“It’s a ghost, not a vampire!”
“How can you tell?! It’s a pale and creepy creature in the woods!”
“I think we have to make a run for it.” I set my jaw determinedly. “Maybe a distraction, first? Or something. And then we’ll go on the count of three.”
“Okay, okay,” he said nervously. “Let’s do it.”
She took another step.
“Screw it, we’re going now!” Dev screamed. “Throw the Reese’s, throw the Reese’s!”
“You have it!” I reminded him.
“Right! Don’t eat me! Eat this!” Dev grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the camp, chucking the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at the ghost’s face as we sprinted past her. We ran as if our lives depended on it, hurtling through the woods at a speed that would have qualified us for the track team. In a fraction of the time it had taken us to get out there, we collapsed, panting, in the glow of the Confederate campfires. I looked back, wheezing in my corset. The ghost hadn’t followed us.
At this point, it was after All-Quiet, so there was nothing we could do until the morning. Dev left Captain Cauldwell a strongly worded letter, which led us, after a night of little to no sleep, straight back to a meeting early the next morning at the schoolhouse. Once again, Captain Cauldwell asked the perpetrator to “’fess up,” but no one came forward.
“I want an armed guard!” Dev demanded after ten minutes of indeterminate mumblings and ramblings from the men. “Do any of these guns actually shoot?”
“No, that would be a huge safety hazard,” Captain Cauldwell said.
“I don’t think you can shoot a ghost. It would go right through them,” one of the Boy Scouts offered helpfully.
“There’s no ghost. There’s no such thing. It wasn’t a real ghost,” Captain Cauldwell said calmly.
“Was too!” Dev shot back somewhat hysterically.
“Are y’all sure you didn’t just see a lost reenactor and spook yourselves in the dark?” Captain Cauldwell asked skeptically.
“I wish I could say that,” I answered, sighing heavily. “And I know this whole story sounds ridiculous, but I really don’t think so. It didn’t look like a person. It looked like a ghost. And it looked exactly like Jackson described it.”
The men muttered. I mean, I knew Captain Cauldwell was right, and ghosts weren’t real. Except that this thing … whatever it was … had certainly looked real. And it looked really, really creepy.
Dev raised his hand. “I still want a bodyguard!”
“If I can be Libby’s bodyguard, I’ll watch him, too,” Cody offered.
“I neither want nor need a bodyguard,” I said testily.
“Of course you don’t,” Dev sniffed. “Clearly, this ghost only has it in for handsome young men. Which is why Corporal Anderson and I have been so egregiously targeted.”
“Then I guess she’ll be after me next.” Cody nodded, resigning himself to his fate. “My days are numbered.”
“When I said young, I didn’t mean ‘still watching The Wiggles’ young,” Dev said snarkily.
“I don’t watch the damn Wiggles!” Cody yelled.
“Riiiiight,” Dev replied sarcastically.
“Order!” Captain Cauldwell banged his fist on the lectern.
“I don’t!” Cody muttered mulishly.
“Suuuure you don’t,” Dev said under his breath.
“I said order!” The room got quiet. “Listen, I can’t do anythin’ about this right now; we’ve got a cavalry battle to get to.”
“But my life is in danger—”
“We’re all in danger. Kilpatrick’s Raid, son. Can’t do anythin’ about anythin’ else now.” Captain Cauldwell held up his hand for silence. “We’ll deal with this later. Men, fall out.”
Obediently, the men filed out of the schoolhouse, Beau shaking his head as he passed. Dev folded his arms, frowned, and grumpily slouched in his seat, refusing to move. We were alone in the schoolhouse.
“Well, that did nothing,” he complained.
“Well, what do you expect him to do?” I said helplessly. “I mean, I don’t know what he can do. How would you get rid of it?”
“I want it to go away. I expect him to make it go away. And I wasn’t kidding about that armed guard.”
“Excuse me.” A mother with a fanny pack, holding a small child and trailing two others behind her, stood in the door. “Is this the ‘Drop the Hanky’ Children’s Circle?”
“Um, does this look like the ‘Drop the Hanky’ Children’s Circle?” Dev snapped.
