“Could have stayed in the lounge,” says Jacob, sagging back on the sidewalk. “Just relaxed like normal people.”
“We’re not normal,” I mutter, brushing off the Veil like cobwebs.
“There you are,” says Mom, appearing in the doorway. “Hungry?”
* * *
I’m not thrilled about going back into Muriel’s, but the food looks really good.
Jenna and Adan stash their camera equipment under the table, and Lucas puts away his notes as dishes arrive. Mom and Dad have this rule that when we travel, I can order whatever I want, but I have to take one bite of whatever they get. Which is how I end up with a plate of fried chicken and biscuits, but find myself facing down Mom’s bowl of gumbo, and Dad’s shrimp and grits.
Gumbo, it turns out, is a kind of stew poured over rice. It’s rich, and full of flavors—and pieces of things I don’t necessarily recognize—but it tastes good. Grits, on the other hand, look like grainy porridge, like something that was supposed to dissolve but didn’t.
But a deal is a deal, so I brace myself and take a bite of the grits, and they’re … good. Salty and buttery and simple, creamy without being rich. It reminds me of grilled cheese sandwiches, and chicken nuggets, the food I crave when I’m sick, or sad, or tired.
Comfort food.
I take another spoonful, and Dad offers to trade plates, but I think I’ll stick with my fried chicken. I glance around, trying to keep track of Jacob. I see him wandering from table to table, eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. Poking saltshakers and nudging napkins, having staring contests with people who can’t see him. He wanders into the kitchen and comes back a few minutes later, looking pale.
“You don’t want to know how they make lobster,” he says.
I roll my eyes.
When we’re all stuffed and the plates have been cleared away, Adan leans his elbows on the table and says, “I’ve got a ghost story for you.”
Everyone perks up.
“It’s about the LaLaurie,” he adds, and the mood at the table changes around me.
“What’s that?” I ask. I remember the name from the list of locations in the binder.
“The LaLaurie Mansion,” explains Lucas, his voice quiet and tense, “is considered the most haunted place in New Orleans.”
“And for good reason,” adds Mom, and for once, the topic of ghosts doesn’t seem to make her cheerful. There’s a crease in her forehead, and her mouth is a pale pink line.
“What happened?” I ask, looking around, but no one seems willing to tell me.
Adan clears his throat and presses on.
“Right,” he says, “the LaLaurie Mansion has a gruesome past, but this story isn’t about way back then. This one’s new. It happened just a few years ago. People keep buying the house, you know, but no one stays too long. Well, a big-shot actor, he buys the house, and asks a friend of a friend of mine to stay in it, to watch the property. Alone.”
Jacob and I exchange a look, and I don’t need to read my friend’s mind to hear him thinking, Nope.
“So she goes to bed that night, and she’s just falling asleep when her cell phone rings. She doesn’t answer, just rejects the call. But an hour later, it rings again. This time, she’s annoyed, so she silences the phone, tries to go back to sleep. An hour later, it rings again, and she finally looks to see who’s calling her in the middle of the night.”
Adan lets the question hang over the table. And then he smiles, just a little, the way Mom does when she hits the best part of a story.
“It was the landline in the house,” he says. “Where she’s the only one home.”
The table erupts into noise.
Jenna says, “OH MY GOD,” and Mom applauds, and Dad laughs and shakes his head, and chills run across my skin, the kind I love, no danger, no fear, just the thrill that happens when you hear a good story.
“Well, on that note,” says Mom as we stand to leave, “who’s up for a séance?”
If you’ll follow me …”
The voice belongs to Alistair Blanc, the Hotel Kardec’s resident Spiritist.
“The proper title is Master of Spirits,” he said when he met us in the lobby tonight. Apparently Lucas called to schedule a séance for us earlier today, after Mom and I offered our enthusiastic yes at Café du Monde.
The Master of Spirits is a small white man, with short silver hair and a sharp goatee, deep-set eyes, and a long thin nose topped by a pair of little round glasses. And he’s currently leading us through a door near Kardec’s copper bust and into a narrow hall, so dark we practically have to feel our way to the end. He picks up the edge of a velvet curtain, and holds it aside.
“Come in, come in. Don’t be shy,” says Mr. Blanc, ushering us through into a dimly lit space. “Your eyes will adjust to the dark.”
This séance room is nothing like the one at Muriel’s. There’s no clutter, no tinny music, just a stuffy quiet. There’s velvet everywhere, the space draped like a tent, so it’s impossible to tell what size it really is. But it feels too small for six people and a ghost.
Lucas came along with us, and Jenna, too, but she left her camera supplies in the lobby with Adan, who seemed a little too eager to stay behind and watch their stuff. (“He’s not a huge fan of small spaces,” she whispered as we walked away, and I couldn’t help but think, Good thing he wasn’t with us down in the Catacombs beneath Paris.)
A chandelier hangs in the center of the room, an elaborate sculpture of hands, each holding a candle in a foggy glass jar. Six high-backed chairs sit like thrones around a table covered in black silk. A large black rock, like a giant paperweight, sits in the center. The rock seems more ornamental than functional, but I can’t stop looking at it. And the longer I look, the more my eyes play tricks on me.
If you’ve ever stared into a campfire, or the woods, or a blanket of snow, you understand. Your brain gets bored and starts doodling. Showing you things that aren’t there.
I stare at the stone until I can almost see shapes. Smudged faces in the dark.
Chairs scrape back, and I blink, dragging my attention back to the room, shivering.
It should be warm in here, stifling even, with all the velvet, but the air is cold, a draft sliding over my arms and ankles as I sit down.
I lift my camera, slide the focus in and out, but all I see is the room as it is.
No hint of the Veil.
No glimmer of something more.
I take a photo of the narrow space, even though the only way I’d be able to capture the full room is from overhead. That makes me think of a ghost story Mom once told me, of hotel guests and the photos they found on their camera, the ones they couldn’t possibly have taken, because of the angle, which was right over their bed.
Mr. Blanc takes his seat in a throne at the table. Candles rise at his back, and a large bell hangs on a hook by his elbow.
He gave us permission to film the séance—seemed eager, even, to be on camera—but Lucas said that wouldn’t be necessary. I get the feeling Lucas shares Dad’s opinion when it comes to this kind of thing.
According to Dad, séances are a spectacle of the supernatural.