by Paula Morris
“Man, we’re never going to find this tomb,” Ling muttered to Rebecca. They crunched up and down rows, trying to be methodical, but it wasn’t easy. This wasn’t an orderly place: It was a jumble of over three hundred years of burials. “How do you spell the name again?”
“I think it’s over this way,” Rebecca’s father said, checking the time. “It better be. This place is closing in ten minutes.”
Tour groups were filing out, and the caretaker wandered around jingling his keys.
“I think we missed some over here,” Rebecca said in desperation, though she was certain they’d already circled this exact spot. How could they miss a tomb in such a small cemetery? She stopped to shake a pebble out of one shoe, feeling guilty about leaning against someone’s tomb in order to prop herself up.
“Rebecca!” Ling called. “Here it is!”
Rebecca tugged on her shoe and raced over to where the others were standing. A railing and elaborate gate enclosed the tomb, and Rebecca pressed against it, scanning the names engraved on the marble slab.
Musson, Musson, Musson — one after another. The very second name was a Desirée — the name Frank had said! — but she’d died in 1819, so it couldn’t be the same one. Toward the bottom of the slab, however, another Desirée Musson was listed. Born December 1838, died April 1902. Rebecca did a quick calculation. This Desirée would have been thirty-four years old the day Frank was entrusted with the locket. Could she have been the cousin living on Esplanade Avenue?
“You know, there’s something much more interesting about this tomb than the railings,” Rebecca’s father said. “Have either of you noticed the famous names here? See up at the top, Desirée Musson née Rillieux? This was a famous Creole family in this city. One of the Rillieux had children with a free woman of color here, and their son, Norbert Rillieux, became a famous engineer and inventor.”
“That’s super-interesting,” said Ling, leaning in to take another photo. Rebecca was still focused on Desirée’s name.
“And the other name you can see further down,” Rebecca’s dad went on. “The line that reads Henri, Jeanne, Pierre De Gas. They all died young, and probably close together, because their names are all on that one line. Yellow fever maybe. Anyway, they were the children, I believe, of this lady here, Estelle Musson. See? Her husband isn’t buried here, because he left her at some point and moved back to France. His name was René De Gas. And he was the brother of — who?”
“Cemetery closing!” shouted the caretaker. “Closing in two minutes! Anyone not out in two minutes, you gonna be sleeping here tonight!”
Rebecca’s dad smiled at her. “I’ll give you a clue. His brother spelled it as one word, not two. D-E-G-A-S.”
Rebecca couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“You mean,” she said, “the painter Degas?”
Something was clicking together in her head.
Her dad nodded proudly. “The only one of the French Impressionists ever to visit the U.S.,” he said. “And he came here to New Orleans, to visit his brother, and his uncle’s family. They lived somewhere up on Esplanade. There might be a plaque outside the house….”
Rebecca’s heart was beating so fast she thought she might fall over. The painter who gave Frank the locket was Edgar Degas. Desirée Musson was Degas’ cousin! That little picture inside that Frank had mentioned: That could actually have been painted by one of the great French Impressionists. It could be worth millions of dollars!
“Come on — we better go before we get locked in,” Rebecca’s dad said. “More interesting than Marie Laveau, right? I told you I had a surprise.”
“Right,” Rebecca agreed. Her arms and legs felt weak; her head was stuffed with cotton wool. She followed her father and Ling out of the cemetery in a daze. Degas. Degas. Degas. One of her favorite painters. One of the most famous painters ever.
She had to rescue that locket.
When Ling finally skipped off to meet Phil at the Croissant d’or — a café in the premises of a nineteenth-century ice cream parlor — Rebecca raced straight to the corner of Rampart Street. Aurelia would be arriving soon, so there wasn’t much time. But she had to talk to Frank.
For the first time Frank was actually waiting there for her. As she ran up Orleans, she could see him, and he started talking when she was still a few strides away.
