behind me whispered, “She’s for-real dead?”

“C’mon, Fleur,” someone cried. Begged. Insisted.

My presses were getting too heavy, the type of heavy that cracks ribs. I was going to town on Fleur’s small frame. Nothing worked, nothing twitched. Her essence itself had slipped into nothing, into everything. The body and the life that lived inside the body had split. Maybe they’d forever try to find their way back to each other.

Thirty compressions. More rescue breaths. No life. The demented stench of cleaners, mold, and old sweat hung sharp as barbed wire in the hot gym air.

“Did anyone see what she took? How much?” I yelled.

Just tears and whispers in reply. The sudden quiet was outrageous. All that energy and all that youth reduced to the wet sound of my breathing and useless meter of CPR.

Fuck no. Our kids, our art, our work should outlive us. What and who we create are supposed to feed the next generation and then they feed the next and the next.

Infinitespiritsinsidefinitebodies.

Three medics burst in with a squeaky gurney and oxygen tank. I looked for Moose but couldn’t spot him anywhere. The EMTs pulled out bags, masks, equipment, leaning over Fleur, taking over chest compressions, spraying Narcan up her button nose, shooting her up with steroids, everything short of sawing her open.

At her side lay her purse, and beside it, a lighter with an engraved letter B. The attention and panic fixed on the medics who were working on Fleur with savage intensity, I made a split-second decision. With the toe of my sensible nun shoe, 16I nudged the lighter toward me and pocketed it with a silent Hail Mary. Could have been hers. Bfor Benoit. But I never saw Fleur smoking in all the time I’d known her. A year of class and months of rehearsals. The spring recitals and holiday pageants. Countless study halls. Not once had I caught even a whiff of smoke on her uniform. So, yeah, I took evidence. Shouldn’t have, but nestled against my thigh, it pulsed with the weight of a potential clue.

For ten more minutes the medics worked, trying to restart her heart. I stayed on the perimeter, watching, waiting to see any flame in her eyes. I let my body release, but not too much. Just enough to sip some air.

On the heels of the medics were the cops who powered through the gym with confident movements. A detective seemed to fancy himself the big dog. A face I didn’t recognize and empty eyes I didn’t trust. “Secure the scene,” he instructed his colleagues. “What’s the story?” he snapped at me.

“My student, Fleur Benoit.”

“You found her?”

“Bernard Pham did.” I pointed at Bernard, who was talking to another police officer and gesticulating wildly. “We both work here,” I said.

“When’d he find her?”

“About fifteen minutes ago? I’m Sister Holiday.”

The detective turned his back to me and leaned down for a closer look. “Fentanyl?” he asked a colleague. My heart caught fire, an ember’s red scream, and dropped into my feet. I didn’t know much about street fentanyl, only that it was insidious. An unholy power in even the smallest dose. 17

“We’ll know when we run these,” replied an officer who took photos and dangled a baggie of orange pills he’d lifted from Fleur’s purse.

The medic who took over CPR from me said the terrible words, “Still no pulse. We’ve done everything we can.”

Fleur,don’tbescared.It’sokay.Wasn’t sure I believed it, but I needed her soul to hear it.

Whetherweliveordie,webelongtotheLord.Romans 14:8.

18

MYSTOMACHDRAGGEDANCHORfor the next twenty minutes as I watched men in uniforms poke around Fleur’s body and belongings, question students, and run caution tape across the doors. Bernard disappeared before I’d had a chance to talk to him. Detective No Name told me to stick around for a statement. Death had its own bureaucracy and established rhythm. A routine at once spontaneous and rehearsed. One cop picked at his teeth with the blade of a Bic pen cap while his partner took more photographs. They worked around her body like it was a pothole on Canal Street, something to measure and document before patching it over. How could they be so cold, so unmoved by the presence of a dead human being? All the fight, all the electricity drained from her. Surely the cops and first responders would come loose at home later, or at the bar, in the bottom of a glass. Or, like my own father, inside of themselves, locked so deep no crowbar could pry him out. My dad, a man buried so thoroughly in his own flesh you’d think he’d set up camp. His silence was a beast. It chewed through boring days and birthdays and holidays and every family photo showed the same blank-eyed stranger I called Dad. Maybe that’s how it started, 19with a moment too heavy to carry. I felt it in my own throat, silence, the weight of no words.

Fleur,I’msosorry.

Fleur was the kind of kid who said hi and bye and asked you how you were doing. Someone who strummed “Free Fallin’” on repeat until she nailed it.

