I stood, straightening my gown. “I need to change.”
I left them to figure it out while I went upstairs and changed into the clothes that Michel had left out for me during my stay in the Quarter. Once that was done, I made sure the blade was in my backpack.
Sebastian was just zipping up his bag as I jogged down the stairs. The others stood by the front door with grim, determined faces. “I take it we’re all going?” I said.
“It’s a free country.” Sebastian slung his bag over his shoulder. “If anyone gets hurt, Charity Hospital is nearby.”
As the others headed outside and down Coliseum Street, I paused. 1331 First Street in the misty darkness before dawn was an awesome sight. A black, hulking shadow. An eerie, silent giant that guarded the ravaged streets. I gave it a respectful nod.
This was home. And I loved it.
I’d be forever grateful for what Bruce and Casey had done for me, but Memphis was not the place for me. More than anything I wanted to stay here, to make a life in the GD. On my terms. Not on the Novem’s terms.
Whether I would ever have that opportunity was yet to be decided, though. There was the little matter of getting the Novem and the Greek goddess of war off my back.
“Ari!” Dub called.
With one parting look, I hurried down the street, catching up with the others and falling into step with Sebastian. “So, what did you mean before about anyone getting hurt?”
“Part of the cemetery was flooded during the storms. A portion of it sank some. It hasn’t drained.”
Henri laughed. “Lafayette Swamp Cemetery is more like it. City of the Dead. Land of the Creepy Crawlies.”
A hard shiver raced straight up my spine to the back of my neck. I shuddered. Great.
“Like I said, if anyone gets bit, the hospital isn’t far away.”
But which part of the cemetery held the bones of Alice Cromley?
I didn’t ask, not really wanting to know. Get in, get out. That’s what I needed to focus on. With our group, maybe we’d scare away any “creepy crawlies” before they got too close.
A brush on my arm made me glance down to see Violet, Pascal’s head bobbing up and down with her small steps. “I hope it’s in the swampy part,” she murmured with a wistful expression.
O-kay. Maybe you should keep Violet by your side. If there were any snakes, she and Pascal could take care of them. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. Violet was going to stay right by my side.
Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 was four blocks over from First Street. The approaching dawn had turned the inky sky to a dull purple, enough light to see, but also enough to cast shadows in dark places and illuminate the long, silvery moss that hung from the oaks and cypress trees inside and outside of the cemetery. Through the tall wrought-iron fence, tombs were visible, rising like gray ghosts from the soft ground. The gate whined loudly as Henri pushed it open, the sound making my pulse rise.
The smell of wet stone and mud hung heavy in the dewy air, reminding me of the plantation house on the Mississippi. Leaves and debris littered the grounds around the main gate. Thick, bushy vines grew over the iron arch. I ducked under the vines and stepped onto what had once been a paved lane, but now it was cracked and covered with moss and weeds.
The only sound was the shuffle of our footsteps as we disturbed the hallowed ground. Long rows of tombs, carved to resemble miniature churches of marble and stone, ran down either side of the lane.
Time and the hurricanes had left their mark, leaving discoloration, fractures, and broken marble strewn all over. Some tombs had been lifted by the flood tides and carried to a high rubble pile against the fence. Within the rubble and vines and leaves were human bones and funerary pieces left to the elements.
I watched Sebastian’s back, wondering what had been so important for him to have come to a place like this to search out Alice Cromley.
Henri stopped at the end of one long alley. Sebastian continued past him, turning down another cluttered row where tombs closed in around us. There was enough light now to reveal small details on the ground. I tripped, distracted by a broken skull stuck under a slab of marble.
Dub gave me a gentle push over a rubble pile. “Don’t bother,” he said, noting the direction of my gaze, but mistaking my reasons for looking. “The place has been picked clean.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. The stuff they were buried with. Rings. Necklaces. Keepsakes. I found a giant ruby in that one over there.”
“You stole from a tomb?” I knew Dub was a grave robber. Sebastian had told me, but I couldn’t seem to get past the idea.
He shrugged and kicked a small bit of marble from the path. “Sure. Not like they’re gonna need it. Where do you think we got all that stuff last night? We sell it to Spits, he sells it to antique shops, and they sell it to the tourists.”
The idea of unsuspecting tourists walking around wearing a dead person’s jewelry gave me the willies. My thoughts went to the bedroom I’d slept in. “Please tell me that skull upstairs is not real.”
Crank laughed over her shoulder, her pigtail braids sticking out from the back of her cabbie hat. “That’s Eugene Hood from Saint Louis Number One.”
