Paula Morris (32 page)

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
illuminated 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.