Bridge of Souls Read online

  “Look,” he says, “Lara doesn’t know everything, but she does know a lot of stuff, and maybe she’s seen one of these weird skeleton men before.”

  I swallow hard. Whatever I saw in Paris, it wasn’t a man. It was shaped like one, more or less, with that black suit and that broad-brimmed hat. But a man has flesh and blood. A man has a face behind his mask. A man has eyes.

  What I saw?

  It wasn’t human at all.

  As my parents walk on ahead of me, I take out my phone. It’s the middle of the afternoon in Scotland, assuming Lara’s still staying with her aunt. I send a text.

  Me:

  Hey, can you chat?

  Within seconds, she texts back.

  Lara:

  What did Jacob do now?

  “Rude!” he mutters.

  I look down at the screen, trying to figure out how to ask about what I saw on the platform.

  I bite my lip, searching for the words.

  “I think the ones you’re looking for are scary, and nicely dressed, and soul-sucking skeleton dude,” offers Jacob, but I shoo him away.

  Me:

  There are other paranormal things, right? Besides ghosts?

  Lara:

  You’ll have to be more specific.

  I start a few texts, deleting them each time. I don’t know what’s stopping me. Or maybe I do.

  I can’t always run to Lara. I shouldn’t have to. I’m an in-betweener, too. I should know what to do. And if I don’t, I should be able to figure things out on my own.

  “Sure,” says Jacob, “but you don’t have a dead uncle who spent his whole life researching the paranormal and now haunts the leather chair in your living room.”

  “No,” I say slowly, “but I have you.”

  Jacob smiles, a little uncertain. “Well, yeah, obviously.” He scuffs his shoe. “But I didn’t see the skeleton thing.”

  And there’s more to my hesitation. The truth is, I don’t want to think about what I saw, or how it made me feel. I don’t want to put it into words, because then it will be real.

  Lara:

  Cassidy?

  I look around for something else to ask her about. A spray-painted mouth smiles at me from a brick wall, two fangs jutting from the upper lip. An arrow points down an alley and asks the question, Thirsty?

  I snap a photo with my phone and hit send.

  Me:

  Real?

  Moments later, Lara writes back:

  Lara:

  No, Cassidy, vampires are not real.

  I can practically hear her posh English accent. I can picture her rolling her eyes, too. Lara’s remarkably skeptical for a girl who can move between the world of the living and the dead.

  My phone buzzes again.

  Lara:

  Are you in New Orleans? I’ve always wanted to go. It’s home to the oldest branch of the Society of the Black Cat.

  It’s not the first time Lara’s mentioned the secret organization. When we met, she was staying in Edinburgh with her aunt and the ghost of her uncle. When her uncle was alive, he was a member, she said, of the Society, a mysterious group that knows all sorts of things about the paranormal.

  Lara:

  If I were there, I could petition the Society in person and convince them to let me join.

  Lara:

  If you find their headquarters, let me know.

  I glance around again, half expecting to find a sign for the Society right here on Bourbon Street.

  Me:

  Where are they?

  Lara:

  I’m not sure. They don’t exactly advertise.

  Up ahead, Dad’s studying the hours of a museum dedicated to poisons, while Mom reads a sandwich board advertising séances. I walk over to join Mom, and I study the icon of the upturned hand, a crystal ball hovering in the air over the palm. I take a photo of the board and send it to Lara.

  Me:

  What about this? Real?

  I watch the three blinking dots that signal she’s typing. And typing. Still typing. I don’t know why I expected a simple answer, but when the text comes in, it fills my screen.

  Lara:

  Psychics are real, but séances generally fall under the category of entertainment. This is because, unlike in-betweeners, psychics stay on this side of the Veil, and pull the curtain back to talk to someone on the other side. But séances claim to bring those spirits across the threshold into the land of the living. If the spirits are strong enough to cross over, they generally get out.

  Jacob reads over my shoulder, shaking his head.

  “She could have just said no.”