But when I ran the mental tape of it backward through my brain, I remembered more. The hollow laugh in the hallways. The way she’d wrap her arms around her torso like she was giving herself a hug. Her absence in the cafeteria as I walked through it last week, gagging at the rank smell of fried fish sticks and cardboard pizza. And then, of course, Ryan Brown. From the frequent fights at her locker, it seemed they might have been dating. Or he was trying to date her—the way a hurricane tries to charm a coastline.

Last month, I caught up with Fleur at that water fountain near the office, the fountain that Bernard was always fixing. She was staring at the wall, filling her bottle covered in PETA stickers. But the bottle was already overflowing and water splashed onto the ground. She didn’t seem to notice or care. Trance eyes.

“Looks like the cup runneth over,” I’d said. I remember aiming for a cool-nun vibe but missing by a mile. “You all right?”

She’d shrugged with such conviction. A fucknoof a shrug.

“What’s the point?” Fleur had replied, finally letting go of the tap.

“Of water?”

“Of finals, graduation, school, anything.”

“You have potential,” I said. “A future. You can do whatever you want.”

“More school and a stupid job? No. I’m taking a gap year.” 20

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“Going to Thailand, to an elephant rescue. Will probably fail finals anyway.”

“You’ll do just fine. And a gap year to help animals is a good idea.” I managed a smile. “If that doesn’t work, there’s always the convent.”

I remember how Fleur had forced a smile too. “If you’re in a convent, it can’t be that bad.”

That memory of the waterfall of a fountain would infect me until the day I died. I should’ve seen the signs sooner, should’ve tried harder. I’d lived the tells, how could I miss them? How could I fail her so completely?

The devil’s finest trick was making sin seem special. I’d seen the face of evil and, let me tell you, it’s nothing exciting. It’s not unique. It’s an empty wall, a blank page that lets us write it into being. I’ve let its rancid breath taint my own. We’re all capable of damage. A whisper of wrongness hides inside all of us, whether we admit it or not. Pain that feels too good to stop. The sweet and bitter thrill of a bloody lip. A delectable need that gets stronger the more you stab it. Doing a bad thing and secretly loving it and telling no one, not even yourself. Lying. Thinking a sick thought, playing out a nasty vision. Giving in to greed. But keeping it in check. Balancing light and darkness, that’s God’s ask.

Fentanyl slaughtered pain and people too. Cheap, easy to find, mixed with other meds to make them more addictive. A fast track to the edge of death. But there was a limit on how many resurrections we were granted.

The only way to fix it was to cut this snake off at the head, watch its body wither. Dive into the pit and exorcise the fucker.

That’s exactly what I tried to do, before it bit me. Hard. 21

I couldn’t hold my own weight anymore, so I sat on the unforgiving gym floor.

Whoever hooked Fleur up with a lethal dose might be long gone. Or still on campus. Maybe in that room. I hated feeling on the back foot, like I was the cartoon coyote stuck in motion, chasing an idea of the thing, because the real thing was never close enough to nab.

A shaken Shelly had shepherded a dozen crying kids behind the police caution tape, and now the gym was empty of students. But I knew this would live with them. Tough girls wouldn’t be tough that day. Loud boys would go quiet. Every defense mechanism, every stupid strongman act that kids had built up for the hellhole of high school had failed under the impossibility and weight of an actual death of a peer. No person, no class, no moment had delivered this lesson. Until now.

Rosemary appeared across the sad expanse, showed her school ID to the cops, then walked over. “What’s going on?” She placed a hand over her heart like she was about to take the pledge of allegiance.

“Fleur’s dead,” I said as I stood, almost toppling over with vertigo, or shock, or both. All sensation drained from my legs. Ankle to knee was numb. Heavy metal. “I think she overdosed.”

“I … I just …” She couldn’t string words together. “Our Fleur? How?”

“Don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Where’s Sister Honor? Father Nathan?”

“I saw them on their way to the Guild before class. They might not know yet.” Rosemary opened her lips and inhaled, like she was about to say something else, but just turned abruptly and left. The sound of her departing heels was quickly drowned out, and I was impaled by the sight of the medics 22loading Fleur’s dead body onto the gurney. Her hand draped over the side, the hand I taught how to play arpeggios. Her muscle memory wiped.

I knew then and there that Riveaux and I would have to step in, deal with it directly. Interrogate students. Scrutinize statements. Look for discrepancies the cops would miss. Search lockers for drugs, for notes passed in halls. If Fleur had a diary, we needed to find it. Riveaux would have to comb the kid’s social media. People write different realities depending on the medium.