St. Louis No. 1 was a cemetery in the French Quarter. No wonder the skull had unnerved me; it was real!
I ducked under a low branch that had fallen across the tombs. The alley dead-ended at the tall iron fence that surrounded the cemetery. Sebastian ducked around the corner of a tomb, following the fence line down the soft carpet of leaves and grass until the ground became soft and squishy, and the scent of swamp grew stronger.
Up ahead, rows and rows of tombs rose out of the black, brackish water.
Sebastian turned again, filling me with relief. At least we weren’t going forward.
The squish, squish, squish of our steps became louder. My relief was short-lived as the thought of sinking into mud riddled with corpses, set my stomach clenching and my nerves on edge.
“Here it is,” Sebastian said quietly, stopping and facing a tomb. Two steps led to a six-foot-tall iron door, both sides framed with marble urns filled with sludge, debris, and a few tufts of grass. The tomb was covered in lichen and algae. The inscription on the door read: THE RIVER ANGELS, 1867.
Black water seeped over the toes of my boots the longer I stood in one spot. Violet let Pascal down, and the alligator scurried away, probably off to hunt for breakfast.
I glanced behind me to the dark, shadowy swamp, seeing the faint glow of eyes, dozens of eyes, and hoping to hell they were frogs or alligators.
Henri helped Sebastian shove the heavy iron door inward until the space was big enough to squeeze through. Then he stood back and wiped his hands. “I’m staying out here this time. Y’all have fun.”
Sebastian let his bag slide off his shoulder, unzipped it, and pulled out a fat vanilla-colored candle. “Dub.”
Dub snapped his fingers over the wick. Flame licked into the air as Sebastian faced me. “Ready?”
One last glance over my shoulder revealed that more glowing eyes had appeared, rows and rows of them, tiny dots bobbing in the water. Watching and waiting. I moved forward, suppressing a hard shudder and shaking off the bizarre idea that those glowing eyes had come for me.
Deep breaths. Long one in. Long one out.
I stepped up the cracked marble steps as Sebastian entered the tomb, leaving a small orange light for me to follow.
I angled my body, slipping easily inside.
The musty, damp air made it hard to breathe. About eight feet deep and maybe seven feet high at its vaulted peak, the tomb was big enough for four, maybe five people to stand with elbow room.
On each of the rectangular sides were two long shelves stacked with urns and funerary boxes. More had been stacked on the floor beneath the shelves.
“The tombs were reused over and over. That’s why there are so many bodies here. Back in the old days, they’d remove the bones from the latest coffin, put them into one of those boxes, and then bring in a new coffin with a new dead body. Once the body inside was decayed or another family member died, they’d repeat the process. Kind of like musical chairs for the dead.”
“Nice.” I looked around the small space, noticing that the older funerary boxes were cracked and rotting, bones peeking through. My heart pounded, because I was trying like hell not to draw the smell of decaying corpses into my lungs. “Which one was Alice?”
Sebastian walked to the very back of the tomb, where what I thought was a long marble seat was actually a stone coffin lining the back wall. Above it, in a niche carved into the marble wall, was an old half-burnt candle covered in rot.
“You just said they moved the bones into the boxes.”
“All but this one. That legend you heard from the carriage driver . . . the two bodies in the river? Just a story.” He placed the candle on the small niche shelf and then knelt at the tomb. “Help me push.” He took a spot at one corner while I knelt at the other, placing my hands on the rough marble lid.
“Okay, so what’s the real story then?”
“Alice Cromley was killed by her lover. A crime of passion. No one knows for sure exactly what happened, except that she wasn’t dumped in the river, and as she lay dying, she gave him instructions on how to prepare her body. Some voodoo ritual. He did as she asked, afraid of being cursed, and because, some say, he really did love her. Ready?”
I nodded, knowing I’d have to breathe soon. As it was, my lungs and heart could barely keep up. My teeth clenched as I faced the stone, finally dragging in a deep breath, knowing it was better to do it now than when the coffin was open and the air filled with . . . Alice Cromley.
The weight of the marble lid had us both sweating by the time we managed to angle the top part. Once that was done, we went to the other end and did the same, until the coffin was opened almost halfway.
Sebastian sat back. Sweat dampened his hairline. “That should do it.” He swiped his forearm over his brow before standing up to retrieve the candle. He gazed down into the coffin, his profile grim.
I rose up on my knees, tall enough to see over the ledge of the coffin and down into the final resting place of the infamous Alice Cromley.