Ruined

  In front of the float, flambeaux twirled and dipped, their flames streaking the night sky. Occasionally they paused -- when someone pushed through the crowd to hand them some change or a folded dollar bill -- but most of the time they were on the move. The kerosene was pungent, and fumes from the tractor pulling the float belched into Rebecca's face; cigarette smoke wafted over from the crowd.

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  Between twisting from side to side, as best she could, to throw beads, and being surrounded by the constant movement of rushing bodies, waving arms, trotting horses, and dancing flambeaux, Rebecca started feeling flustered, sweaty, and dizzy. They seemed to have been rolling for hours, but they were still on St. Charles Avenue.

  A couple of times the parade ground to a halt for unknown reasons.

  "Why have we stopped?" Rebecca asked the steward the first time; she had to strain to look over her shoulder at him.

  "Don't know." He was very brusque, preoccupied with ripping open bags of beads and tearing the paper fastener off each bunch. The empty plastic bags he just tossed onto the road. "Some float's hit a tree, maybe. A tractor might have broken down. Or maybe someone got run over."

  This last thought seemed to amuse him.

  At least these stops gave her a chance to get her bearings, though they also provided an opportunity for people to rush the float, reaching up to her with imploring hands, begging for whole bags of beads. The dukes muttered to each other, and the flambeaux adjusted their holsters, dripping black oil onto the road. Then, abruptly, they'd be off again. Behind her -- stretching for miles, she guessed -- all the floats packed with krewe members were dispensing beads and other throws; Rebecca could hear the roar of the crowd as floats passed and school marching bands played. But all she could see was the float ahead of her -- it was carrying the two other maids, dressed as water and wind -- and the flambeaux and dukes on horseback encircling her float.

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  After the parade rounded Lee Circle and entered downtown, the parade-goers seemed even more boisterous. Maybe they're drunker, Rebecca thought, because they've been waiting such a long time. Her arms ached from throwing; her neck was stiff with the effort of twisting, and she couldn't move the lower part of her body at all. The steward kept thrusting string after string of plastic beads into her hands, and she did her best to smile and keep throwing. Why the girls of Temple Mead thought this particular role a glamorous one, she didn't know. It was utterly exhausting, especially when the floats turned onto the craziness that was Canal Street. The entire city had to be out tonight, cramming every inch of sidewalk and neutral ground, screaming and whistling and clamoring for throws.

  It was a relief, after the parade began wending its way back along Magazine Street, to start recognizing landmarks closer to home -- even though, as the crowds thinned, Rebecca could feel the cold wind blowing off the river. Her feathers rippled in the stiff breeze, and her hands, protected only by the thin gloves, felt numb and weary. The sound of one of the marching band's drums made her head pound. She stifled a yawn -- it had to be getting close to midnight. The sky was black as ink, the stars diamond-sharp.

  But now wasn't the time to feel tired. The royal floats of Septimus were turning onto Prytania at long, long last: The parade was over. Soon her float would pass the Bowman mansion. This was the vital moment, Rebecca knew; She had to look up at the Bowman house, look for Helena. She wanted to make absolutely sure that Miss Celia's prophecy was played

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  out to the letter, however terrible the consequences. It was important not to be distracted or to look away.

  As her float rolled nearer and nearer to the Bowman mansion, the white walls of the cemetery visible on the other side of the street, a knot of anxious anticipation grew in the pit of Rebecca's stomach. She turned her face to the right, staring up through the fortress of oak trees. The gray walls of the Bowman house were in sight. Any moment now, Rebecca would be looking straight at it.

  Now! Rebecca's gaze swooped from the empty gaslit porch up to the third-floor windows, but she couldn't see anybody. The blinds were down, the curtains were drawn. Apart from the light beside the front door, the house appeared to be in total darkness. Panic made her heart beat faster: Where was Helena?

  The tractor pulling her float seemed to be picking up speed. Suddenly the Bowman house was behind them. Rebecca grasped her fistful of beads, ignoring the shouts of the thin scattering of parade-goers gathered here, hoping that some of the royal floats still had leftover throws to unload. She couldn't believe she'd messed up.

  Maybe everything was OK: Helena might have been inside the house, looking out, and Rebecca simply couldn't see her. Maybe she'd been peeking through a gap in the curtains. Still, this wasn't the result Aunt Claudia had wanted. The first thing Rebecca had to do when her aunt got her out of this concrete boot of a costume was tell her what had -- or rather, hadn't -- happened.

  Her float made the wide turn onto Louisiana Avenue, trundling toward the river. As it turned, Rebecca glimpsed

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  the first floats in the long procession -- the king's, the queen's, the captain's -- slowing down, preparing to stop. She felt too agitated to be tired now, the wind sharp against her cheeks: She wanted to get off this float and to talk to her aunt.

  Rebecca let the beads in her hand drop and was glad that the steward was no longer bothering to pass her more.

