“Thanks. I hope so.” I gave Henry’s hand a little tug. “C’mon, baby. We have to get going. I’ll be late.”
Iris regarded Henry like she was sizing him up. “You don’t want to go to a boring job interview with your mama, do you? Listen to grown-ups talk about books and coffee and inventories?”
“No, ma’am,” Henry said, shaking his head.
Iris looked at me with a twinkle in her blue eyes. “I don’t think Addie and Ms. June are back from their errands. Would you like to stay with me while your mama is away?”
Henry’s face brightened. “Yes, ma’am!”
“Oh, that’s so kind of you, Iris,” I began. “But—”
She waved away my words with a dismissive gesture. “My pleasure!”
I offered her a brief, tight smile. “I appreciate it, truly. But I can’t pay you, Ms. Iris.”
“Don’t you worry about that.” She reached out her hand to Henry, who happily accepted it and skipped around the end of the desk. “He can work it offby keeping me company. We don’t get many visitors who need my assistance, as you can imagine. And when Ms. June and Addie get back, we can go for a visit. I guarantee Ms. June won’t mind this little man coming to play for a while.”
I hesitated, still uncertain. I didn’t know this woman at all, had never met her. Hell, she might not have even been who she said she was. I was just opening my mouth to politely decline when the front door opened, spilling sunlight into the foyer.
“Mornin’, y’all!” Chase stepped in carrying several cans of paint and sporting his usual grin. “You’re looking particularly lovely, Ms. Iris.”
“Flatterer,” Iris teased.
Chase turned his attention to me. “Where y’all off to this morning?”
Iris answered before I could get a word out, “Zellie is going to visit Dottie Shay about a job, and Henry is going to stay with me for a bit until Ms. June and Addie get back.”
“Well, that sounds like a good plan to me,” Chase said, giving Henry a wink, then added, “Don’t you worry, Zellie—Iris will take good care of your boy. You’d best get going. Probably easiest to walk to the store. Just cut right through the cemetery and you’ll be there in no time!”
Still torn at the prospect of leaving Henry but needing to leave so I wasn’t late, I hesitated. “Are you sure, Ms. Iris? I don’t want to impose.”
“Not at all, darlin’,” she assured me. “You go on now. Henry and I will be just fine. We’re all family here, honey. We take care of our own.”
Henry beamed and waved, perfectly content with me leaving him with Iris. “Bye, Mama!”
I gave him one last hug and kiss and ordered him to mind his manners then hurried out the door before I could change my mind.
I walked a few blocks, turning down a beautiful tree-lined street that offered a little shade from the bright morning sunshine. The humidity was already starting to make the air thick and sticky, but a light breeze skimmed over my skin, offeringjust enough relief to pretend it wasn’t going to be miserable by noon. I cut through Chippewa Square, one of Savannah’s smaller green spaces, and paused to take in the loveliness before continuing a few more blocks toward Colonial Park Cemetery.
I stopped at the entrance.
Of course, the shortcut would be through a cemetery…
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, steeling myself for what was to come, and tried to surround myself with a protective bubble in my mind, doing what I could to keep anyone from getting my attention, latching on.
Cemeteries were never my favorite places. Too many spirits reaching out, trying to get my attention. And this one was the oldest in Savannah, dating back to the 1700s—a long time for the dead to grow restless, more frustrated, more insistent.
As I stepped through the gates, the weight of the place settled over me. Desperation and sorrow clung to the air, particularly that of the thousands lost to yellow fever epidemics, buried in mass graves with no records and no tombstones to remind anyone they lived and died here.
But even those whose lives were memorialized with headstones or buried in one of the above-ground red brick tombs had no one left to visit them, generations gone since the last of the burials here. Now, their only visitors were tourists with cameras, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of a restless soul.
As I passed a small group of tourists who’d gotten an early start, I suddenly sensed someone watching me. I glanced around but saw only a handful of other people in the cemetery, none of whom were remotely interested in me and all very much alive. Still, dread crept along the back of my neck, urging me to get going. I quickened my pace, making a mental note to go the long way on my return, cemetery shortcuts be damned.
A flicker of movement drew my attention.
Standing behind one of the tombstones was the woman from the hallway of Dawes House—her long, black hair bedraggled and matted, her nightgown soaked and stiff with blood.
Her eyes locked onto mine, the darkness I saw there drawing me in, surrounding me with a preternatural coldness that chilled me to my core.