“Dev!” I admonished him. “Here, let me help you.” I picked up a schedule that someone had left on the floor from yesterday. “Yes, you’re right—it’s in this room, right after Kilpatrick’s Raid. Same time as the Ladies’ Tea in the Activity Barn.”
“Ladies’ Tea?” Dev perked up. “You think they’ll have coffee?”
“Only one way to find out.”
We spent the next hour watching Kilpatrick’s Raid, which was marginally more interesting than a normal battle, as it involved more horses. Dev, near delusional from lack of sleep, started yelling, “Save a horse, ride a cowboy!” until the woman standing behind us bopped him on the head with her parasol.
Not surprisingly, Dev and I were first in line for the Ladies’ Tea. He marched straight up to the plaid-clad, pagoda-sleeved matronly woman standing at the door of the Activity Barn.
“Pardon me, ma’am.” Dev smiled winningly. “You wouldn’t happen to have coffee in there, would you?”
“It’s a tea,” she said icily. “For ladies.”
“Humph.”
I shrugged. Dev gave up and went back to Sutlers’ Row. I joined the ladies for an hour of tea, almond sponge cake, knitting patterns, poetry readings, and a lengthy debate on the attractiveness of a beard. Dev may have gotten the better end of the bargain.
The next day was pretty much like the day before, only the Union corps broke through Hardee’s thinning line and crushed the rest of the Confederate soldiers. Eventually, it was all over, and all of the corpses, Beau included, picked themselves up. As they were re-forming their ranks to head back to camp, Beau waved, broke line, and jogged over to meet us.
“How’s it going?” Beau asked.
“Tired. Traumatized.” Dev sighed. “But really, what’s to be expected in my situation?”
“We’ve gotta do somethin’ about this,” Beau said, his jaw set.
“About what?” I asked.
“This ghost thing. It’s gone too far. We’ve gotta figure out who’s doin’ it and stop ’em.”
“Thank you!” Dev said. “Finally, someone is concerned for my safety and taking action!”
“Exactly,” Beau agreed. “We’re gonna take action. And we’ve gotta catch it. Er, her. It. Whatever.”
“Wait, ‘we’?” Dev stopped abruptly. “What is this ‘we’? I didn’t mean ‘we’ at all. I meant you.”
“You ready?” Beau turned to me.
“For what?” I asked nervously. I mean, sure I wanted this whole ghost thing to go away. But I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be running around in the woods trying to catch it.
“For the Military Ball tonight,” he said with a grin, changing the subject. “Time to break out those dance moves we’ve been workin’ on all week! We’ll get down to the bottom of this ghost thing after the party.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said anxiously. “I’m so not ready; my waltzing is atrocious.”
“It’s not atrocious,” he said kindly. “It’s just not good.”
“Thanks.”
“Uh, no, wait.” He blushed. “I didn’t mean—”
“Are you familiar with the phrase ‘honest to a fault’?” I teased him. “That was the fault.”
“Anderson!” someone yelled. “Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Sorry!” Beau yelled, as he jogged away. “I really didn’t mean it like that!”
“Sure you didn’t!” I yelled back.
“I’m not catching anything,” Dev said flatly as we walked back to our tent. “The two of you can take your Daphne-and-Fred-style sexual tension and solve whatever you want, but leave me out of this freaky Scooby-Doo nightmare.”
“There’s no sexual tension! Argh!” I smacked my forehead. “How many times do I have to say it? There’s nothing there! It’s all in your head!”
“Hmmm.” He fixed me with a look. “So you wouldn’t mind if I just put you in a sack dress for the ball tonight? I don’t really want to have to press any of the nicer gowns.”
“What, no!” I protested. “I have to look good. I—Wait a minute.” Dev was smiling with satisfaction. “Um, no, this has nothing to do with that. I want to look good because it’s a dance, and that’s what you do. You look nice. And I want to wear a pretty dress. It has nothing to do with anyone else. It’s all about me.” Dev choked on a laugh. “Wait, no, that’s not what I meant either.”
“Ah, Libby.” Dev slung an arm around my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “I’m finally starting to rub off on you.”