  He’s standing in front of a café window, and he squints at a reflection only the two of us can see. He runs a hand through his hair, but it doesn’t move. It’s always sticking up, just like his superhero T-shirt is always wrinkled. Nothing about him ever changes, because it can’t. It hasn’t, since the day he drowned.

  I’m glad he told me the truth about what happened to him in the river, I really am.

  I just can’t stop thinking about it. About the Jacob I never got to meet. The one with two brothers and a family and a life. He sighs and shoots me a look, and I realize, I’m thinking too loudly. I start humming a song in my head, and he rolls his eyes.

  Mom and Dad start walking again, and Jacob and I follow. I’m just about to turn my attention back to Lara’s texts when Jacob passes an open doorway. The shop beyond is filled with candles, and tinctures, and charms, and Jacob erupts into sneezes.

  “Stupid—”

  Sneeze!

  “—spirit—”

  Sneeze!

  “—wards—”

  Sneeze!

  At least, I think that’s what he said.

  It’s the same reaction he had back in Paris, when Lara sent over protective charms to keep a poltergeist at bay. Apparently, the charms work on all sorts of spirits, even increasingly corporeal best friends.

  I take a photo of the shop—the word VOODOO ghosted on the glass—and send it to Lara.

  Me:

  Real?

  I’m waiting for her answer when something catches my eye.

  It’s a black cat.

  It’s sitting on the shaded curb in front of a shop called Thread & Bone, grooming one leg. For a moment, I wonder if Grim somehow got out. But of course it’s not Grim—I’ve never seen Grim so much as lick a paw—and when the cat looks up, its eyes aren’t green but lavender. I watch the cat stretch, and yawn, and then trot away down an alley. There are probably a ton of black cats in a city like this, but I think of the Society and wonder if it might be a clue. Mom would call that “a little on the nose,” but just to be safe I snap a photo of the cat before it disappears. I’m about to send it to Lara when she texts me back about the voodoo shop.

  Lara:

  Very real.

  The text is followed by an X0, and for a second I think she’s trying to send me hugs and kisses, which would be very out of character. Then she explains that it’s a skull and crossbones—like a bottle of poison. Do not touch.

  The mention of a skull reminds me of the skeleton in the suit. Maybe I should just tell Lara about what happened. But before I can, she texts that she has to catch a flight, and then she’s gone.

  I blow out a breath and tell myself it’s okay. I don’t need her help. Just because I saw the skull-faced stranger once doesn’t mean I’ll see it again. Once is a glitch, an accident. No reason to be worried.

  “Yeah,” says Jacob, sounding skeptical. “I’m sure it will all turn out fine.”

  At Café du Monde, the air tastes like sugar.

  The café sits at the edge of Jackson Square: a giant courtyard full of people—tourists, but also performers. A woman stands on an upturned bucket, painted head to toe in silver. She’s dressed like a dancer, but she doesn’t move until someone drops a coin into her palm. A man plays a saxophone in the shade, and the sound of a trumpet rises from the other side of the square. The two melodies sound like th
ey’re talking.

  We grab a table beneath the green-and-white-striped awning. Mom and Dad order coffee, and I order iced tea, which comes in a large, sweating plastic cup. The drink is mercifully cold, but sweet enough to make my teeth hurt.

  A dozen fans make lazy circles over our heads, churning the air without cooling it, but despite the heat, Dad is clearly in his element.

  He looks out at the bustling square.

  “New Orleans is a marvel,” he says. “It was founded by the French, given to the Spanish, used by pirates and smugglers—”

  Jacob and I both perk up at that, but Dad presses on.

  “Sold to the United States, scarred by slavery, consumed by fire, ravaged by flood, and rebuilt despite it all, and that’s just the shape of it. Did you know the city has forty-two cemeteries, and it’s home to the longest bridge in the US? The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway—you can’t see one side from the other—”

  Mom pats his arm. “Save some for the show, darling,” she teases, but he’s on a roll now.

  “This city has more history than hauntings,” he says. “For one, it’s the birthplace of jazz.”

  “And home to voodoo and vampires,” says Mom.

  “And real people, too,” presses Dad, “like Pere Antoine and Jean Lafitte—”

  “And the Axeman of New Orleans,” adds Mom brightly.

