But as we walk down the cemetery’s wide avenues, lined with pale stone crypts, something drags at me. I turn, searching for the source, but all I see are graves. And yet, now that I’ve noticed, I can’t shake it. It’s like a compass needle, drawing my attention north. North, past the walls of the graveyard. North, toward something I can’t see.

But I feel it, leaning against my senses, not a pull but a push, a warning deep inside my bones.

And I’m not the only one who feels it.

Jacob stares in the same direction, a rare frown creasing his face.

“What is that?” he asks, shivering slightly.

I catch up to Lucas.

“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice down since Mom and Dad are filming. “What’s that way?” I ask, pointing in the direction of the tug. Lucas pulls up a map on his phone. I squint down at the grid of streets, looking for another graveyard, or a monument, something to explain the eerie draw, but there’s nothing. Just neighborhoods. Block after block of ordinary houses running all the way out to Lake Pontchartrain. The vast expanse of water intersected only by the long, thin bridge.

I remember Dad talking about that bridge. He said it wasn’t haunted, but then, there must be plenty of ghost stories my parents don’t know, ones they haven’t heard. But we’re too far from the lake and the bridge for it to be the tap-tap-tap of ghosts.

Lucas puts his phone away, but my attention keeps going back toward the strange pull. I lift the camera to my eye, sliding the focus back and forth, as if it will show me the source of the pull, but all I see are blurry headstones. I’m still peering through the viewfinder when Mom calls, “That’s a wrap!” and it’s time to go.

*  *  *

We grab lunch in the Garden District, a place where all the houses are draped in Spanish moss and look like smaller versions of the White House, columned and proud. And then it’s on to Lafayette, which is apparently only Lafayette No. 1 (they really aren’t that good at coming up with names for graveyards here, but I guess when you have forty-two of them, it’s easy to run out of options).

The rain has trailed off, but the clouds still hang low, as if it might start again at any second. The world is gray, and full of shadows.

“For such a vibrant city,” says Mom, “people love to spend time with the dead.”

And I can tell that she’s about to start a story.

The cameras trail her down a row of tombs, and we follow.

“A few years ago, a couple was staying at a hotel here in the Garden District when they decided to take an afternoon walk to explore this cemetery.”

“As you do,” says Jacob.