Unbroken (24 page)

A
s soon as they found Ling and Phil, crawling along in stop-start traffic, Anton took over the driving. Rebecca told him to head for Rampart Street.

“I could kill Toby!” Ling ranted. “Becca, I’m
so
sorry we lost you. The crowd was too crazy. He must have been waiting for his moment.”

“I’m OK,” Rebecca told her. “I think I might have pulled some of his hair out, at least.” She had to laugh. “Phil got a T-shirt at Jazz Fest. I got two handfuls of Toby Sutton’s hair.”

“And what does Aurelia think she’s doing, running off like this, making us all crazy with worry?” Ling spluttered.

“She thinks she’s helping,” Rebecca said, wishing she could turn around to face Ling without her neck zinging with pain. “By the way, Raf told me that the house on St. Philip Street has been broken into. The boards are off the back door, and he said anyone could walk in right now.”

“Who did that? Toby?”

“I have no idea how he would break into a house if it’s all boarded up,” said Anton, zooming down a side street to try to avoid traffic, but getting stuck again at the end. “He doesn’t have any money to buy supplies.”

“He had enough money to get into Jazz Fest,” Ling pointed out. “Maybe Marianne gave him money? Maybe that’s why she came down from Mississippi for the dance?”

“You know, I should call my dad,” Rebecca said. “I should have told him all about this today, or last night, or — or right away yesterday in the cemetery when we found out that the locket might contain a Degas.”

“What Degas?” asked a startled Anton.

“Wait a minute,” interjected Ling. “How would Toby know which house?”

“Gideon Mason,” Rebecca told her.

“No,” groaned Ling.

“Who is Gideon Mason?” Anton demanded. “And what’s this about a Degas? You mean, the French painter?”

“I shouldn’t have kept all this a secret from my dad,” Rebecca said, ignoring Anton’s questions. “If I call him now …”

“What could your dad do?” Ling demanded. “Hop to the corner on his sprained ankle? Call the police and tell them to be on the lookout for a girl and a ghost? Two ghosts, actually.”

“Who is this Gideon Mason?” Anton was shouting.

“Another ghost,” Rebecca told him. “The one who murdered Frank. Toby’s talked to him, but I don’t think he realizes that Gideon Mason is a ghost.”

“OK, so this ghost thing is totally a new development,” said Phil, who’d been sitting quietly until now. “Maybe someone could bring me up to speed?”

“Actually,
Degas
is the new development,” said Anton. “I don’t know who this guy Raf is, I don’t know what some dead French Impressionist has to do with anything….”

“Don’t forget the ghost!” Phil called out.

“Two ghosts,” Ling reminded them.

“I don’t even know why we’re driving to Rampart and not St. Philip Street,” Anton said.

“We can’t explain it all now,” Ling snapped. “Can’t you drive any faster?”

“Look,” said Rebecca, “here’s the deal. Please, just listen.”

She twisted her whole body to protect her sore neck, so she was sort of facing Anton, and Phil could see more than the back of her head.

“The main ghost is a young guy named Frank who was murdered in 1873. The day he died, he dropped a locket through the floorboards of a house on St. Philip Street so the guy murdering him couldn’t steal it.”

“And the guy murdering him was this Gideon Mason guy,” Phil said.

“Yes. And we have reason to believe that the locket was entrusted to Frank by the artist Degas, who spent some time here in New Orleans.”

“Cool!” said Phil.

Rebecca talked as fast she could. “The house is being demolished next week, so this is incredibly urgent. If the locket isn’t rescued and returned to its rightful owners — the descendants of Degas’ family, I guess — then Frank is condemned to being a ghost for eternity. Plus something that belonged to Degas is completely destroyed.”

“Not cool!” said Phil, and Ling shushed him.

“Raf is a guy who lives near the house, and Ling and I have been volunteering at his school this week.” Rebecca shot Anton a be-jealous-if-you-dare look. “Yesterday I asked him if he could help us break into the house to find the locket, but he was really not happy about that, because he thought it would be dangerous, and he might get into trouble, and …”

“At least someone here is using their brain,” interjected Anton, and Ling kicked the back of his seat.

“Hey!” she said. “You have no intellectual high ground! You had the fake locket idea! That worked out, huh?”

“But,” Rebecca continued, “as I was saying, when I saw Raf today, he told me someone has already broken down the back door of the house. This could mean various things — that Toby’s trying to get in to find the locket, that someone else is
trying to get in to find the locket, that, say, drug dealers have been using the house …”

“This gets better and better,” muttered Anton.