  Jacob shoots me a look. “I really hope axe is a kind of instrument and not—”

  “He went around chopping people up,” Mom adds.

  Jacob sighs. “Of course he did.”

  “Back in 1918, he terrorized the city,” says Dad.

  “No one felt safe,” says Mom.

  They’re sliding into that TV show rhythm, even though there are no cameras, just me and Jacob, hanging on the edge of their words.

  “He was a serial killer,” says Mom, “but he loved jazz, so he sent a letter to the cops and said he wouldn’t strike any house that had a full band playing in it. So for weeks, music filled the city streets, even more than usual. It spilled out of houses day and night, a cacophony of jazz.”

  “Did they catch him?” I ask.

  And Mom blinks, eyebrows going up as if she got so caught up in the story, she never thought about how it ended.

  “No,” answers Dad. “They never did.”

  I look around, wondering if the axeman’s ghost is still wandering these streets, a hatchet on one shoulder and his head cocked, listening for a saxophone, a trumpet, some promise of jazz.

  Mom breaks into a smile. “Hello! You must be our guide.”

  I twist around in my seat, and see a young Black man wearing a crisp white button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Behind wire-framed glasses, his eyes are light brown, flecked with green and gold.

  “Professor Dumont,” says Dad, rising to his feet.

  “Please,” he says, in a kind, smooth voice. “Call me Lucas.” He shakes Dad’s hand, and then Mom’s, and then mine, which makes me like him even more. “Welcome to New Orleans.”

  He sinks into a plastic chair across from us and orders coffee and something called beignets.

  “You’re staying in the Hotel Kardec?” he says as the waiter leaves.

  “We are,” says Mom.

  “It’s named for someone, isn’t it?” I ask, remembering the statue in the lobby, with its far-off gaze and studied frown. “Who was he?”

  Lucas and Dad inflate at the exact same time, both about to speak, but then Dad nods for Lucas to go on. Lucas smiles, and straightens a little in his chair.

  “Allan Kardec,” he says, “was the father of Spiritism.”

  I’ve never heard of Spiritism, and Lucas must be able to tell, because he explains.

  “Spiritists believe in the presence of a spirit realm, and the … entities that inhabit it.”

  Jacob and I exchange a glance, and I wonder if Kardec could have known about the Veil. Perhaps he was an in-betweener.

  “You see,” continues Lucas, “Kardec believed that spirits—phantoms, ghosts, if you like—existed there, in that other place, but that they could be communicated with, summoned by mediums.”

  “Like in a séance?” I ask.

  “Exactly,” says Lucas.

  And suddenly the decorations back at the hotel make sense. The velvet curtains, the outstretched hands, the painting on the lobby ceiling—the table and chairs, empty and waiting.

  “There is a séance room in the hotel,” Lucas adds. “I’m sure they’d be happy to give you a show.”

  Mom and I say “Yes!” at the same time Jacob says no, but since I’m the only one who can hear him, the vote doesn’t count.

  A plate arrives, piled high with pieces of fried dough covered in powdered sugar. Not dusted, really, but buried beneath the sugar, white mountains like snow over the mounds of dough.

  “What are these?” I ask.

  “Beignets,” says Lucas.

  I pick one up, the fried dough hot beneath my fingers, and bite down.

  The beignet melts a little in my mouth, hot dough and sugar, crispier than a doughnut and twice as sweet. I try to say how good it is, but my mouth is too full, and I end up breathing out a tiny cloud of powdered sugar. It is heaven.

  Jacob eyes the beignet mournfully as I pop the rest in my mouth. He folds his arms and mutters something like “Not fair.”

  Lucas takes one, and somehow manages to eat it without spilling sugar all over himself, which I’m pretty sure is a kind of superpower. Even Dad, who’s a bit of a neat freak, has to dust some powder off his sleeve.

  Mom, meanwhile, looks like she walked through a snowstorm. Sugar dots her nose and her chin; there’s even some on her forehead. I snap a photo, and she winks.

