“He keeps places all along the southern U.S. border. Gives him somewhere to regroup when he comes in and out of the country. This one just happened to be the closest one we could get to. It was the perfect hiding place,” Tyler says. “In a quiet part of the Quarter. No one messed with it.”
And this reminds me of the crowd outside. “Why are all these people here?” I ask.
Tyler lets out a nervous laugh. “They’re here for you.” Maybe he’s just glad there’s something wrong that he didn’t cause.
“Me? All I did was open my window. I don’t know why those people started taking pictures of me.”
“All those carriages are from the same tour company. I checked their site when I saw people out there. Some woman on a haunted tour last night took a picture of Ursuline. After looking back at her pictures this afternoon, she noticed one of the images had a girl hanging out of a top-floor window of Ursuline, waving her arms around. She sent her picture and story to the haunted tour company and they posted the story and picture on their site. Told everyone to come back at dusk to see if there would be another ‘sighting.’”
“And those people are here to see a girl hang her head out of a window?” Ethan asks.
Tyler rolls his eyes and says, “She stuck her head out and stirred up the rumor. Every other building in this area is supposedly haunted or has some dark rumor attached to it, but no one ever sees anything weird on those tours—until last night. There will be two beliefs floating around with the locals about that picture—it’s fake or it’s part of the three-hundred-year-old rumor associated with Ursuline.”
“What rumor?” Ethan and I ask at the same time.
“The Casket Girls,” Tyler answers. “For the last couple hundred years, one of the biggest superstitions in the Quarter is that the third floor of the Ursuline Convent is where the vampires live, and that tour company is going crazy with what they call ‘proof.’”
“What?” we all ask at the same time.
Tyler shakes his head, “Not here. It’s a long story and it’s not safe standing around here with Mateo so close. Come with me. I can take you somewhere safe.”
“We’re leaving, just the three of us. You can sit here and piss yourself for all I care.”
“You have no idea what you’re up against,” Tyler says.
“You’re probably right, but at least we’ll be in control of what happens to us.” Ethan says. Then he knocks him out cold.
Rules for disappearing
by Witness Protection prisoner #18A7R04M:
Always have a backup plan….
New rule by Anna Boyd:
Forget the backup plan—just make sure you haveaplan. Even if it sucks.
are people everywhere. By the time we stop running, we’re several blocks away from the alley where we left Tyler hidden behind one of the Dumpsters. As much as I hate him right now, I don’t want Mateo to find him. I take a quick look at the street sign—Toulouse and Dauphine—although that means absolutely nothing to me. We stand in the middle of the sidewalk and try to take it all in.
Ethan is still furious—with Tyler, with Thomas, and probably with me for not telling him the truth when I could have. And he’s favoring his left side, so I’m guessing he’s in a lot of pain, too.
Another wave of guilt washes over me for getting him involved with this.
“We need to keep moving,” he bites out.
There is a huge group of girls heading toward us and they seem to be holding up this one girl in the middle. She’s hammered drunk, stumbling with each step, and wearing a strapless black minidress and a wedding veil. And it’s no regular veil—this one has condoms attached to it. Lots and lots of condoms.
“What kind of necklace is that girl wearing?” Teeny asks.
The group gets a little closer and I can make out a replica of a guy’s private parts.
We push Teeny along and I walk behind her, trying to block her view of the roving bachelorette party behind us and totally ignore her question.
By the time we hit Bourbon Street, there’s no hiding the craziness of the French Quarter from Teeny. Every other business is a strip club and some of the girls who work there, wearing very little, call to customers from open doorways. And if that wasn’t enough, most of the windows to these businesses are papered with pictures of what goes on inside.
But the music is incredible. Every door has a different sound pouring out: jazz, rock, country, and blues. It’s hard not to stop and stare and try to take it all in.
I hear little gasps from Teeny as her eyes soak up every single thing on this street—good and bad. We’ve slowed down to try to blend in with the crowd as they flow down the street.