Of course Dev didn’t put me in a sack dress. It was a stunning off-the-shoulder gown of warm cream, with a cherry-red belt, cherry-red bows on the sleeves, and little blue-and-red cloth swallows pinning back the voluminous folds of the overskirt to reveal an underskirt dotted with a pattern of tiny printed swallows. I pulled on my white gloves as Dev tied a red sash on his Zouave uniform. The Zouaves were French infantrymen in North Africa who favored cropped open-fronted jackets, baggy trousers similar to harem pants, sashes, and bold colors. Units on both sides of the Civil War adopted their names and style of dress. And since this was a Military Ball—meaning anyone with a dress uniform would be in one—Dev felt that included him, too.
“Who doesn’t love a crop top?” Dev posed and extended his arm. “Let’s do this.”
On our way over to the Activity Barn, I felt an unfamiliar vibrating in my corset. My cell phone! It had been so long since I had used it, I had forgotten it was in there.
“Go!” I shoved Dev in toward the ball. “I’ll be there in a minute. Just go!”
“Um, okay.” He looked sort of confused but went into the Activity Barn without me.
Quickly, I darted behind a tree. I felt around the swallows parading on the front of my bodice and pulled out my phone.
“Garrett!” I whispered. “How are you?”
“Good, good, how are you?” He sounded happier than I’d heard him the last time we spoke. Certainly the happiest he’d been all summer.
“Oh, I’m fine. You sound good. I’m glad.”
“I can hardly hear you.”
“Sorry,” I whispered, slightly louder. “I’m not really supposed to be on a phone …”
“Have you seen the Tuscaloosa News?!” he asked excitedly.
“What?” Talk about the last thing I expected him to ask. “Um, yeah, I have. Why?”
“Libby! You out here?” It was Beau, calling for me. Shoot. I could not let him catch me with a cell phone. I would lose all my hard-core reenactor cred.
“Garrett, I’m so sorry—I have to go,” I said hurriedly.
“But, wait, Libby, I’m trying to tell you. I’m—”
“Sorry!” Guiltily, I snapped the phone shut and shoved it down the front of my dress.
“There you are!” Beau stood before me, straight-backed and tall, resplendent in his uniform. “May I have this dance?”
He held out his hand. I placed my gloved hand in his and followed him in.
five
“Now, where the hell are we?” Dev blinked into the sun. “Ugh, could somebody please hurry up and invent sunglasses? This is killing me. I’m, like, going blind.”
“If you’re waitin’ on the invention of sunglasses, you’ve got a ways to go. Sam Foster didn’t invent them until 1929,” Beau commented, as he hammered a post into the ground. “Course, the Chinese darkened eyeglasses by tinting them with smoke back in the 1400s. But they didn’t make ’em to protect your eyes from the sun, or reduce solar glare, or correct vision, or anythin’. Judges wore ’em to conceal their eyes while in session in court, so the jury wouldn’t have any idea what they were thinkin’.”
“Jesus.” Dev rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than Libby.”
I glared at Dev. I mean, come on, that was impressive.
“Sunglasses as we know ’em, glasses made specifically to shield your eyes, are strictly a twentieth-century phenomenon. So like I said, you’d have a ways to wait. And a ways to go. Sam Foster started sellin’ ’em up in Atlantic City. Not down here.”
“Which is where, again?” Dev asked. “Where is here?”
“Simpsonville, South Carolina.” Beau shook the pole, to make sure it was sturdy, before adding, meditatively, “The Golden Strip.”
“This is the Golden Strip?” Dev snorted. We stood at the edge of a dirt road and looked down a long green expanse of not much. “Um, why?”
“Low unemployment, or somethin’.” Beau stood up, wiping the dirt off on his pants. “And that’s a well-constructed tent right there.”
“With a name like the Golden Strip, you’d think there’d be more boutiques and less … dirt.” Dev rubbed his spotless boots with a silk handkerchief until they shone. “Or at least some strippers.”
No boutiques. And certainly no strippers. We were in a field behind the Upcountry South Carolina Historical Society, camping out until the Raid on Hopkins’ Farm that weekend. It was a much smaller reenactment, in a much smaller field, with even less to do. Another quiet week under the southern sun.
