“This can’t be right.” I glanced through the car window and watched the Spanish moss sway in the evening’s wind.
“I can only go where the map takes me, lady,” he said, and I hesitated in the backseat.
Fine. “Thanks a lot. I guess,” I said as I stepped out of the car, and he drove forward before I had the door closed.
Great.
Now I was stranded in a deserted, haunted cemetery at night alone. I wasn’t sure the cemetery had ghosts, but it was old, famous, and in the South. Odds were in the ghosts’ favor.
The Google Map icon for Bonaventure Bluff lay straight ahead, and I took a few steps in that direction, watching myself get closer on my phone’s screen. Why couldn’t tonight be the night the locals had a cemetery festival? Where were the tourists everyone complained about?
What about all those groups of people we did paranormal investigations with? Why weren’t they here on the hunt for ghosts?
A text lit up my screen and vibrated my phone. I read it through the preview while keeping the map open—you know, just in case the bluff moved.
REED: Do not go to that cemetery!
Oops.
Now he texted. It was way too late to help me make good choices at this point. A bird screamed about something overhead, and I flinched like it might come for me.
Great, an old cemetery with ghosts and angry crows.
The night continued to get better.
My stomach twisted with stress. Maybe coming here alone wasn’t an excellent decision. I turned around, ready to walk to the front of the cemetery and call an Uber home. What a failure. I’d have to buy a new laptop, and Delaney wasn’t getting her groundbreaking case, but at least I’d be alive.
I’d pulled up the phone app to call Reed and ask for a rescue when my name came from behind me.
“Elenore?” I spun around in time to see Samantha walk around the corner. It looked like she almost magically appeared on the pebbled stone pathway. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
Everything was certainly not okay, but I didn’t know how to explain that to her. I released my breath and unclenched my jaw, lowering the phone to my side.
“Hey,” I said, sounding as confused as she did. “I’m here with a tour,” I lied and pointed behind me like a group of people were waiting for me.
My phone vibrated again, and I checked for a text from Reed, but it was a call instead. I silenced it to stay on my game. Something about Samantha looked weird, but it had to be the shadows formed from the trees as the moonlight filtered through the leaves. If Selene didn’t kill Casey, then Samantha didn’t either.
“Oh, I saw a note at Selene’s to come here.” She glanced behind her and to the side. “I thought it was from my sister. Is she with you?”
Samantha walked to her left toward the trees on the edge of the walkway, and I followed her in that direction. No cars were coming, but it seemed like a good idea to get off the side of the road. My phone rang again, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Samantha. My stomach tightened, and my throat felt clogged.
“No, I just saw your sister earlier tonight. She had luggage and said she was headed to your place,” I said.
We were under the cover of the trees now, our bodies blending in with the shadows in the night. The cemetery went creepily silent. Even the angry murder crows stopped squawking.
Samantha shook her head. “No, that’s not right. I’m at her place until she decides what she wants to do after the funeral.”
“This whole thing is weird,” I mumbled, searching the sky for the crows. Did they just leave?
She scanned the sky with me and then moved a tree branch out of the way. “Have you seen the river view from this side of the cemetery? It’s gorgeous during the day or sunsets.”
“No, but my grandma always used to say, ‘They give the best spots to the dead.’” She had a lot of hard feelings about a cemetery in our hometown that stretched out over miles of riverfront property. She also bought a plot right on top of a hill so she’d spend eternity looking out at the water.
I stepped toward Samantha with those thoughts in my head, even as alarm bells sounded in my chest. Samantha had been nothing but friendly, but as I got closer, I stopped. My legs wouldn’t force me another step and instead wanted me to run.
Samantha raised an eyebrow at me as if she read the panic in my eyes. “What’s wrong, Elenore?”
“Nothing,” I said and forced the step.
