“What, so now you’re a Voodoo priestess and clairvoyant?” I snapped.

When she held up both her hands in a gesture of surrender, I stopped pacing and rubbed my temples. Cringing, I slouched over and plopped next to her on the bench.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring off in the distance at a small bandstand where a group of jazz musicians played Christmas music. “I just … I have no idea what I’m doing.”

To my surprise, Gabrielle wrapped one arm around my waist and gave me a brief half hug. After she released me, she laughed.

“Like I do? I totally destroyed your afterlife in some last-ditch effort to find my parents. And so I wouldn’t be … alone.”

“Alone? You’ve got Felix.”

She lifted one shoulder and then dropped it. “Felix is my brother, and I love him. Of course I’m glad we’re together through all of this. But at some point Felix has got to get on with his life. Without me haunting it.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Like I told you earlier, I met those Faders once,” she said. “After I became Risen, I still haunted my parents’ graves at the St. Louis Number One, trying to figure out what to do with myself. One night last summer I ran into them, sort of aimlessly standing around what was probably one of their own graves. At first I was excited to meet them. I thought maybe they’d be—I don’t know—good companions or something. But when that pirate guy tried to cop a feel, I decided that they weirded me out too.”

I barked out an involuntary laugh, and she smiled slyly.

“Besides,” she added, “old Nathan Hale was more my type anyway. I just love a man in uniform.”

“The soldier?” I made a sour face. “You really do have bad taste in guys.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, laughing. “Let’s just agree that the whole crew is pretty unsavory. Anyway, the real point of this story is that I’d basically given up on finding someone like me. Then you and Lover Boy walked into Marie’s, and I thought, ‘Holy hell, this is someone I might be able to hang out with.’ And when you touched him? Forget about it—I was totally convinced that another relatively normal-acting ghost with special powers was exactly what I needed. But I really wasn’t trying to ruin your afterlife, or break the two of you up.”

“How did you know I left him?” I asked, frowning. “I mean, before Café du Monde?”

“You talked in your sleep last night. Believe it or not, Felix wasn’t the only one keeping watch over you.”

“Huh,” I murmured, leaning back against the park bench thoughtfully. For a while I just sat in silence, absentmindedly listening to the jazz band. Then I turned slowly toward Gabrielle.

“Look, Gaby,” I said, trying out her nickname, “I have no idea if I can trust you or not. To be honest, I’ve met so many people and been through so much in the last few days that I’m not even sure where to start. But if you’re going to hang around me for an extended period of time, there’s some things you should know.”

Gaby leaned forward, her expression intent. “Whatever you can tell me that will help my parents, I’m all for it.”

I gnawed at my bottom lip for a few seconds before nodding hesitantly. Then without further introduction, I told her everything: how I died and then reawakened when I met Joshua; how I fought off the wraiths when Eli sent them after Jillian; how I narrowly missed entrapment in the netherworld at the hands of the demons. I explained how ineffectual my attempts to reenter the netherworld had been since that dark night. Then I told her about all the things that I’d experienced in the last few days: Eli’s warning; the bizarre dreams; the brief sighting of a handful of demons at the club.

I left out only one detail: what the Quarter ghosts had said about using a middleman to hand me over to the demons.

Despite my better judgment, I’d started to like Gaby. Maybe even trust her, on some level. But I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure she wouldn’t trade me to the darkness the second I dropped my guard. After all, it didn’t escape my attention that the pirate had said “she” when referring to their intermediary.

By the time I’d finished my story, the sun had already shifted in the sky and the warm glow of late afternoon filtered through the trees. Gaby, who’d sat quietly while I talked, now leaned back against our park bench. She released a long sigh and began twisting a curl of her Afro around her index finger.

“Wow,” she muttered. “And I thought my afterlife was eventful.”

I snorted softly in agreement. Then, smiling just a tiny bit, I said, “Dude, you have no idea.”

Gaby laughed and once again wrapped me in a half hug. Then she let me go, leaping to her feet. Still rapidly twisting her hair around one finger, she began to pace just as I had.

“So, how do we do it?” she mused. “How do we reopen the netherworld? I mean, without tracking down Eli or the demons and basically asking them for an extra house key.”

I sighed and lifted my hands uselessly in the air.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve had no luck at all. I stood at that river for hours every day, with no results. So what’s the point? And besides, what are we going to do? Hitchhike back to Oklahoma to try again?”

Gaby shook her head. “We don’t need to. You said it yourself: all the different parts of the netherworld are connected, according to the redheaded girl in your dreams. If we can get into one of those—what did she call it?—portals, then maybe we’d have access to all of them.”

“It’s an interesting theory. But where do we find another portal?” I asked.

She frowned, and her eyes flicked over my shoulder, to the south. “Actually … I have a pretty good idea,” she murmured.

Abruptly, she lunged forward, grabbing my hand and yanking me to my feet. “Come on,” she demanded, and began to hurry down the alley with me in tow.

“Where are we going?” I cried, stumbling behind her.

“You’ll see when we get there,” she called back over her shoulder.

“Why do I feel like you’re always dragging me all over New Orleans?” I grumbled. Gaby laughed loudly.

“Because I am dragging you all over New Orleans.”

Once she realized I would come along without duress, she released my hand and continued to walk briskly out of the park. I nearly had to run to keep pace with her as we moved west on the city sidewalks, back toward the Quarter.

I didn’t ask her any questions; I didn’t say anything at all. But when I saw a familiar awning up ahead, I slowed to a stop. After a few steps Gaby noticed that I no longer followed her. So she reversed course and crossed back to me.

“Amelia,” she said impatiently, “it’s, like, almost three o’clock. They’ve definitely gone home by now.”

Without taking my eyes off Café du Monde, I nodded. “Yeah, probably. It’s just … you know …”

“Yeah, I know.” Her tone was surprisingly soft. Kind.

She gave me a brief moment to compose myself and then tugged gently on the sleeve of my jacket, urging me forward again. With a small breath for courage, I hurried alongside her, keeping my eyes glued to the sidewalk as I moved past the café. Even the beguiling scent of chicory couldn’t entice me to look inside.

A few blocks away, Gaby slowed to round the corner of Decatur and Toulouse Streets. I followed her south on Toulouse, passing a tall building full of retail stores and crossing over a steep footbridge. At the bottom of the bridge, however, I skidded to a stop.

There in front of me, just behind a small building constructed to look like a lighthouse, stood the netherworld pavilion.

Or at least something that looked almost identical to it.

Through the open walls of the structure, I saw the gray water of the Mississippi River moving lazily past the Quarter. Underneath its roof, I could make out the shadowed angles of metal girders.