Paula Morris (33 page)

"I don't like this," the man with the gun said; he was
still holding it low, not pointing it at Rebecca. "We've never intervened
in fate before. The curse just has to take its course."

"No!" screamed Helena's mother. "We have to save
Helena! Do you hear me?"

Another tussle was going on at the foot of the stairs: Anton had
surged forward again and was being dragged away by one of the men.

"Get him out of here!" someone shouted, and Anton was
silenced, swallowed up by the crowd. Helena had pulled free of Rebecca's grip,
wriggling far enough away to give the man at the bottom of the steps a clear
shot.

"Rebecca!"

That was Lisette's voice! Rebecca looked around wildly, trying to
spot her, but all she could see was the circle of expressionless masks.

"Get away!" Helena shrieked, and Rebecca twisted,
following Helena's gaze. Lisette was lying flat on the domed roof of the tomb,
crawling tentatively toward the edge. "Get her away from here!"

Helena stabbed an accusing finger in the air, but nobody below
them moved. They'd just think she was pointing up at

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the angel, Rebecca thought: Nobody else could see the ghost up on
the Bowman tomb's roof. Only Helena and Rebecca could see and hear Lisette.

"What is it, darling?" Mrs. Bowman cried.

Lisette stretched one arm down, reaching toward Rebecca.

"Take my hand!" she pleaded. "Quick!"

For a split second Rebecca hesitated -- Gould she trust Lisette?
Was this all part of this sick ceremony of death? -- but she had no choice: Any
moment now she was going to be shot, right here on the steps of the tomb. She
turned her back to the masked crowd, standing on tiptoes, her whole body
stretching so she could reach Lisette's hand. Just one more inch ... there!

The loud communal gasp she heard had to mean one thing: Rebecca
was now invisible to everyone. As far as they were all concerned -- the men in
masks, Helena's mother, the man with the gun, even Anton--she'd just vanished
into thin air.

But one person could still see her.

"She's here!" Helena shouted, her voice choking and
enraged. "For god's sake, shoot her! Shoot her now!"

Helena tugged at Rebecca's outstretched arm, trying to pull her
free from Lisette's grasp. Lisette was dangling perilously off the edge of the
tomb, now with two hands holding Rebecca. With her free hand, Rebecca pushed at
Helena, trying to fight her off.

"She's right here -- shoot! Shoot!" Helena sounded as
though she was possessed, and she must have looked that way as well, grappling
with a person nobody else could see.

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"I can't ... I can't see her," said the man with the
gun.

"You can climb up," Lisette told Rebecca. "I got up
right from where you're standing -- put one foot on the top of that stone
there." Rebecca managed to haul herself up part of the way, but it wasn't
easy: She felt as though she was about to get torn in two. Above her, Lisette
was tugging her right arm out of its socket, and below her, Helena was pulling
and clawing at Rebecca's bare legs, trying to drag her back down.

"On the count of three, pull me as hard as you can," she
said to Lisette, breathlessly kicking out with one leg at Helena, whose nails
felt sharp as razors. This was her only chance to get away. Even if it took a
superhuman effort, she had to break free from Helena and get onto the roof of
the vault. "OK? One, two, THREE!"

Lisette pulled hard and, with all her might, Rebecca swung her
free hand up to the pedestal holding the stone angel. If she could only get
ahold of it, she might be able to haul herself up. Her fingers slithered around
the base, searching for a grip, her free leg flailing in Helena's face and
managing to get one decent kick in.

"Ow! Up there! She's getting away!" Helena was furious.

Lisette gave another massive tug, this time nearly dislocating
Rebecca's right arm, and that was it: Rebecca's fingers dug into a small gap at
the back of the base, and although the angle was awkward, it might give her the
leverage she needed.

"Just ... one ... more," she gasped, looking into
Lisette's dark eyes and knowing, in that instant, amid the utter panic of the
moment, that she was wrong ever to doubt

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Lisette. The ghost had been true to her word, coming to help
Rebecca -- the one nonspirit friend she'd had in a hundred and fifty years --
when Rebecca needed her most.

