Unbroken (16 page)

Rebecca swallowed, trying to pull herself together.

“Let’s go,” she murmured. “We have to go. We have to run.”

The crosswalk light flashed green, and Rebecca took off, pelting across the final stretch of Rampart and down Orleans Avenue. Rain swooshed into her face, half blinding her, and she staggered the last few steps to the gate, grasping for its railings.
No more ghosts
, she wanted to say.
No more
. It was all too much
for her today. She could barely stand up, let alone search for her key. Ling’s hand was on her arm.

“Everything’s OK,” Ling said to her, her voice gentle. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s chasing us. Everything’s OK.”

“But it’s not OK,” Rebecca said. She was crying now, tears mixing with the rain until she felt her face was drowning. “You don’t understand. It’s not OK.”

“Let’s go inside and get out of the rain,” Ling said softly. It was easy for
her
to be calm, Rebecca thought. To Ling, this was just a beautiful old city. It wasn’t
Night of the Living Dead
. “And you can sit down, and tell me everything that’s upsetting you. Just tell me everything, and we’ll figure it out. Things are easier when there are two of us to talk them over. Uptown Girl and Miss Thing, right?”

Rebecca sobbed even harder. She really did want to tell Ling everything. She was tired of keeping all these secrets, of talking to these ghosts. Everything was too hard.

“You won’t believe me,” she said, smearing rain and tears out of her eyes. “I know you won’t.”

“Try me.” The rain was heavier now. Ling pulled Rebecca’s bag toward her and fumbled inside for the key to the gate.

“I know you won’t. I wouldn’t believe it if you told me.” None of this would make sense to a normal person. Sure, Aurelia had believed her, but Aurelia had seen the ghosts for herself.

“Well, maybe I’m not as skeptical as you are. I promise to believe you, whatever it is you’re about to say.”

Rebecca sniffed, rubbing her face.

“The thing is,” she said slowly, blinking at poor bedraggled Ling. “The thing is, there are ghosts everywhere in this town. And I can see them.”

T
he rain was loud on the old roof of the slave quarters, thundering onto the flagstones of the courtyard, but at last they were dry and safely inside. Rebecca lay on the bed in her little room, gazing at the steamy windows. Although she’d taken a hot shower, and was dressed in clean sweatpants and a hoodie, she still felt shivery. She’d told Ling everything — well, she’d told her a lot. Ling had listened intently, saying very little. Maybe she thought Rebecca was crazy.

Ling walked in now, carrying a towel, and helped Rebecca to sit up and wrap it around her wet hair. Then Ling pulled a white wicker chair close to the bed and sat down.

“OK,” said Ling. “While you were in the shower, I was thinking. Certain things have to happen.”

“First thing,” Rebecca croaked, “you have to believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“Really?” Rebecca wasn’t even sure if she believed herself anymore. She wriggled into a seated position again, propping herself against a pillow.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?” Ling looked dumbfounded. “We’ve been friends forever. Why would you start lying to me?”

“I didn’t tell you lots of stuff about what happened to me here last year. With seeing ghosts, I mean. And anyway, I could just be going crazy, right? You might think I’m out of my mind.”

“Look, do you want me to believe you or not?” demanded Ling. She put her feet on the bed and slouched in her chair. Rebecca nodded. “All right, then. Let’s review. There’s a ghost named Frank who wants you to rescue a locket he hid under the floorboards of a house in Tremé sometime in the 1870s.”

“Eighteen-seventy-three.”

“And not only do you have to retrieve it, you have to return it to the descendants of the person to whom it rightfully belongs. And that person is …”

“Was.”

“… someone named Desirée Musson, and she is — was — the cousin of an artist. And, as we learned this morning, that artist is probably Edgar Freakin’ Degas.”

“Right.” Rebecca slumped down again. Thunder crashed overhead, shaking the roof. Both she and Ling looked up.

“Eek,” said Ling. “That sounds angry. Speaking of which, there’s a second ghost. Gideon Mason? He murdered Frank to steal the locket, and when he couldn’t find it, got murdered himself. So now he’s all bitter and twisted, and trying to get in the way.”

“Pretty much.”

“Hmmm.” Ling crossed her ankles, then uncrossed them. Rain drove against the windows, almost drowning out the buzz of Rebecca’s phone. She pulled it out from under her pillow.

“Text from my father,” she reported. “He’s on his way home. He says we should get ready for dinner.”

“You know, if you don’t feel up to going out tonight …”

“No, I’ll be OK. Just hearing you talk all this through makes me feel better. Everything was getting so mixed-up in my head. Anyway, I need to talk to Aurelia tonight, which is a whole different complication — but whatever. Go on.”

“Where were we? Two ghosts. One seems good, one seems bad. As far as we know.”

“As far as we know,” Rebecca repeated. “And then there’s the third ghost. The girl up on the gallery. Delphine.”

“And her deal is …?”

Rebecca shrugged. “She’s a friend of Frank’s. I think they may … like each other or something.” Rebecca felt her cheeks warm up and she shook her head; she didn’t want Ling thinking Rebecca had feelings for Frank, too. Not that she did. Right? “She wants to help him in some way, but she’s stuck up on that gallery all the time, from what I can see. Tonight she was trying to help. She was warning me about Gideon Mason.”

“But she could be dangerous herself, right?”

“I guess,” Rebecca admitted. “But I don’t think so. She was friends with … this other ghost. One I knew last year. That’s another story.”

Ling raised her eyebrows.

“Who knew your life was this complicated? This is like
The Sixth Sense
on steroids. Anyway, the inevitable conclusion is: We
need
to help Frank. Don’t you think?”

Rebecca liked the sound of that “we.” Things would be much easier now that Ling was in on all this. At least Rebecca wouldn’t have to sneak around quite so much.

“Yes,” she said, trying to get her thinking straight. “Because if we don’t find the locket, it may be destroyed. And something that belonged to Degas, something possibly incredibly rare and valuable, may get crushed to pieces.”

Ling’s eyes widened.

“And,” Rebecca continued, “because Frank needs someone living to help him. Until the locket is found and handed over to its rightful owners, he’s stuck being a ghost. If the house gets demolished next week, and the locket disappears, Frank is, basically, doomed to be a ghost forever.”

“Oy.” Ling slid even further down in her chair until she was almost parallel with the ground. “And the house in question is that one by the schoolyard?” Rebecca nodded forlornly. “And it’s all boarded up, and not exactly in the world’s safest neighborhood, so we can’t just pop in anytime to look around. Not to mention it’s guarded by Caspar the Unfriendly Ghost.”

“Exactly.”

“So,” said Ling, in the kind of voice that suggested she was a detective who’d just solved the case. “I know what we have to do.”

“What?” Rebecca sat up.

“Tomorrow you need to introduce me to Frank. Then we can grill him until he’s, like, toasted on both sides.”

Rebecca laughed. She was feeling so much better now.

“Then we need to talk to Raf.”

“Raf? Really?”

“If anyone can help us, he can.”

Rebecca wasn’t so sure. They might not get a chance to talk to Raf tomorrow. He might not believe them, or want anything to do with this. But she didn’t have any better ideas, and at least Ling seemed to be approaching this whole nightmare with gusto and determination. Rebecca was all out of gusto.

“We should get ready.” Ling checked her watch. She was the only person under forty Rebecca knew who actually wore a watch. “I’m starving. But one last thing. Who else knows about any of this?”

“Anton,” Rebecca told her. “Well, he knows a little piece of it. I tried to talk to him about Frank on Monday, but he doesn’t
want
to know. So he won’t help us, I don’t think.”

“Whatever! We might need him for an alibi or decoy at some point, though. You don’t think he said anything to Phil?”

“I doubt it. He’s not going to start talking about ghosts if he doesn’t even really believe it himself.”

“OK — so the only people in on all this are you, me, Anton, and various crazed ghosts.”

“And Aurelia.” Rebecca wanted to hide behind her pillow.

“WHAT?”

“It’s a long story….”

“They always are, with you.”