We had our work cut out for us. Saint Sebastian’s School was shrinking after the events of that year, but there were still nearly a hundred students. Security cameras at school might’ve helped, if the Diocese hadn’t been too cheap to install them. Thanks for nothing, Bishop. But we’d shake something free. Follow any lead, every trail. A hunt has to end somewhere.

“Man alive. Never pegged Fleur Benoit for a druggie.” Alex Moore suddenly at my elbow. Our school’s know-it-all librarian and Rosemary’s aspiring gentleman caller. Dare to dream, fucknut. Alex was so white, so thoroughly pale, like he’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Instead of clotheslining him and watching his bow tie spin like a pinwheel, I said, “And I never pegged you as a gawker. But here we are.” Detective No Name took this moment to, blessedly, interrupt.

Alex peered over my shoulder as I filled out a witness statement. The twerp fell into a tight step beside me as I left the gym.

The air scalded me as we hit the street. New Orleans—the curse, the cure. The church bells began to bash themselves like solid thunder. How was it only 10 a.m.? 23

“I can’t believe this. I’ve seen the opioid epidemic covered on the news, but here?” Alex asked with a sincerity that surprised me.

“Maybe,” I said. My own spit burned me as I swallowed. “Whatever it was, I missed the signs.”

Alex shook his head. “These things are so complicated.” Every word was cast in bronze. “I mean, I live a very clean life. But I know that street drugs are a collective ill.”

“An ill that kills,” I said, not intending to be funny, but Alex laughed anyway. Practically choked.

Then he puffed up. “I’ve studied youth crises extensively. This is why we all need mental health training.”

“Where’d you do yours?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “That’s my point.” Then he was gripped by a fascination with his thumb knuckle. “It’s never been offered to me. See? Systematic failure.”

“You put in a request? With the Diocese?”

“I can’t possibly be expected to manage everything, can I?”

With my eye on the convent door, I paused. All I needed was a minute alone. A minute to lock myself in the freakishly clean bathroom and throw up.

“You know the Bible’s take,” he said. “‘Be sober-minded and be watchful.’” His nodding turned creepy, like he couldn’t turn it off, an overpriced bobblehead doll for sale at a roadside gift shop. He let his eyes slowly travel across my face. It was the first time I noticed how careful Alex could be. “It’s true, though. Be mindful, Sister. Someone with your background has to understand the gravity here.”

Background?How the hell would Alex douchebag Moore know anything about my background? I wanted to lobotomize 24any thoughts of me out of his Ivy League brain. “Don’t worry about me. I’m two steps ahead,” I lied, and with a “God bless you,” I sent Alex on his way.

Riveaux would have to hustle to campus so we could get to work. There was not a minute to waste. Then I heard a shout from behind: “Sister Holiday!” It was Ryan Brown with a fresh Dunhill tucked behind his ear. “It’s not true, right? Fleur?” His tears sprayed the sidewalk.

“She’s gone. Maybe overdosed,” I said, as his face dropped then recollected itself into a crimson knot. I reached out and rested my hand on his shoulder. The gesture felt foreign, like borrowing someone else’s hands. He was so skinny and bony. Weak. Not the cocky kid trying to be bad, just a boy flailing in a truth too big for him.

“No!”

“I’m sorry, Ryan. I know you were close. It’s a pain you’ll never get used to.” And I did know pain. Different circumstances, same abyss. “If you have any info, you know you can always tell me, right?” I softened up to play “good cop,” the only theater I bothered with because it bought me something I needed. Trust.

“Me?” Ryan took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know anything!”

Youcouldsaythatagain, I thought. “Surely you noticed something? Always hanging around Fleur’s locker.”

“Nothing!” Snot rolled onto his lips. He was too undone to wipe his face. “I swear on my mom’s grave.”

“Your mom’s alive, Ryan. She was just in the office renting your graduation gown.”

“Figure of speech,” he said. His eyes narrowed in anger. Amazing how fury lives in the face before seeping into the rest 25of the body. What makes the Hulk “incredible” is rage, green as Louisiana rain.

Time to rip off the Band-Aid. “Ever see Fleur take pills?” I asked. “Or give her any?”

“She was the love of my life!” Ryan tweaked in a jittery dance.

“So you and Fleur were an item?”

“I mean, no, not exactly.” Ryan came apart completely. Sobbing, gasping, his whole body shaking.

