And then, distantly, a child’s laughter drifted over me, followed by a soft chant. Somehow I recognized the voice even though I had never heard it before, and an image of Devlin’s dead daughter formed in my mind as clearly as if she stood before me.

Papa would have warned me to remember the rules. I recited them to myself as I turned slowly to scour the gathering twilight: Never acknowledge the dead, never stray far from hallowed ground, never associate with the haunted and never, ever tempt fate.

The ghost child’s voice came to me again. Come find me, Amelia!

Why I didn’t ignore her and continue on my way, I had no idea. I must have been enchanted. That was the only possible explanation.

The nightingale crooned to me as I left the sidewalk and followed a narrow alley to where an ornate gate opened into the walled garden of a private home. By entering, I ran the risk of being shot on sight for trespassing. Charlestonians loved their guns. But the danger didn’t stop me, nor did Papa’s rules because I’d fallen under that strange hypnotic spell.

Months ago, when I’d first seen Shani’s ghost hovering at Devlin’s side, she’d tried to make contact. That was why she’d followed me home that first night and left a tiny garnet ring in my garden. That ring had been a message just as surely as the heart she’d traced on my window. She wanted to tell me something… .

This way. Hurry! Before she comes… .

An icy foreboding clutched my spine. Danger was all around me. I could feel it closing in, but still I kept going, following the nightingale and that tantalizing scent through a maze of boxwood hedges and palmettos, through trails of evening primrose and midnight candy. The trickle of a fountain mingled with Shani’s ethereal laughter and then the hair on my nape lifted as she started to chant: