Chapter 3

“Your mom,” she whispered.

My eyes filled.

“She was so pretty,” she murmured with a sad smile. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did she come to you in a dream or something?”

Sheltered by an umbrella, I reached for the tablet, and this time Harmony let me have it.

“I like to think so,” I said. It would explain why I’d felt so warm before I woke up, in those hazy foggy moments before I’d sat up in bed and found the sketch on the floor.

Her hair was long and wind-swept, tangling around her face and falling wildly against a pink tank top. Her mouth was full, her eyes tilted, like mine. And with them, I knew she had seen far too much.

Like me.

“My mom dreams about her, too,” Harmony said as I stared at the dragonfly pendant glowing against her chest. “She still misses her a lot.”

So did I. Fifteen years had passed since she’d drowned. I’d been two years old. She’d been only nineteen. I had no real memories of her, but somehow I knew her.

That was radically different from my father, whom I’d never known. I’d asked questions, but no one would answer them, not even the grandmother who’d raised me. It was like I was an immaculate conception, except for the fact that that ridiculous.

“What’s trinity?” she asked.

I looked at the single word, written lovingly in a beautiful calligraphy-like cursive—one I’d been unable to repeat, despite trying. “I have no idea.”

Harmony shrugged. “Do you think she was trying to warn you about something?” she asked. “Maybe that’s why—”

I shot her a look only a best friend can get away with. “Harmony?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

She grinned. “Just trying to put it all together.”

“Stop.”

Her grin softened. “Maybe I should find someone else for the tour,” she said, glancing toward the plaza in front of the beautiful old cathedral, where Dominic and Esmerelda usually set up.

We were the only ones sitting in the rain.

“With all this weird stuff, I’m not sure tonight’s the night you should be leading a tour—”

“Stop,” I said again, swooping up her script and shoving it into my bag. “You broke your ankle. I’m your best friend. I said yes.” Actually, I’d jumped at the chance. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be—and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

It was probably the one thing I’d learned about destiny. You couldn’t run from it. You couldn’t hide.

Somehow that just made things worse. Destiny had a plan of her own.

With another ridiculous gust of warm air, the rain turned to a downpour. “Who knows,” Harmony said, scrambling to pack away her cards. “Maybe no one will even show up.”

I hurried to slide an arm around her as she stood. Crutches were not going to work in this rain. “Maybe,” I said, supporting her as we dashed toward Desiree and her vacant-eyed dolls.

But even as I said the words, I knew they were wrong.

I was right. The hurricane continued to churn east toward Alabama, spreading intermittent rain showers across southern Louisiana as feeder bands swept in from the Gulf of Mexico.

But at four o’clock I still had three people waiting at the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Jackson Street. Six had been scheduled, but the rest were no-shows, leaving me with a married couple from California and an English writer eager to research our Cities of the Dead for a book about a secret society of Immortals.

Her name was Naomi, and like the Hoods from San Francisco, she was all about the rain. Every time lightning broke the eerie late afternoon darkness or thunder shook the old houses, she smiled and opened her arms, and in her very beautiful, aristocratic accent, exclaimed, ‘Brilliant!’

I liked all of them from the moment I walked up, and any anxiety I had about giving my first tour faded.

Despite the rain and slightly cooler temps, everyone agreed they wanted the full tour, no shortcuts. So bundled in rain-jackets with umbrellas in hand, we took off, walking along the broken sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue, where beautiful old mansions slept much as they had for hundreds of years, and equally old trees served as perpetual umbrellas.

Parked cars lined the street, but very few passed alongside us. Even the streetcar was stashed somewhere for the storm. I knew everyone was eager to get to the cemetery, but Harmony insisted it was best to let suspense and anticipation build. It was that whole drama thing.

“The stories are many, the tales as varied as the spirits themselves,” I began we passed a gorgeous old concrete statue of the Virgin Mary cradling an infant. “But most would agree our most famous ghost is but a young girl.”

The excitement glowing in everyone’s eyes spurred me on.

“Long ago, when the Garden District was little more than a sugar cane field, a family came to visit friends. The adults busied themselves doing what adults do, drinking and catching up. It wasn’t until sometime late that they realized their daughter, Sara, had wandered off.

“It took over a week before they found her body in the sugar cane field.”

Standing statue-still beneath their respective umbrellas, Mr. and Mrs. Hood exchanged a brief somber look.

“Some say she’s still here,” I said, leading them toward a beautiful old Victorian home, where an older woman sat alone in a rocking chair on her veranda.

“Many have seen her, sometimes walking right through their house. Others say they hear her calling for her mother. But only by day.

“Sara never comes out at night.”

Another gust whipped in, delivering a fresh onslaught of horizontal rain. “Tragic,” Naomi murmured.

The Hoods remained silent.

Leaning into the wind, I led them onto Harmony Street and picked up the pace. (Yes, Harmony Street. My friend was totally born to do this gig. Lots of people thought Harmony was a made-up name, like Marguerite. But she’d been given that name at birth, by her mother—Faith. True story.)

“I participated in a marvelous French Quarter tour last night,” Naomi said. Soaked despite her umbrella, her dark brown hair was slicked back from her face, making her eyes looked even bigger. “We walked by a particular house on Royal Street, where I was informed a woman kept people chained in the attic! I can hardly even fathom. Are there any stories like that here?”

Her accent and word choice made me smile.

“Lots!” I said, guiding them onto Prytania. Lafayette Cemetery was only a few blocks away. “Many of these houses have stood for over two hundred years.”

“Which means they’re haunted,” Mrs. Hood gushed.

Her husband slid an arm around her, drawing her close against him. “Dawn has a thing for ghosts.”

She grinned.

I stopped dead in my tracks.