by Paula Morris
"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 t
ree.
"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."
"You told your mother about that?" Rebecca felt herself blushing, thinking about that night. About Anton kissing her. Maybe he was thinking about it as well, because he met her eyes -- quickly, nervously -- and then looked away.
"I didn't tell her anything," he said. "Not about ... anything that happened that night. But right away they seemed to want to know everything about you. My father told me you might not be ... well, who you claimed to be. They said I had to ask you questions, get information out of you. But I didn't want to. That's one reason I never got in touch with you after the party. I told my parents you weren't answering my calls or e-mails."
"You could have still talked to me," Rebecca pointed out, unwilling to let Anton off the hook. "You just didn't have to tell anyone, that's all."
"I guess. It was just so much pressure. That day we had the argument in the cemetery, just after you got back from New York? Someone else saw you going in that day. I got sent in to interrogate you. I had to, even though I didn't want anything to do with it."
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"That was the day I told you I could see Lisette," Rebecca murmured. She wrapped her arms around her bare legs, huddling to keep warm, wishing she could stop trembling. This was her fault as much as Anton's -- she should have kept her mouth shut.
"I never said anything to them," Anton said quickly. "And somehow they knew I wasn't telling them the whole truth. That's why they sent Toby in to spy on us. That day I tried to warn you about riding in the parade -- you just wouldn't listen."
"Why didn't you just tell me, instead of dropping all those vague hints?"
"You ran off before I had the chance to explain!" he protested. "And anyway, I was real confused. My parents and friends were all saying one thing ....I've known Toby and Helena all my life. Everyone kept telling me that Helena's life was at stake. I just didn't know what to do."
"So you did nothing." Rebecca didn't know if she could forgive Anton. All this week he'd known what they were planning for her, and he'd said nothing. "You just left me to ... to get murdered tonight!"
"I didn't have a choice," he said. "Toby had heard what I was saying to you, telling you not to ride in the parade. Everyone was beyond angry with me. They emptied my pockets -- got my phone off me, everything. They even took me out of school! I had to go to a fishing camp in Mississippi with two of my uncles. There was no way to reach you. We only drove back to the city this afternoon, because they were riding in Septimus. They're both dukes."
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The men on horseback, thought Rebecca. Anton's family. It wasn't just the Bowmans and the Suttons in the cemetery tonight.
"I was locked in my room this evening," he was saying. "My dad only came to get me so I could witness the end of the curse in the cemetery. He thought it was important because ..."
"Because why? Your family likes seeing girls getting killed?"
Anton shook his head.
"We were part of it. All those years ago, when Lisette died ..."
"Was murdered, you mean."
"When Lisette was murdered. Our families were friends then. It was my ancestor who talked to Mrs. Bowman and to Mr. Sutton, who was her lawyer. It was his idea to hide the body in the Bowman family vault and to tell her mother she'd died of yellow fever. He and Mr. Sutton carried Lisette's body to the cemetery the night she was killed. Don't you get it? We have her blood on our hands as well. And the blood of all those Bowman girls who died. If they hadn't lied to Lisette's mother, this curse would never have happened. It was the Greys and the Suttons who tried to cover it all up, and the result was ... well, you know better than anyone. Girls dying, one after the other. All the way down to tonight. God, I just can't believe Helena is dead."
Anton rubbed at his face: He looked exhausted as well, Rebecca thought. She almost felt sorry for him. She wanted to believe him -- wanted to believe that he'd tried to protect her, that he'd lied to his family rather than expose her, that
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he'd been kept away all week so he couldn't warn her of what was about to happen.
"At least it's all over now, right?" He glanced up at Rebecca. "That ghost is gone."
"She was my friend," Rebecca told him. Even though Lisette would be with her mother now, it was hard not to feel sad. Rebecca would miss her.
"I'm your friend as well," Anton insisted. "You have to believe me! I wouldn't do anything to hurt you, I swear. That's why I never said a word to anyone, even though it meant choosing you over Helena. I didn't want to be part of this any more than you do."
"Too bad, buddy." A sneering voice from somewhere in the darkness spoke up, and Rebecca almost fell off her tree root. She knew exactly who was speaking before he stepped out of the shadows.
It was Toby Sutton.
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***
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
***
Toby stood, hands on hips, glaring at them. In his parade costume he looked like a malevolent clown.
"You're part of it whether you want to be or not," he told Anton. "And we've got some unfinished business to take care of."
"Get out of here, Toby." Anton scrambled to his feet. "It's all over now, OK? Helena's dead, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"Nothing we can do?" Toby parroted in a bitter, mocking tone. He sneered down at Rebecca as though he'd like to spit in her face. "Your girlfriend here murdered Helena -- and our lame-ass parents just let her father walk away."
Rebecca gasped: Her father was OK -- thank god. Toby shot her a look of contempt.
"Well, excuse me if I'm not in the mood to play happy families," he said. "Nothing's over until she pays."
"Nobody's paying for anything." Anton took a step toward Toby; he was much taller than his friend, and for that reason,
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maybe, Toby warily backed away. "Haven't we just had a hundred and fifty years of people paying for something that shouldn't have happened? Isn't that why Helena died tonight? That's it -- the curse is over. Helena's death was a bizarre accident, like all those bizarre accidents and illnesses that killed all those girls. It's not Rebecca's fault. There's no more unfinished business. Just get out of here and leave us alone."
Toby gave a theatrical sigh, taking another few steps backward.
"I guess I'll have to do this alone, then," he said. He was fingering something, Rebecca noticed -- something small, obsc
ured in one hand. The moonlight caught it, and it gleamed. Not a gun, she thought! But no, it was too small.
"He's got something," she warned Anton, standing up to face Toby. "In his hand, he's got something."
"She's a genius, your girlfriend." Toby looked smug. He opened his palm, and there lay Anton's silver lighter. "Your father left this lying around, and I thought, Now that could come in useful."
"You're talking nonsense," Anton said impatiently. "Give it back, and get out of here. I'm not in the mood for your stupid games."
"Whatever," said Toby. He was walking backward to the corner now, a vile smile cracking his face. "All I know is, a house has to burn tonight. And it's not going to be one of ours."