“But it also means
we
can get in now, right?” Ling asked. “If we ever get through this stupid traffic.”

“Right,” said Rebecca. The busted-down back door was the only semi-good news of the day, as far as she could see.

“Permission to speak, Team Leader,” asked Phil, raising his hand. “Please explain the missing cousin.”

Rebecca sighed.

“My cousin got wind of this whole locket-under-the-floorboards story the other day. She saw Frank, and got really overexcited. She wants to help him, and thinks I’m just trying to stop her, to keep all the great ghost stuff for myself. I think she went down to the Quarter yesterday to talk to Frank again, and that she’s planning — I don’t know what. Maybe to go to the house right now and look for the locket?”

“Permission to speak again. What do we think Toby is planning?”

Just thinking of Toby and his plans made Rebecca’s stomach turn. “All he knows is that I’m looking for a locket.” Rebecca and Anton exchanged looks. “He knows that the one I was wearing last night was a plant. So today he ripped it off my neck and threw it away. He also knows, I guess, that Aurelia is part of the whole locket-search thing.”

“And we’re driving to Rampart Street because …” This was Anton.

“Because when I want to find Frank, that’s where I go. And that’s where Aurelia met him, so I think she’ll probably go back there today. I just sent her a text telling her to wait for us on Rampart Street. Whether she will, I don’t know. If she had to walk there, we might even get there first.”

“I’m keeping my eyes peeled,” Ling said. “It’s easier to make things out now that it’s stopped raining.”

“So, best-case scenario,” said Phil. “We get there first and intercept her before she runs into a drug dealer or Toby.”

“Yes,” said Rebecca, her nerves starting to chatter. “And worst case, we’re too late. Toby gets the locket and destroys it or runs off with it, just to spite me. And he hurts Aurelia.” Rebecca’s throat tightened. “Anton, really — you just missed that light! Can’t you get us there any quicker?”

“This isn’t the Batmobile, you know! I have to, like, drive on the road!”

“But maybe if we’re not too late, I’ll get to meet one of these ghosts?” asked Phil. “Good ghost, bad ghost? Whatever?”

“Probably not,” Ling told him. “Ghosts are very picky. They don’t make themselves visible to just anybody.”

“Man! I’d rather see a ghost than a drug dealer.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you know judo,” sniffed Ling.

“Judo’s not so great when the other people have guns. They
never told us that in elementary school, but I figured it out for myself.”

“Could everyone please stop talking?” Rebecca asked. Anton was flying along Rampart Street now, swooping into a U-turn. “This is it! We’re here.”

Rebecca was out of the car before it came to a complete halt, sloshing through the flooded gutter. The sky looked menacing, brimming with rain. Another downpour was on its way. Aurelia was nowhere to be seen.

“Frank! Frank!” Rebecca bellowed. Ling was on the sidewalk now as well, striding up and down, shouting Frank’s name. The boys had stayed in the car, probably at Ling’s request. That was good thinking. Rebecca didn’t want to scare Frank off by turning up with strangers.

But where was Frank? Fat raindrops were falling now, plopping onto Rebecca’s head. With every moment that passed, it was getting later and darker; the house in Tremé would be even more difficult to navigate. Getting in was one thing; finding the locket was another. They needed Frank.

“He’s always found me before,” she told Ling frantically. “I’ve never had to wait this long when I wanted to see him. But he could be anywhere — down by the river, on Carondelet, somewhere in the Quarter. Over by the cemetery. I just don’t know.”

“What should we do?” Ling asked her. “Go straight to the house on St. Philip Street and see if Aurelia and Frank are there already?”

Rebecca walked to the curb, balancing at the very edge and staring up at the derelict town house.

“I have another idea,” she told Ling. “Delphine! Delphine! Please! I need your help!”

“Who is Delphine?” Ling asked, puzzled.

“That ghost girl, remember? She comes out on the top gallery when it’s dark.”

“How can
she
help?”

“She likes Frank.”

“You mean,
likes
likes?”

“Maybe. I don’t know — Delphine!” To Rebecca’s immense relief, a pearly light beamed from the top gallery, transforming its rusted railings into a sparkling jewel box. It was hard to believe no one else could see this, Rebecca thought; in the gloomy, sodden twilight, Delphine’s ghostly light swirled out into the sky like dry ice pouring from a stage.