“It’s okay,” I said, in my best customer-service voice. I let my exhale lengthen and linger, modeling how to breathe. Had to calm him down so I could turn up the heat.

Once Ryan collected himself, I asked, “This your lighter?” I pulled it out and held it up. The B, etched like a vow. “B for Brown?” If I’d seen that swanky number before, I’d have swiped it too. Maybe Fleur beat me to the punch.

“Not mine.”

“Was it Fleur’s then? Bfor Benoit?”

“No. She didn’t smoke. She hated the smell.”

“If you’re holding back on me, I’ll find out.” I took his cigarette. “Understand?” He nodded glumly.

I stuffed the lighter and cig into my pocket where they burned a psychic hole.

Besides being my cigarette source and ever-present noodge, Ryan Brown was seriously into Fleur. How often I’d watch him trailing her, talking into the back of her head in the cafeteria line. Maybe she was into him too. Maybe not. I couldn’t see Fleur going for a poser like him, but what did my celibate gay ass know about high school heteronormies. Regardless, the noodge knew more than he was saying—strange for a kid who usually couldn’t shut up. This was the boy who wore socks with sandals, whose “switchblade” was actually a comb, who broadcast 26details about pounding Hard Lemonade after school, thinking nuns couldn’t hear teen talk because our saintly ears tuned out the audible grime of life. Ryan Brown’s brevity spoke volumes that day.

His crying intensified. I wasn’t going to get anything more from him. It was too fresh.

“It’ll be okay,” I told him.

“Will it?” He looked dehydrated, wrung out.

“Go to the gym.” I dismissed him with a jerk of my chin. “Tell the police what you know.”

Hard to imagine a turkey like Ryan Brown involved in schoolyard drug dealing. But if I’d learned anything from this past year, it was that you can never discount a suspect until you’re sure. And even then, absolute certainty was neither absolute nor certain. Had to keep my eye on that kid.

No more tragedy on my watch. But why’d I lie to Ryan Brown, saying it would be okay? Reality is a rough comedown. We want to believe fables and fairy tales and elaborate fictions. A man in a sleigh delivering billions of presents at once. A virgin giving birth to the son of God. A second chance when the world keeps dealing bad hands. Or was lying a first step toward truth? Arriving at knowledge through a side door?

The numbness by then was so paralyzing, I couldn’t even throw up. In the convent bathroom, I slapped my face with cold water and cold hands, then I ducked into the kitchen. The industrial fridge clicked. Three generations of Sisters of the Sublime Blood had obediently wiped the counters into submission, 27but that Monday they felt like autopsy tables. Too brutal and knowing.

I picked up the convent’s old corded phone—no modern luxuries for us nuns—and dialed the only number I had memorized.

“Riveaux,” I said. Talking, trying to say one word, was a frustrating challenge. Like walking up a down escalator.

“Sister Goldsmobile.” Riveaux’s voice spun the expected mix of mild amusement and pointed superiority. She loved her nickname for me—a shout out to my gold tooth—and I pretended to be annoyed, but it’d grown on me, just like Riveaux’d grown on me. No BFF bracelets in the pipeline, but I knew she cared about me too. Not that she’d ever fess up to it. “Your school’s making news again,” she said.

“Heard already?”

“The blotter,” Riveaux said. She’d kept some equipment from her days as an arson investigator with the NOFD. “What’s the happs?”

“A student died.”

“Mary and Joseph.” She coughed. “One of yours?”

“Yeah, a good one. Fleur Benoit. Bernard found her.”

“I am so sorry, Goldsmobile. What happened?”

I imagined her rubbing her eyes, could practically see it, through the invisible channel.

“Seems like she OD’d,” I said. “She had a bag of pills on her.”

“Fentanyl. Has to be. That shit is everywhere.” Riveaux took

a series of breaths like she was doing desk yoga. Or maybe she was sniffing some of her perfume concoctions. Then I heard her typing furiously. “I have the police department reports from Q1 here. Lemme see. Car thefts up, homicides up, domestics up.” She whistled. “Fentanyl possessions tripled in the last three months.” 28

“Tripled?”

“They’re raking it in,” Riveaux said. “Who said crime doesn’t pay?”

“Tale as old as time.”

She huffed. “What’s new is that the DA’s started charging fentanyl dealers with first-degree murder, for ODs.”

“They’re peddling death. Why not?”

“Homicide. You know what that means. Decker will be all over this case like hives.” In the silence that followed I heard the machinery of Riveaux’s brain deciding what words to verbalize next. “She’ll probably be at your school soon.”