"Ready?" Lisette murmured, and Rebecca nodded. With another
giant, desperate burst of effort, Rebecca tugged on the base of the angel,
trying to let it take as much of her body weight as possible, heaving herself
up. But the gap into which she'd dug her fingers was growing: The angel was
rocking on its base, coming free from the roof of the vault. The more she
gripped it, the more the pedestal rocked -- until suddenly, almost without a
sound, the angel and her upside-down torch tipped forward, rocking and then
toppling toward the ground.

Helena screamed, letting go of Rebecca's leg; still, it was all
Rebecca could do to hang on to Lisette and the remains of the pedestal, her
face turned to see the angel fall.

And then there was a sickening crack. Not the sound of the stone
angel shattering on the steps of the tomb, but of the stone slamming into
Helena, striking her on the skull and knocking her to the ground.

"Helena!" shrieked her mother, and the crowd pushed in,
pulling the broken pieces of stone away from her crumpled body, the stone torch
lying smashed on the steps just above her head. Helena's face was white, her
skull crushed and bloody. Her eyes were closed.

Rebecca dug her feet into the grooves of the tomb and hauled
herself onto the roof, lying exhausted and panting next to Lisette. People were
crying and shouting below them, swarming like insects around Helena's prone
form.

"Do you think ... do you think she's going to die?"

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Rebecca whispered to Lisette. She felt sick with fear and worry.
She hadn't meant to kill Helena: She was just trying to get away.

Lisette looked back at Rebecca, a quizzical expression on her
pretty face, as though she didn't quite believe it all, either. Something
approaching a smile -- a slow, sad smile -- appeared, and then it faded. Or
rather, she was fading. Lisette was disappearing, right in front of Rebecca's
eyes.

"Good-bye, Rebecca," Lisette whispered, and just like
that, she was gone.

"She's dead!" Mrs. Bowman wailed. "My baby is
dead!"

Helena Bowman lay dead on the steps of the family tomb, the
seventh Bowman daughter to die. The ghost of Lisette Bowman was gone, her
spirit no longer forced to haunt Lafayette Cemetery.

The curse was over.

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***

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

***

Rebecca's mind was in a daze -- Helena was dead, Lisette was gone;
how had this all happened? -- but she knew she had to get away. Mrs. Bowman was
beside herself with grief and rage. With Lisette gone, Rebecca was visible
again. Any second now, the people clustered on and around the stairs could look
up and see her, and who knew what they would do? It was her fault that Helena
was lying dead and broken at the foot of the tomb.

"Give me that gun!" A familiar gruff voice was shouting,
and Rebecca's heart soared. It was her father! There he was, pushing through
the cluster of masked men, pulling off his own mask. Maybe he'd been there all
along, waiting for his moment. Someone tackled him, dragging him to the ground,
but Rebecca's dad was strong: He was fighting back, flailing and punching.

She opened her mouth to cry out, but it was too late -- she'd been
seen. One of the men must have scaled the tomb: Someone was tugging at her arm,
trying to pull her back into the shadows. Rebecca was too scared to even look

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around. They knew she was up here; they were overpowering her
father. It was all over.

"Come on!" She swiveled: It wasn't a masked man up here
on the tomb with her. It was Anton, his eyes wild, half hanging off the back of
the tomb. He tugged hard on her arm again. "Quick!"

Silently she wriggled back, out of sight, slithering down the back
wall of the tomb into Anton's arms. Her feet hit the ground. She was shaking so
much she could barely stand up.

"This way," he whispered, but Rebecca hesitated: This
was the person who'd betrayed her. If Anton had kept his mouth shut, none of
this would have happened tonight.

"My father ..." she began, and Anton shook his head.

"While there's a distraction -- quick!"

