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ghost-hunting equipment. So if you are serious about hunting this ghost, why don’t you have any of those plasmatic meters or those temperature gauges that show that the spirit is in the room, huh?”
    He didn’t seem so confident then. And Natalie wondered if she had hit her own nerve with Newland Tran.
    “So just because I don’t have some sort of meter or temperature gauge you think I’m a fake?”
    “You said it. Not me.”
    “I came here because your aunt told me a story, and I believed her. You’re the one who doesn’t. So I don’t need plasmatic meters and gauges that check temperature and all of the other things that these people on TV think a person needs to hunt ghosts. I have the word of a beautiful lady who assures me that the last Thursday of the month a ghost will appear. We should see him next week, and that’s all the proof I need.”

Chapter Four
    Tran stood and stretched out his legs. Natalie was torn between standing just so he wouldn’t tower over her and just sitting back and waiting to see what he would do next.
    He started down the porch steps.
    “Where you going?” Natalie almost slapped a hand over her mouth. What business was it of hers where he was going? Except that she felt a little responsible for him since he was here, staying in her aunt’s house.
    He turned and shot her a grin. In the dying light of the day she couldn’t tell if it was mischievous or just a grin. “I’m going over to the cemetery. You want to come with me?”
    Natalie shook her head, then thought better of it. “Okay.” She stood and started down the porch steps after him.
    The old cemetery sat behind her aunt’s house and took up most of the back side of the block. It was an old cemetery, the kind in horror films with a wrought-iron fence made of spear-shaped posts and a creaky old gate that led inside. And she had never, ever gone into the cemetery. Not even in daylight. So what made her think it was a good idea to do so at sundown? And with a man like Newland Tran?
    “What do you expect to see here?”
    He didn’t stop walking as he answered. “I don’t know. But it seems like the best place to start if this is where the ghost usually is.”
    “There is no ghost.”
    Newland stopped and whirled around to face her.
    Natalie came to an abrupt halt as well, craning her neck back to look at him.
    “Let’s get one thing straight right now. You don’t believe in the ghost. I do. So let’s just agree to disagree. Every time I mention the ghost, how about you not deny his existence? Then come the last Thursday of the month, we’ll see. Okay?”
    Natalie nodded mutely. She supposed that was the least she could do. She had to keep up with Newland, find out what he was doing and make sure he didn’t take advantage of her aunt and steal them all blind. If that meant admitting there was a ghost, or at the very least not denying the ghost, then she should do that.
    “Good.” He turned back around and started toward the cemetery once again.
    The grave markers were old, some of them dating well before the War Between the States. A few were barely legible, while others seemed to have somehow escaped the erosion, still showing off names, dates, and relationships the person had enjoyed in his or her life. Several of the stones had sunk in recent years leaving them drunkenly crooked, turning this way and that as they tilted toward the earth.
    “So do you think the ghost is buried here?”
    She could do this, Natalie coached herself. “He might’ve been at one time.” See, that wasn’t so hard.
    “What do you mean at one time?”
    Natalie walked over to one grave, staring at the arched tombstone with its eroded etching. “Back in the ’60s, I think it was. Not that I remember or anything. They came through and exhumed a lot of the Confederate soldiers from cemeteries like this. Some of them had even been buried out in the open on people’s land and property and things. One farmer had three graves in