  My own shirt is streaked with white, my hands sticky, but it was totally worth it.

  “Well, Professor Dumont,” says Mom, wiping her hands. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Our guide steeples his fingers.

  “It’s hard to live in a place like this and not believe in something, but I prefer to focus on the history.”

  It’s a very diplomatic answer.

  “Better than my husband,” says Mom. “He doesn’t believe in any of it.”

  Lucas lifts a brow. “Is that so, Professor Blake? Even after all your travels?”

  Dad shrugs. “As you said, I prefer to focus on the history. That part, at least, I know is real.”

  “Ah,” says Lucas. “But history is written by the victors. How can we know what really happened if we weren’t there? We are, all of us, speculating …”

  At that point, Dad and Lucas launch into a deep discussion about the “lens of history” (Dad) and the past as a “living document” (Lucas) and I stop paying attention.

  The show binder sits on the table, the cover dusted with streaks of sugar. I pull it toward me, flipping past Scotland and France to the third episode, marked by a single red tab.

  THE INSPECTERS

  EPISODE THREE

  LOCATION: NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

  “LAND OF LOST SOULS”

  “Well, that’s promising,” says Jacob, reading over my shoulder as I skim the list of filming locations.

  1) THE PLACE D’ARMES

  2) MURIEL’S RESTAURANT

  3) ST. LOUIS NO. 1, NO. 2, NO. 3

  4) LAFAYETTE CEMETERY

  5) THE OLD URSULINE CONVENT

  6) THE LALAURIE MANSION

  It all sounds fairly innocent, but I know by now that looks can be deceiving.

  When the beignets are gone and the glasses are empty, everyone gets to their feet. Lucas dusts off his hands, even though he doesn’t have a speck of sugar on him.

  “See you tonight?” asks Dad.

  “Indeed,” says Lucas. “I think you’ll find this is a different city after dark.”

  * * *

  That night, Lucas is waiting for us in the hotel lobby, along with our film crew: a guy and a girl, a mismatched pair, linked only by the cameras hanging from their hands. The
y introduce themselves as Jenna and Adan. Jenna is small and bubbly and white, the ends of her black hair dyed electric blue, and a dozen silver chains draped around her neck. Adan is a giant, a towering guy in a black T-shirt, tattoos wrapping every inch of his olive skin.

  He catches me staring at them and flexes so I can see the Christian cross on his bicep, the Egyptian eye on his forearm, the pentacle near his elbow. Some of the symbols I don’t recognize—a knot of triangles inside a loop, and a bold black mark that looks like a crow’s foot.

  “That’s an algiz,” he says. “It’s a rune.”

  He goes on to explain it’s not a crow’s foot, but an elk’s. I study the other symbols. I’ve seen people wearing one or two of them, but Adan has at least seven.

  “What are they all for?” I ask.

  “Protection,” he explains. A little thrill runs through me as my own hand drifts to the mirror around my neck.

  “From what?”

  He shrugs. “Everything.”

  Jenna leans in and pats his arm. “Adan likes to keep his bases covered.” Her voice drops to a fake whisper. “He’s not a big fan of things that go bump.”

  “Keep talking,” Adan says. “One day you’ll see a ghost, and you’ll get it.”

  Jenna sighs dramatically. “I wish!” she says, pouting. “No one has ever haunted me.” Her eyes flick to my mirror pendant. “Cool necklace.”

  “Thanks,” I say, twirling it between my fingers. Jacob winces when the mirror twists his way, and I close my hand over the glass before he can catch sight of his reflection. It happened once, back in Scotland. I can still see him the way he was in the glass: gray, and dripping wet from the river, and undeniably dead.

  Jacob clears his throat, and I force a smile.

  “Ready?” asks Lucas, his voice steady and sober, as if the answer might be no.

  We step out of the Hotel Kardec, and the Veil rises to meet me. Without the sun glare and the heat, the press of ghosts is even stronger, tapping on my skull, swimming at the edges of my sight.

  Music spills out of bars and off corners, but I can hear the music beneath the music. Ghostly tendrils of jazz drifting on the lukewarm breeze.