his shirt, and if he’d had a cigarette in his mouth, he’d have been able to light it on fire.
“You are sensitive to the dead, yes? Why are you so surprised that they might overwhelm you in a town like New Orleans? And now, what, you want to prove yourself and go back in there? Idiot.” He arched a brow at me, and I glared at him.
No, I did not want to go back in there. He was right. There were hundreds of ghosts in there, and the sensation was not pleasant—overwhelming was an understatement.
“What are you doing here in NOLA?” followed quickly by, “I could use your help.” I said those words and instantly regretted what I’d said about him being a piss-poor necromancer just moments before.
“No, I do not think so.” His lips curled into a sneer. “I am no good, remember?” He pressed his fingers to his chest. “I have been asked to come here to see my old mentor. He is in ill health and I have something special for him.” His nose went up into the air higher than usual. “Something very special.”
I swallowed what little pride I had left. “Louis, someone stole my Gran’s ghost, and now they’ve taken a little girl as well. I am sorry I was rude, you caught me off guard”—only a small lie—“can you please help me find—”
“I already said no.” Louis sniffed at me. “Perhaps if you were still a part of the Hollows, things would be different. As it is, you are just . . .you. Wretched and useless.”
He clasped his hands behind his back, which tightened his loose shirt and showed an outline of something under it. I frowned and found myself grabbing at his shirt because the shape was that of a cross.
Robert and I had put the dummy cross in the grave of Evangeline to throw off anyone who might be looking for the real deal. We’d made sure that we were a bit sloppy with our dig, and I’d known all along that Eammon had seen me. He must have told Louis.
“What are you doing, you foul thing?” he screeched at me, but his scrawny arms were nothing to me, brute that I was. “You beast, get out of ’ere!” He slapped at me as I ripped his shirt to see the fake stone taped to his side. Of course, he couldn’t put it in a pocket, his jeans were too damn tight.
“You stole it?” I had to play the part and even went so far as to reach for the fake cross.
He slapped my hands away, and Robert let out a low growl and ground his teeth. For just a moment, I thought Louis flinched from him, but no, he was looking at me.
“You should have brought it to us! To the Hollows!” Louis snapped as he fixed his shirt, backing away from me. “We are the guardians of Savannah, not you!”
There was a burst in the air above our heads, like a series of bright blue fireworks. I frowned and even Louis cocked his head to the side.
Kinkly flew up into the air and did a slow circle. “Bree, I have to go. Something’s going on, and I . . . Crash is calling me! He’s got Scarlet.”
“Is he in trouble?” I yelled after her, wondering how she’d gotten all that from a series of blue fireworks.
“Just needs me to follow the little runt!” she hollered back, and then she was gone in a burst of autumn colors before I could ask anything else.
When I turned back, it was to see Louis’s bright red shirt all the way down the street. “Good riddance,” I grumbled. “You’re a jerk!” I yelled after him, and he flipped me off. The dude had the nerve to flip me off!
I yanked my map out, turned it around three times, and realized that I needed to hold it a little farther away from my nose than usual. “Awesome. And now my eyes are going?”
Nope, I was not going there, and neither were my eyes.
“Come on, Robert, let’s see what else we can find in this town.”
“Friend,” he said and then followed me dutifully as I made my way to three more cemeteries. None of them had a morgue, none of them had nearly as many ghosts like ol’ St. Louis Number 1 had, and none of the people I talked to knew a Homer Underwood. I should have pinned Louis to the ground and given him