“I went to Carondelet Street,” he said, his blue eyes gleaming. “And I talked to this ghost who used to work as a porter there. He remembers the names of all the cotton offices where he worked. He said the one I was talking about never paid him for his last day’s work. He said other things, too, that I can’t repeat in front of ladies …”
“Frank!” Rebecca said. She was desperate to interrupt him with her news, but she’d never seen him so animated.
“He said the company was called Musson, Prestidge, and Co.” Frank was looking very pleased with himself. “I knew I remembered it right!”
“Frank,” Rebecca tried again. “The man who gave you the locket, the artist …”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about him as well,” said Frank. He paced the corner, the angles of his face sharp under his chalk-white skin. “I remember that he had a long, thin nose and a short beard. He spoke French with his brother in New York, and with the men at the cotton office. When he spoke to me in English, he had a strong accent, and —”
“I think I know who he is. Who he was!” Rebecca had to interrupt. “He was a very famous French painter named Edgar Degas. The Mussons were his cousins.”
Frank gazed at her, as though nothing she said made sense. He’d never heard of Degas, she realized, but why would he? How could he hear of anything much, apart from fires or floods, things he could see with his own eyes? The life of a ghost must be so monotonous.
“So you know who should have the locket?” he asked her. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Rebecca opened her mouth to say yes, sort of — in that she knew much more than she did yesterday — though still had no idea of how to rescue the locket itself — but she was distracted by the sound of pounding footsteps.
Someone was running along Rampart Street toward them; she’d have to stop talking to Frank until the danger had passed. Really, they needed to find somewhere less public to meet. It had been so much easier with Lisette, hidden deep within Lafayette Cemetery.
“Hang on a minute,” she whispered to Frank. Then she remembered Aunt Claudia’s various warnings about bag snatchers on Rampart Street. She shaded her eyes and squinted down the street to get a better look at the person pounding toward her. If she didn’t like the look of him, Rebecca decided, she would start running herself, down the middle of Orleans Avenue.
“Oh my god,” she said. The person running toward her, looking terrified and frantic, was Aurelia. And in the distance, rounding the corner in hot pursuit of her, was a boy with a shock of bright red hair.
Toby Sutton.
“What’s wrong?” Frank wanted to know.
“Don’t disappear!” she snapped at him. “Seriously. I need your help.”
“How can I …”
“That’s my cousin. Someone’s chasing her.” Rebecca, her heart thumping, could barely get her words out. “You have to help. Take my hand!”
There was a moment’s hesitation from Frank, and then he reached for her. Rebecca knew she’d disappeared from view because of the panicked look on Aurelia’s face. She was crossing Orleans, and gazing at the spot where Rebecca had been standing just a moment ago, but, of course, she couldn’t see her now. Frank’s touch had rendered Rebecca invisible.
“Now,” she hissed at Frank. “Grab her!”
“But …”
“Do it!”
As Aurelia hesitated at the corner, Frank grabbed Aurelia’s hand and pulled her toward the wall. Seeing Rebecca again, holding the hand of a disheveled stranger — just as Aurelia herself was doing — was too much for Aurelia. Her eyes looked ready to pop out of her head, and she opened her mout
h as though she was about to scream.
“Shhh,” Rebecca whispered. “Keep your mouth shut, and stay very still! Toby can’t see us, but you have to keep still.”
A trembling Aurelia gazed from Rebecca to Frank, her little face pale with fright, but at least she wasn’t speaking. The three of them stood pressed against the building’s rough walls. The only sound was Aurelia’s agitated breathing. Rebecca gripped Frank’s hand, trying to concentrate on how substantial it felt, how real — like a living hand, except much colder. Her own breathing was heavy, too, and she had to get it under control. She didn’t want anything to give them away to Toby.
Because he was standing on the corner now, just a few feet away, bent over and panting. It was more than a year since Rebecca had seen him. He was taller now, and heavier. Acne had exploded across his chin, as livid as his hair. The scowl on his face made him ugly, she thought. His eyes were wild, like some kind of feral creature’s.
