Greta shivered even in the warm sun. She had always loved a spooky tale, but hearing one while looking at the place where it happened was even better.

“So what really happened?”

Carys raised an eyebrow, sphinxlike, and they walked in silence for a moment.

“Chances are that the women were pale and gaunt and ill from being on a ship for five months. Tuberculosis causes the sufferer to cough up blood, which likely explains the blood on some of their mouths. The mortality rate in the city at the time was high to begin with. Lack of hygiene and the weather and swampy environment spawned disease regularly. Perhaps some new disease was brought over on the ships with the girls. But as for the attic window opening and the journalists drained of blood…”

She shrugged elegantly and let the mystery lie.

When Greta and Adelaide were nine and ten, they’d spend stormy nights, of which there were many on Owl Island, trying to scare each other with stories they made up. They’d whisper bits of the tales back and forth between their twin beds until one of them (and it was always Adelaide) got too scared. Then she would pull the blanket up over her head so she couldn’t see anything that might threaten her and make a blind leap onto Greta’s bed, usually landing half on her and half on the bed, where they would finish the story in squeals, under the blanket, clutching each other for comfort.

A pang of longing for her sister surprised her.

“This is Jackson Square,” Carys said a few blocks later.

Greta banished Adelaide from her mind.

“Oh, I walked past here earlier.”

“It’s the hub of tourism. Everyone visiting New Orleans for the first time ends up here. And so this”—Carys gestured expansively to the square and spun around—“is where we come to take their money.”

Greta’s stomach gave a lurch. Had she inadvertently gotten taken in by a pickpocket? Was Carys the Oliver Twist of New Orleans? Was Greta about to be used as a diversion because of her obvious infatuation with the gorgeous woman? It would be just her luck.

“Um. Like, take their money?” Greta said awkwardly.

Carys raised an eyebrow and said, “Come see.” She walked through the square, Teacup at her side, and waved to several people stationed on the steps outside the tall, white church as she passed. She was heading toward the wrought-iron fence that ran around an area of green park in the center of the square. She hugged a tall woman who had a table set up with a sign promising to read your tarot for five dollars and tell your future for twenty, and called hello to a couple whose paintings of the city were lashed to the fence.