Dev never got that armed guard. The only people who had volunteered to sleep outside our tent and protect us from the ghost were Beau (whom Dev vetoed, as he was the ghost’s primary target and would therefore do more harm than good by attracting the ghost) and Cody (whom I vetoed, for obvious reasons). Even though another Boy Scout had left in the wake of our ghostly sighting, it ended up being for nothing. We hadn’t seen so much as a haunted footprint. Nothing even remotely spooky. Not a trace of the ghost.
So there was nothing to do but practice dancing. And I needed all the help I could get. Even by the close of the Friday Night Period Dance, a casual affair in the lantern-lit field, I still wasn’t really getting it.
“And one-two-three, one-two-three!” Beau shouted gaily, as we waltzed down the lane. Even though the dance was over, we hadn’t been ready to stop dancing. It was one of those perfect summer nights, where everything was bathed in moonlight, and you never wanted the sun to come up. “I said one-two-three! Three, Libby, three! What the hell are your feet doin’ down there?”
“I’m trying!” I shouted back. “I told you rhythm is not one of my strong suits.”
“See, Beau, you should have danced with me!” Dev shouted from behind us, as he ambled slowly out of the party, to make sure he hadn’t missed any hot prospects. There weren’t any in Simpsonville.
“Let’s do a spin!” I suggested.
“Aw, you ain’t ready.” Beau grinned.
“Twirl me!” I commanded. “Twirl! Twirl! Twirl!”
He did, and I twirled merrily down the lane, careening directly into the last person I expected to see south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
“Garrett?!” I gasped. “What—Wait—What—How?”
“Hey, Libby,” Garrett said warily, eyes on Beau, who had crossed his arms and was looking Garrett up and down, sizing him up. Garrett was taller, but Beau’s build reflected a lifetime of football, and Garrett’s reflected the approximately eighteen hours a day he spent in front a computer screen.
“What are you doing here?” I regained my composure, getting over my initial surprise, and hugged him tightly. “Oh, it’s so good to see you,” I said, melting into his arms.
Garrett looked down at me, and his somewhat stony face softened. “You too.” He smiled, then cupped my face in his hands and pulled it up toward his. “God, I missed you. You have no idea.”
“Me too.” He kissed me, and I clung to hi
m, never wanting to let him go.
“Ahem.” Someone coughed discreetly in the lane. Oh, right. I broke away, somewhat embarrassed. Beau was scuffing his boot, watching it make little eddies in the dirt. Dev was now practically sprinting up the lane, a manic gleam in his eye, clearly beside himself with excitement at the potential for drama rapidly developing in a random field in the South Carolina upcountry.
“Hey, man,” Garrett said gruffly, his already low voice dropping two octaves until it reached a Tom Waits–ian rumble, and slung an arm around my shoulder. “’Sup?”
I shot him a look, as if to say, Who are you, and what have you done with my boyfriend? Because I don’t think Garrett had ever said “’sup” in his life.
“Ah, yes,” Beau said, nodding. “This must be the reporter.”
Except with his accent, of course, it sounded more like “re-poht-ah.”
Which prompted Garrett to say, “Yep, the reporter.” And hit each r so hard, they cut through the air like a knife. Couldn’t cut the tension, though. Because Garrett then murmured, so low that only I could hear it, “And this must be the reason you hung up on me.”
The color drained from my face. “No, Garrett,” I assured him. “Well, maybe, technically. But not the way you think! Let me explain. It’s just that we’re not supposed to have cell phones here, and he was about to catch me, so I—”
“So, what brings you to town?” Dev asked cheerily. “Vacationing on the Golden Strip?”
“On the what?” Garrett blinked behind his glasses, confused.
“Welcome to the Glamorous Golden Strip!” Dev flung his arms open wide. “Upcountry South Carolina! The Vacationland!”
“Maine’s the Vacationland,” Garrett said. “I’m not on vacation. I’m here to see Libby.”
I’m not on vacation? I mean, that didn’t sound good.
“Wait, is this business or pleasure?” Dev asked for clarification
“Business.”
“Not pleasure?” I asked, panicky.
“Burn,” Dev whispered.
“No, no.” Garrett pushed up his glasses to rub in between his eyes. “The real reason I’m here is to be with Libby. The practical reason I’m here is for work.”
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