Toby straightened up. He looked down Orleans and then along Rampart Street, shaking his head in disbelief. Rebecca gripped Frank’s hand even tighter, willing Toby to walk away.
But instead he marched over to the boarded-up front door of the town house and hammered on it.
“Where did you go, you stupid girl?” he shouted, kicking at the door. “Where did you go?”
Rebecca held her breath. Toby was just inches away from her now. She didn’t dare look at Aurelia; all she could hope was that Aurelia was standing still and not about to do something stupid, like panic and drop Frank’s hand.
Instinctively Rebecca wriggled closer to Frank. They might be hidden from sight right now, but Rebecca and Aurelia weren’t ghosts. They were still corporeal beings, and if Toby reached a hand out he could touch her. Rebecca knew from her ghost walk with Lisette that though the living couldn’t see you, they could certainly bump into you. She’d gotten bruises trying to navigate the streets of the Quarter, when the living blithely walked into her or smacked at her with bags and elbows. If Toby managed to grab her — or Aurelia — he would be too strong, she thought. In a tug-of-war with thin, waifish Frank, Toby would win. Rebecca had no idea what he planned to do once he’d caught Aurelia, but she didn’t want to find out.
Toby kicked the door again — once, twice, three times.
“I saw you with her!” he roared, smacking his fists against the planks nailed across the door. “I know you’re here somewhere!”
He staggered back toward the curb and glared up at the building’s rusted galleries. It took all Rebecca’s will to stop her teeth from chattering, with fear and with cold. Just go away, she thought. Leave us alone.
As though he could hear her thoughts, Toby gave up. He walked away down Rampart Street, shoulders hunched, head down. Even when he disappeared around a corner three or four blocks in the distance, Rebecca was still standing with her back to the building, holding Frank’s hand, afraid to move. Anton had been right about Toby. He was back, and he wanted revenge.
None of them knew what to do or say. That was pretty obvious. Frank was holding the hand of a girl he’d never met before, no doubt confused about who she was, why some angry guy was chasing her, and how they were going to explain this whole invisibility thing to her. Aurelia, on the other side of Frank, was still — uncharacteristically — silent. Rebecca leaned forward to look at her.
“Relia — are you OK?” she whispered. Aurelia nodded. “Don’t be afraid. This is Frank. He’s … good. He’s on our side.”
She didn’t know what else to say. Frank gave her a questioning look, probably wondering what “our side” meant.
“But … b-b-but …” Aurelia was trying to speak.
“What is it?” Rebecca said softly. Poor Aurelia. First she’d been chased by Toby, and now a ghost was holding her hand. It was probably her most traumatic afternoon ever.
“Who are all these people?” Aurelia bleated, and Rebecca turned to follow her gaze. There was Rampart Street, studded with replica gas lamps, scraggly crepe myrtles, and miniature palm trees. Someone was walking into the tattoo place. A bus chugged by on the far side of the street. A few cars passed, and a taxi made a U-turn.
And then there were the ghosts. Rebecca had forgotten all about that. Aurelia was seeing the world of ghosts for the first time, and unfortunately, Rampart Street was home to hundreds of them. Slaves and soldiers, gentlemen and gang members. People who’d been run over, people who’d been stabbed, people who’d died in burning houses and car wrecks and shoot-outs. People from the 1760s and the 1860s and the 1960s. It looked like a cross between a costume ball and the Halloween parade in New York, except everyone was sort of wandering around aimlessly, or clustered in strange era-defying groups, a grotesque range of fatal wounds on display. No wonder Aurelia was in a state of shock.
“Um,” Rebecca said, wondering for the briefest of moments if she could get away with a lie. Impossible. Aurelia wasn’t stupid. “These are ghosts.”
“No way,” Aurelia breathed.
Rebecca was feeling calmer now. Toby was gone. Aurelia didn’t appear to be freaking out. There were two hundred ghosts walking by and looking at them, but none of those ghosts seemed to care that much. Ghosts were always thinking about themselves.
