I had to smile.
‘Everywhere in Savannah is haunted.’
‘Yeah, but the cemetery is haunted by some dude named Rene Rondolier.’
She pronounced his name with a forced, spooky intonation, her eyebrows creeping up her forehead as she spoke.
‘And what did Rene do?’ I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
‘Depends who you ask,’ she said. ‘Some folks say he was the innocent victim of an angry mob. Others say he was a supernaturally strong giant covered in fur who murdered kids for kicks from beyond the grave.’
For the first time in a month, I was pleased the ghosts of Savannah were playing hard to get. Rene did not sound like the kind of person I wanted to share my lunch with.
‘According to the stories, he tortured and killed a bunch of people’s pets, so the townsfolk demanded his family keep him in their house, which was right over’ – Lydia twisted at thewaist, searching over her shoulder then pointing at a tall, red-brick house on the eastern boundary of the cemetery – ‘there. His folks, who were filthy rich by the way, built this crazy tall wall to keep him in, but the dude was, like, seven feet tall and strong as an ox, so naturally he got out. The same night, a couple of kids were killed so the townspeople came together to overpower him. And that’ – a croaking sound scratched the back of her throat as she drew a finger across her neck and stuck out her tongue, her eyes rolling back in her head – ‘was the end of Rene Rondolier.’
‘When you say a couple of kids “got killed”,’ I said, my gut twisting at her casual turn of phrase, ‘do you mean they were murdered?’
‘Two died before they got him but then two more died in the exact same way afterwards, plus a woman. So who knows? Maybe he had unfinished business to complete, or maybe he had nothing to do with the murders in the first place. Guess we’ll never know.’
‘So they killed a man without any evidence then blamed his ghost for three more deaths?’ I said, eyes bugging out of my head.
Lydia shrugged and picked at her sandwich.
‘Wouldn’t you rather blame a ghost than admit you unalived the wrong man? It was the nineteenth century, things were very kill-first-ask-questions-later. Much quicker than going through the courts. The folks in charge decided he did it so they cancelled him. Off the planet.’ She paused to lick hot honey from her fingers. ‘There was no legit proof Rondolier did it but, you know how it is; he was different to everyone else and people don’t like different.’
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard those exact words. More than two hundred years after Rene lost his life and we witches, Weres, and whatever else was out there, all stayed hidden forthe same reason. Sliding the rest of my sandwich back into its paper bag, I tucked it away in the canvas tote at my side. Strangely enough, my appetite had disappeared.
Lydia continued to inhale her lunch and I leaned back in the grass, quietly checking for any ghostly goings on among the gravestones and monuments. My first ever encounter with a ghost had taken place in Colonial Park. This was where I’d seen the original Emma Catherine Bell. Perhaps Ashley was right: I wasn’t ready to set foot back in Bonaventure just yet. All the same, I kept hoping she might decide to show herself. It was a strange feeling, being ghosted by every ghost in the city. The perennial new kid wherever I went, I was used to being shunned by the cool kids, but being shunned by ghosts was truly a new low in the popularity stakes. One of the privileges of being dead, it seemed, was the ability to decide whether or not you wanted to interact with the living. And right now it seemed no one wanted anything to do with me. As the only witch in the entire city, it was hard not to feel just a little offended.
Other than myself and Lydia, there was no one else around save a handful of tourists, electronic fans hanging around their necks and golf visors dipped low over pink faces. Most sensible people were inside, as close to an air conditioning unit as humanly possible. Even as a relative newcomer to the city, I found it easy to discern locals from visitors here in the park. Out of towners tended not to linger in the cemetery. They wandered in, read a couple of the historical markers, snapped a picture of Button Gwinnett’s grave, then they found themselves back out on the street at the other end of the block, keen to move onto the next sightseeing opportunity. Savannahians, on the other hand, were in no rush. They strolled, they sat, while their kids scrambled over the climbing frame in the playground at the southern end of the cemetery, separated fromthe grave markers by nothing more than a set of open iron railings.
Savannah’s citizens were far less squeamish about spending time with the dead than most people and it wasn’t difficult to understand why. They were practically everywhere. So many of the city’s historic homes and landmarks were built on top of burial grounds. Just last week, Ashley had come home from some city planning meeting, desperate to tell me how Mr Preston on Bull Street had dug up a complete human skeleton while prepping his backyard for a new koi pond. Mr Preston and his very expensive fish were currently waiting for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to clarify what, or rather who, was squatting on his property. Or was it the other way around?
‘OK, enough murder ghost chat, on to something way scarier,’ Lydia said as she screwed her empty sandwich bag into a tiny ball. ‘I know why you asked me to come here today.’
‘You do?’
‘I do,’ she said with confidence. ‘You wanted to soften me up before confessing that you’re going on a date with my brother.’
‘It’s not a date!’ I protested loudly as Lydia clapped her hands together in delight at my reaction.
‘Sure. Whatever you say.’
‘It is not a date,’ I said again. ‘I am nothing but a last-minute platonic stand-in for the girl who cancelled.’
‘A girl cancelled onmybrother?’
‘Yes.’
‘The day before the dance?’
‘That is correct.’
‘Huh.’
‘You’re going to feel terrible in a minute,’ I told her. ‘She’s in the hospital.’
‘Who is?’