Sergeant Ruby Decker.

Decker lost her wife, Sue, during Easter weekend because of me. Because of my mistake. My good intentions tainted by deadly misjudgment. And a crooked cop. Decker had made bad calls too. Worse than bad. It tracked, blaming me. I’d have done the same. Anything to lessen the weight of guilt and grief. A broken heart makes you want to break everything.

Riveaux prodded, “You all right?” She must have sensed the cliff I was dangling over.

“Been better, but you can help. Let’s work this case, Riveaux.”

“You never pick the easy path, do you, question mark?”

“It’s never picked me,” I said. “You did, though.”

“All right, Goldsmobile, don’t lay it on too thick. I’ve got your back. But this is one sticky wicket.”

“So how soon can you get here?”

“In a jiffy.” She cleared her throat. “Actually, need to tie up a few things here. Give me a jiffy and a half.”

I grumbled in acknowledgment and gently hung up. 29

Bernard’s number was laminated and taped above the convent phone. I had to call him next.

After Jack died in the fire last year, Bernard became our sole custodian. Our fix-it savior. All the leaky roofs and broken door hinges after gale-force winds. I called his line but it hit dead air. Bernard’s voicemail kicked in with that low roll of his voice you could feel in your feet, like a subway train approaching. I called three times but he never answered. Where’d he sneak off to?

Wasn’t sure what to say in a message, so I didn’t leave one. We’d have to debrief later.

What I did notice was a crack in the phone’s plastic green shell. One more busted thing in a city full of them.

It was only lunchtime, though every minute had felt like a year. Classes were paused, but the students had to stay on campus. Police were taking statements in the cafeteria before parents and guardians could collect their charges.

I swung by the utility closet on the school’s first floor, in the hopes that Bernard was there. No dice. Father Nathan’s office in the rectory across the street was empty too, but his phone was ringing off the hook, as usual, morning, noon, and night.

In the narrow gap between the cafeteria’s dumpsters and loading dock, where exhaust mixed with the otherworldly stench of rotted collard greens, I fumbled with the mysterious lighter. Should I use potential evidence to light the cigarette I’d just stolen from Ryan Brown? Fuck no. But smoking helped me think. More crucially, I loved smoking. Loved it with the passion of the liturgy. Delivery pallets formed an attractive half-wall between me and anyone who might glance my way. Though 30I kept scanning in every direction for a glimpse of Bernard. We had to talk. He was our inside man if there ever was one at Saint Sebastian’s. He worked in every corner and on every floor of campus, with intimate knowledge of occupancy patterns, master keys, and access to blueprints. Surely, he had to have seen something of interest.

“Come on, come on,” I said to myself, to God, as I flicked the cursed lighter. “Come on,” I said to the last working nerve connecting my brain to the rest of my body. The flame finally caught, and I inhaled deeply, smoke filling my lungs, searing me inside out, like a kiss of steam from a busted pipe. I welcomed the burn. Cruel relief. My eyes watered and my throat ached. I should have laid low. To avoid Sergeant Decker. To stay on Sister Honor’s good side.

In the filmy cafeteria window, I took inventory of myself. My shabby plain black uniform. And under that, so many tattoos I’d lost count. An inked Hail Mary hummed its cadence under the cuffs of my black blouse. The only pops of color in my new nun life were my blue eyes—same glassy blue as my brother’s—my gold tooth, and my bleach-blond hair. Black roots always showing. Always reminding me of my own mess, my various selves. Maintenance was never my thing. Why was follow-through so much harder than starting something new?

31

AFTERTHATPRECIOUSCIGARETTEsesh, on my way to the convent for a check-in with Riveaux, Prince Dempsey’s mom walked onto campus. Trish, the mother of the kid whose absence thrummed in my brain like an aneurysm, strutted across our courtyard like she owned the land. And what I’d first taken for a fashion statement—an avant-garde sleeve—was a pink arm sling, loud and angular against her flowing blouse. Broken arm? Sprain? Dislocated shoulder?

“Where’s Prince?” I asked. “He okay? You okay?” I nodded to Trish’s arm.

“Well, ain’t that a fine how do you do.” Trish took a drag of what appeared to be a Virginia Slim and blew a fairly impressive smoke ring. Eight out of ten if I had to judge. “Was hoping you’d be here. We need to talk.”

“Where’s Prince?” I asked again, drawing it out. The effort to keep my face calm was all-consuming. The heat turned the concrete into a griddle.