Then Frank dropped their hands, and the ghosts all disappeared.
“Oh, man!” Aurelia complained. “Where did everyone go?”
“He’s here,” Frank told Rebecca.
“Who?” Rebecca was panicking again. Toby was back? Why was Frank exposing them?
“Gideon Mason. He was standing over there looking at us. At you and your cousin.”
“No,” Rebecca groaned. Gideon Mason had seen Aurelia with Frank. Was he going to start threatening her now, too? Wasn’t it bad enough that she was getting chased in the street by a maniacal Toby Sutton?
“Who are you talking to? What’s going on?” demanded Aurelia. She couldn’t see or hear Frank anymore, Rebecca remembered. As far as Aurelia knew, she and Rebecca were the only ones standing on this corner. “Where’s that cute boy with the dirty clothes and the blue eyes? Why was he holding our hands?”
“He’s still here,” Rebecca told her. This whole thing was a mess. Of course, Aurelia was going to have a million questions. “It’s just — it’s just, you can’t see him.”
“Well, then how do you know he’s still here?”
“I can see him. He’s made himself … visible to me.” Rebecca wanted to tell Aurelia as little as possible, to protect her from the world of ghosts, but that wasn’t going to be easy. “He’s a ghost, too, OK? And when he holds our hands, we can see all the other ghosts. And they can see us.”
“Oh.” Aurelia pondered this latest piece of information, eyes narrowed.
“But why couldn’t Toby see us?” she asked. “He was looking straight at us.”
“When a ghost holds your hand, you’re invisible to living people,” Rebecca explained. Giving Aurelia all this information made her extremely nervous. Who knew where it would end up? Blathered about online during some marathon IM session with Claire? Announced over macaroni and cheese in the junior lunchroom at Temple Mead, perhaps? “When he lets go, you’re not invisible anymore.”
“But he’s invisible.”
“Yup. That’s right.”
“So tell me again — how come you can see him?”
“I … I just can, OK?”
“So,” Aurelia drawled. “You can see this ghost the way you could see that other ghost last year, the one who killed all the girls?”
“She didn’t kill anyone,” Rebecca said. She hadn’t realized that Aurelia knew even this much about Lisette. Aunt Claudia wouldn’t have told her. “It’s much more complicated than that.”
“She was the one who was murdered,” said Frank, coming to Lisette’s defense. He nodded at Aurelia. “Tell her.”
“I know, I know.” Rebecca told him. “I can’t get into all that with her.”
“Are you talking to him?” Aurelia demanded, her eyes
wide. “Are you talking to him right now? Can he hear me?”
“Yes, he can hear you.”
“And he can see me?”
“Yes.” Rebecca sighed. Why did this have to happen? If only Toby hadn’t been stalking Aurelia in a completely insane way, Rebecca wouldn’t have panicked and asked Frank to grab her hand, and Aurelia would have been none the wiser about all this. Keeping secrets was a difficult and sometimes dangerous business. But secrets getting out could be much, much more dangerous. Especially with a mean ghost and an even meaner Toby Sutton on the loose.
“So,” Aurelia said, hands on hips, “what I don’t get is how come you can still see him but I can’t, when I could five minutes ago? It’s not fair!”
“Look.” Rebecca didn’t even know where to begin. “The thing with ghosts is, they don’t appear to everyone. They haunt specific places, and choose to appear to specific people. For a reason.”
“And what’s the reason he ‘appears’ to you? That you really love ghosts?”
Rebecca blushed. “It’s because I’m … I’m trying to help him with something, OK?”
“Well, I could help him, too. I know this city really well. Much better than you do.” Aurelia was getting sulky.
“Could she?” Frank asked. “Do you think she could help?”
“No, I don’t,” Rebecca told him.
“No, you don’t, do you?” Only hearing half of the conversation, Aurelia misunderstood what Rebecca was saying. “You don’t know New Orleans at all. I could help you look for this locket….”
“What?” Rebecca shouted. How could Aurelia possibly know anything about the locket?