“Yes?” Delphine was there, smiling her sweet smile, leaning so far over the railings she looked as though she might tip over.

“Delphine, I really need your help!” Rebecca shouted up.

“You can see her?” Ling asked. “Really?”

“Allo, Rebecca!” Delphine was waving, but Rebecca really needed her to focus. This wasn’t a social call.

“I have to find Frank!” she shouted, rain hitting her upturned face. Anton and Phil in the car would have had no idea what she was doing or who she was talking to. She’d forgotten to mention there was a third ghost. “I think he may have met up with my
cousin, Aurelia, right here on the corner. She’s younger than me — short dark hair, about this tall …”

“Oh!” Delphine looked dismayed. “You know that girl? The skinny girl with the curls?”

“Yes! Have you seen her?”

Delphine nodded slowly.

“When?”

“Just five, perhaps ten minutes ago,” Delphine called, stretching over the railings. “But Rebecca — she was not with Frank!”

“Really?” Rebecca wiped raindrops out of her eyes. Maybe Aurelia got tired of waiting for Frank as well, and just headed off to the house on St. Philip.

“She was with that other ghost,” said Delphine. “That nasty man, the one I warned you about. Monsieur Mason. I saw them talking together, and then he took her hand and they walked away. That way.”

Delphine pointed toward Tremé.

“No,” groaned Rebecca. This was a worst-case scenario she hadn’t considered. The ghost Aurelia was talking with yesterday — it wasn’t Frank. It was Gideon Mason. And maybe he hadn’t been so mean to Aurelia. Maybe he’d been very, very nice. He was working Aurelia; he was working Toby. One way or another, he meant to get to that locket before Rebecca and Frank could.

“Rebecca, what’s going on?” Anton was standing next to her now, staring up at the town house. “What are you looking at? Who’s Delphine? What’s happened?”

“OK.” Rebecca was trying to pull herself together. She pushed damp hair out of her face, and stood with Phil, Anton, and Ling in a little huddle on the curb. “I’ve just been talking to another ghost named Delphine.”

“What do you mean, another ghost?” demanded Anton. “You never mentioned another ghost!”

“So now there are three ghosts?” Phil asked. “Whoa!”

“Three who matter to us, anyway. Delphine says she saw Aurelia walking up to Tremé holding the hand of a ghost, but the problem is, the ghost wasn’t Frank. It was Gideon Mason, the murderer. He wants the locket destroyed. He’s been following me this whole week and threatening me….”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Anton demanded.

“What could you have done?” asked Rebecca, wincing; her neck ached. “Ghosts can only hurt each other, anyway.”

“So that means he can’t hurt Aurelia, right?” Raindrops dribbled down Ling’s face. This was the second time this week, Rebecca realized, she’d made poor Ling stand out in the rain talking about ghosts.

“I don’t think so. But he
can
get her or Toby to find the locket and then maybe destroy it. Throw it into the river or something — I don’t know. He could be spinning Aurelia some
line about how the locket is cursed. Aurelia doesn’t know the whole story. Toby doesn’t, either, but he’ll destroy anything if he thinks I want it.”

“They’re on their way to the house now?” Anton asked, and Rebecca nodded. “Then let’s go!”

“Hang on!” Ling grabbed his arm. “Becca, didn’t you just say Aurelia and the ghost were holding hands? Doesn’t that make Aurelia invisible?”

“It does.” This just got worse and worse.

“So I won’t be able to see her, and neither will Phil or Anton.”

“I won’t be able to see her, either,” said Rebecca, “unless Gideon Mason makes himself visible to me. And ghosts can pick and choose when that happens. If Frank was here, two of us could hold his hands, but without him, we won’t be able to see Gideon or Aurelia or anything….”

“Unless …” said Ling. She turned to face the town house. “Ghost girl! Delphine! Can you hear me?”

Delphine, arms resting on the railings, gazed down with interest.

“I can’t see you, but I know you’re there!” Ling bellowed. She was looking up toward the wrong end of the gallery, but Rebecca was sure Delphine could hear her. They could probably hear Ling in Congo Square. “We need your help! Please come down!”

“Please, Delphine!” Rebecca pleaded. Frank had said Delphine was a friend of Lisette’s, that they’d gone to school
together. Delphine must have walked through the streets of Tremé all the time when she was alive, and that meant she could haunt them now. If she chose to come down from the gallery. “For Frank’s sake — please!”