He was right, she knew: She had to get out of here, and Rebecca
knew she needed help. Her entire body felt limp and chilled to the bone. Anton took
her hand, dragging her through a narrow, damp cut between the tombs and all the
way to the cemetery's dark perimeter. He was running, keeping his head down,
and Rebecca staggered in his wake, wanting nothing more than to collapse in a
heap. They passed what she thought was the Prytania gate, darting into the
shadows in case someone spotted them. By the disused wall vaults on the
Washington Avenue side, Anton paused.

"If I push you up onto the box here, do you think you can get
over the wall?" he asked. Rebecca nodded, though she wasn't sure if she
had the energy left for any more climbing. Anton knelt, signaling to Rebecca to
climb onto his shoulders. Swaying, he rose to his feet, Rebecca clutching
handfuls of his hair to keep her balance. It wasn't a bad thing

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for him to suffer a little, she decided, though she did feel a
twinge of sympathy when he crashed one shoulder into the cemetery wall. With a
few kicks and some help from a now-battered Anton, Rebecca was able to straddle
the top of the wall, waiting to help Anton up, as best she could, before they
both slid down into the street.

"This way," he said, taking Rebecca's hand again before
they crossed Prytania; she'd jarred her ankle hitting the sidewalk, so he was
half dragging her.

"I want to see my father," she wheezed. Her ankle was
stinging, and she was shivering miserably in the cold. "We have to ... go
home."

"Not yet -- it's not safe on Sixth Street yet," Anton
told her. "Everyone's way too upset and angry."

He didn't understand that Rebecca wasn't talking about
that
home:
She meant New York. All she wanted was to find her father and get out of here,
as fast as possible. But right now she couldn't do anything fast. Rebecca
hobbled after Anton down Washington, where the heavy tangle of oak branches
almost obscured the moonlight.

"Here," he said. He peeled off his sweater, and Rebecca
pulled it over her towering hair and mangled leotard, lowering herself onto the
lumpy, exposed roots of one of the oak trees. She was too tired to walk another
step, her body rebelling against everything she'd put it through tonight -- the
hours standing on the float, all that kicking and pulling and climbing -- and
her mind felt as though it was about to shut down. She was wracked with guilt
for bringing that stone angel down on Helena's head: Rebecca had never meant to
hurt Helena. She was just trying to get away. And then

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Lisette -- her only friend -- had vanished. Rebecca wanted her
father. She wanted Aunt Claudia. She wanted someone to tell her that the curse
was really over and that everything was going to be all right.

Anton crouched next to her, his back against the trunk of the
tree.

"I never meant for any of this to happen," he told her,
running a hand through his thicket of hair. "You have to believe me."

Rebecca shook her head.

"You said you wouldn't tell anyone," she managed to say,
though her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. "You ... you lied to me.
And because ... because of that ... look at what happened."

"I didn't tell anyone! Please ... listen!" Anton slid to
the ground. "I wasn't the only one in the cemetery the other day -- the
day I accused you of being able to talk to the ghost."

"What?"

"Toby was there. Toby Sutton. He followed me, because he
thought I was meeting up with you. He was hiding behind that stupid Dumpster,
and he heard everything we were saying. He told his parents, and they told my
parents. And the Bowmans."

Toby's parents. Miss Karen -- she knew. And Marianne must have
known as well. All day today, when they were getting ready for the parade, they
knew what was in store for Rebecca -- a gunshot in the head, late that night in
the cemetery.

"But it was my fault," Anton went on, looking down at
his scuffed shoes. "In a way. I can't just blame Toby."

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"What do you mean?" Rebecca wasn't sure what Anton was
trying to do -- shift the blame onto someone else or admit to something
himself.

"Before Toby said anything, they were already suspicious.
After the Christmas party, I asked my mother something about the ghost. If it
was possible that someone else could see it. I was thinking about when you and
I were sitting out on the gallery at the Bowmans', and you jumped, like you saw
somebody. And right after that, Helena started screaming."