  "We're stopping soon, right?" she asked him. There was no reply. When Rebecca tried to glance over her shoulder, all she could see was the vast, bright canopy of her feather headdress, billowing in the wind.

  The tractor slowed again, flanked now on each side by one of the dukes on horseback. And then, to Rebecca's surprise, it began to turn again, heading back into the Garden District down a narrow side street where all the streetlights were out.

  "Where are we going?" she asked -- still no response. "Hello? Why are we ..."

  A hand slapped across her mouth, pressing so tight Rebecca could barely breathe. What was going on? Who the hell was gripping her head so tightly she couldn't turn it at all? She squirmed, trying to shout, trying to move, but she was pinioned in place by her costume, its ropes and safety belt, and whoever was trying to keep her quiet.

  The houses along the street were all dark and silent; not a soul was about. The horses' hooves clicked against the asphalt, their riders never once glancing back at Rebecca. In the distance, she could hear the faint sounds of drums and tooting horns: The parade was coming to an end on Jackson Avenue. The musicians and baton twirlers would pile back into school buses; the krewe members would pour off their

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  floats, throwing their empty bags and cans into the street, pulling off their masks. Nobody would hear her shouts -- not them, not Aunt Claudia -- even if this man took his clammy hand off her mouth. Terror rose in her throat. What was happening? Where were they taking her -- and why? And suddenly, she understood.

  Up ahead, white walls glared at her, bright as lights. The float was headed for the Coliseum Street gate of the cemetery.

  And, like one of the gladiators of the ancient world, Rebecca was being taken there to fight for her life.

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  ***

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ***

  Through the cemetery gate, masked men poured: Some carried flaming torches, smaller than the ones toted by the flambeaux. Others climbed onto the float, detaching Rebecca's headdress and pulling her roughly out of her pinioned skirt. She struggled, kicking her legs wildly at them, lashing out with her arms. Writhing and twisting, she could see that Marianne was no longer on the float; the stewards were gone as well. There was just her, the immobile costumes, and these ominous, silent men in masks and dark capes.

  One big man lifted Rebecca off her feet, throwing her over his shoulder as though she were a sack of potatoes. "No!" she screeched. "Let me go! Help! Help!" She tried to kick him in the stomach, but the toe of her sneaker just thudded against his rock-hard leg. The path illumi
nated by the men with torches, the little procession -- totally silent apart from Rebecca's outraged cries -- made its way through the dark cemetery.

  Gold prickled her bare legs -- Rebecca was wearing nothing

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  now but her shorts and leotard -- and she drummed her hands against the man's back, though this seemed to have no impact on him.

  "Put me down!" she spat, trying not to cry: Her voice was cracking, and she wanted to sob with rage and frustration and fear.

  Without a word, he did as she asked, dumping Rebecca hard onto the ground. She lay sprawled, blinking in the semidarkness until her teary eyes could focus.

  She was surrounded, hemmed in by tall white tombs and more than a dozen men, every one of them wearing a mask. Some were in costumes she recognized from the floats before the parade began; others wore the more ornate garb of the dukes on horseback. Some people simply wore heavy coats, as though they hadn't taken part in the parade at all. The identical blank-faced masks were turned toward her, alien and expressionless. Beyond them were shadows fading into darkness, the spreading canopies of oak trees like black clouds hanging low in the sky.

  Glancing around in desperation, Rebecca could see there was nowhere to run: Every possible route, even a narrow sliver between vaults, was blocked by a masked onlooker. She scrambled back, bumping against the steps of a tomb. The Bowman tomb.

  "Aunt Claudia!" she screamed, but her voice was squeaky, breaking the words into two. Who knew if her aunt was still looking for her among the floats on Louisiana -- or if she too had been grabbed by masked men?

  She pulled herself up the steps, waiting for her back to knock against the gravestone fixed to the front of the tomb:

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  Instead she bumped into legs. A girl's legs. Rebecca looked up: Helena!

  Helena Bowman stood leaning against the family vault. She was dressed in a heavy black coat and jeans; her pale, peaky face looked scared. The stone angel on top of the tomb loomed above her, and for the first time Rebecca realized that the object in the angel's hands was the mysterious emblem on the Septimus flag -- an upside-down torch.

  "Let me go!" Rebecca bleated, though she knew nobody here had any intention of letting her go anywhere, any time soon. "Please! I haven't done anything!"

  "Shut up!" a woman's voice spat at her, and Rebecca thought she recognized the speaker as Mrs. Bowman. The woman -- in a mask and long black coat -- stepped forward, wrapping her arms around the shivering Helena.

  "Move away, Terri," a man ordered her in a booming voice: Rebecca started, because she couldn't tell who was speaking. Everyone looked exactly the same. But one thing she was sure of: They were all Bowmans and Suttons and their closest allies.

  Helena started whimpering, clinging to her mother.

  "I want it to be over" she said in a petulant voice. "I want it over with now!"

  "No!"