“And the thing is, she doesn’t really know anything. Just that there’s a ghost, and that he’s looking for a locket. She really, really wants to help. But I don’t think that’s a good idea. It would be like bringing … I don’t know, a pirate as a date to the Spring Dance. Chaos would ensue.”

“Rebecca! Ling!” Her dad was out on the gallery, tapping at the door. The noise of the rain had drowned out his footsteps on the usually creaky stairs.

“Almost ready!” Rebecca called, tugging the towel off her hair and throwing it onto the ground.

“Ten minutes, OK?” he shouted, and then he was gone.

“This session of ghost court is adjourned,” said Ling, already out of her chair. “Second session when we get back tonight. Agreed?”

Rebecca nodded. Things were not any easier now, but they
felt
easier. She’d been stupid to hide all this from Ling. She wouldn’t dread waking up tomorrow, now that Ling was on her side.

Rebecca was glad she hadn’t opted out of the dinner at Commander’s Palace. She’d seen the distinctive turquoise-
and-white striped awning many, many times when she was living in the Garden District, and observed the young valet parkers sprinting up and down Washington Avenue in the rain, but she’d never been inside.

Anton lived just on the other side of the cemetery, and part of Rebecca hoped he would walk in at some point with his parents: The Greys were certainly rich enough to eat here every night of the week. Maybe she should have even told him they were all coming here tonight. Her father wouldn’t have minded Anton joining them. But right now her head was too full of Frank — even though
he was a ghost
, as Rebecca had to keep reminding herself.

Ghosts had complicated problems, as she’d learned, but even so, things seemed less complicated with them, in a way, than with real flesh-and-blood relationships. Frank was always pleased to see her. And when he held her hand it didn’t
mean
anything — apart from instant invisibility. If only she could be invisible tomorrow night at the Spring Dance. The closer it got to the night, the more nervous Rebecca grew. Sure, lording her presence over Amy and Jessica would be gratifying. But she wasn’t looking forward to walking through a sea of hostile faces. No one from Temple Mead would be very happy to see her again. Would it just be the social freeze of the Bowmans’ Christmas party all over again?

“It’s like a floor show,” Ling was saying. They’d been seated
at a round table upstairs in the busy Garden Room, and a swarm of waiters was delivering the first course, lifting silver covers off each plate at exactly the same time in one choreographed swoop.

“I feel kind of bad eating turtles,” Ling said, studying her soup bowl.

“If you’ve already tried alligator, you’ll be fine,” Aunt Claudia said. She had dressed for the occasion in an almost normal outfit: a long black dress with a draped paisley scarf, which she called her “Arabian stole.” Aurelia was gussied up, too, in an expensive-looking polka-dot halter dress. It made quite a change from her usual after-school wear of castoffs.

“It’s from Ballin’s in the Riverbend,” she told an admiring Ling. “It’s Claire’s sister’s. Claire lent it to me.”

“Does Claire’s sister know?” Rebecca asked. Aurelia ignored this question. She was still giving Rebecca the cold shoulder.

“She lent me these shoes as well,” she told Ling, pushing back the tablecloth so they could see her gold strappy sandals.

“Your feet are soaking,” sympathized Ling. She’d had the same bad luck on the way in, climbing straight out of the taxi into a giant puddle.

“Why don’t you invite Claire to come along to Jazz Fest with you on Friday?” Rebecca’s dad suggested. But Aurelia told him Claire was leaving right after school that day, to visit her grandparents in Jackson.

Rebecca had forgotten all about Jazz Fest. She’d been excited when she first heard they were going: Now it was just another complication. Time was running out. When exactly would they get the opportunity to find a way into that boarded-up house and rescue the locket? For the hundredth time she considered telling her father everything, and for the hundredth time decided it wasn’t a good idea. Sure, he knew about Lisette and believed in
her
, but that didn’t mean he’d believe all Rebecca’s stories about Frank and Delphine and Gideon Mason, let alone a lost Degas hidden beneath the floorboards of a house in Tremé. Like Anton said, Lisette was a family ghost. Frank was just some unknown guy from another century with a sob story and a stab wound.