  Another man's voice, but a younger one this time: Someone was pushing through the small crowd until he stood in front of the tomb, in the flickering light cast by the torches. He pulled off his mask, throwing it onto the ground.

  "Anton!" Rebecca gazed at him, and everything inside her ached with sadness at the sight of his stricken face. She

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  couldn't stop herself from crying now, her body convulsing with sobs. The guilty horror on his face told the whole story: He had betrayed her. He must have told his family -- or the Bowmans, or both -- that Rebecca could see the ghost. Whether he realized what that meant or not was immaterial. Someone else had grasped the truth: Rebecca had to be a Bowman daughter, the second girl seen in Miss Celia's prophecy all those years ago.

  "Get back," a man growled at Anton, pushing him away.

  "Rebecca," he cried. "I never meant to ..."

  "Be quiet!" It was Helena's mother's turn to rip off her mask, hurling it onto the steps. Her face was quivering with anger. "You should remember who you are!"

  Someone grabbed the shoulder of Rebecca's leotard, hauling her to her feet and ripping off a scattering of red sequins in the process.

  "Step away now, Terri," another man said. Mrs. Bowman hugged Helena, then slowly backed down the stairs, inadvertently kicking her mask. Rebecca wanted to throw up. Everything from the prophecy was in place: the cold night, people in masks and costumes, the flames on her dress, she and her cousin standing together, face-to-face, by torchlight. Two daughters of the Bowman house, both sixteen years old.

  One girl would live, and the other would die. And the curse would die with her.

  A masked man, one of the dukes who'd ridden alongside Rebecca's float for the whole parade, stepped forward. He was holding a gun, his gloved hand shaking.

  "No!" she gasped, shivering with terror. There was no way to escape, nowhere to run. In desperation Rebecca grabbed

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  Helena's arm; the other girl tried to shake her off. The look on Helena's face was that of pure contempt. As she struggled to push Rebecca away, Helena's mouth pressed into that same tight, malicious smile Rebecca remembered from the day they'd delivered her flowers. It was almost as though she was enjoying Rebecca's terror, getting some twisted satisfaction from what was about to happen.

  "I don't like this," the man with the gun said; he was still holding it low, not pointing it at Rebecca. "We've never intervened in fate before. The curse just has to take its course."

  "No!" screamed Helena's mother. "We have to save Helena! Do you hear me?"

  Another tussle was going on at the foot of the stairs: Anton had surged forward again and was being dragged away by one of the men.

  "Get him out of here!" someone shouted, and Anton was silenced, swallowed up by the crowd. Helena had pulled free of Rebecca's grip, wriggling far enough away to give the man at the bottom of the steps a clear shot.

  "Rebecca!"

  That was Lisette's voice! Rebecca looked around wildly, trying to spot her, but all she could see was the circle of expressionless masks.

  "Get away!" Helena shrieked, and Rebecca twisted, following Helena's gaze. Lisette was lying flat on the domed roof of the tomb, crawling tentatively toward the edge. "Get her away from here!"

  Helena stabbed an accusing finger in the air, but nobody below them moved. They'd just think she was pointing up at

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  the angel, Rebecca thought: Nobody else could see the ghost up on the Bowman tomb's roof. Only Helena and Rebecca could see and hear Lisette.

  "What is it, darling?" Mrs. Bowman cried.

  Lisette stretched one arm down, reaching toward Rebecca.

  "Take my hand!" she pleaded. "Quick!"

  For a split second Rebecca hesitated -- Gould she trust Lisette? Was this all part of this sick ceremony of death? -- but she had no choice: Any moment now she was going to be shot, right here on the steps of the tomb. She turned her back to the masked crowd, standing on tiptoes, her whole body stretching so she could reach Lisette's hand. Just one more inch ... there!

  The loud communal gasp she heard had to mean one thing: Rebecca was now invisible to everyone. As far as they were all concerned -- the men in masks, Helena's mother, the man with the gun, even Anton--she'd just vanished into thin air.

  But one person could still see her.

  "She's here!" Helena shouted, her voice choking and enraged. "For god's sake, shoot her! Shoot her now!"

  Helena tugged at Rebecca's outstretched arm, trying to pull her free from Lisette's grasp. Lisette was dangling perilously off the edge of the tomb, now with two hands holding Rebecca. With her free hand, Rebecca pushed at Helena, trying to fight her off.

  "She's right here -- shoot! Shoot!" Helena sounded as though she was possessed, and she must have looked that way as well, grappling with a person nobody else could see.

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  "I can't ... I can't see her," said the man with the gun.

  "You can climb up," Lisette told Rebecca. "I got up right from where you're standing -- put one foot on the top of that stone there." Rebecca managed
to haul herself up part of the way, but it wasn't easy: She felt as though she was about to get torn in two. Above her, Lisette was tugging her right arm out of its socket, and below her, Helena was pulling and clawing at Rebecca's bare legs, trying to drag her back down.