City of Ghosts Read online

  Then the clouds overhead begin to darken. An ominous wind sweeps through my hair.

  “I think it’s about to rain,” I say, shivering.

  Mom shrugs. “This is Scotland. It’s always about to rain.” She studies her booklet again.

  It must be the lingering magic of the Elephant House, because when she says we should visit something called Greyfriars Kirk, I agree.

  Only when we’re walking do I realize I have no idea what a kirk is.

  “It’s a church,” says Mom, adding cheerfully, “and this one’s home to the most haunted graveyard in Europe!”

  And just like that, the whimsy of the wizarding world is gone, replaced by the threat of specters and spirits. As Mom and I make our way to the graveyard, I can practically hear Jacob in my head, uttering a low, sarcastic yaaaaay.

  The iron gate sits between two stone columns, metal letters curling overhead.

  GREYFRIARS

  Beyond the gate, I see stretches of green lawn, the stained-glass windows of a church, people wandering the grounds. I breathe in and taste damp stone, old dirt.

  But as we near the gate itself, I grind to a halt.

  It’s not what I see or taste that worries me. It’s what I feel.

  The air goes thick, and the pressure builds inside my head, the weight of the Veil no longer an arm around my shoulders but a wet blanket, heavy, smothering. Gray cloth billows in front of my eyes.

  Mom gives a cheerful squeak and shows me her forearm, where all the hairs are standing on end.

  “Look!” she says brightly. “Goose bumps.”

  I have goose bumps, too, but for a different reason.

  As haunted as the Royal Mile was, it didn’t feel like this.

  The Veil isn’t inherently scary, or bad. It’s just another kind of space. But the energy here is dark and menacing. I’m about to tell Mom we should head back, but she’s already got her arm looped through mine, ushering me across the threshold and inside the graveyard walls. Even though I haven’t crossed the Veil, it still feels like we’ve stepped out of one world and into another.

  There’s a tour group just inside the gate. The guide gestures to one of the graves, where dog toys are piled on the dirt.

  “One of Greyfriars’s most famous tenants,” explains the guide in a posh British accent, “was a terrier named Bobby. But unlike most of the residents, he was very much alive when he first came to the graveyard …”

  Mom and I hover at the back of the group, listening.

  “It’s said that when his owner died and was buried here, Bobby stayed by the grave, not for one night, or two, but for fourteen years. When he finally passed away—”

  A collection of sad “awws” from the group.

  “—he was buried just within the gate.” The guide’s expression sobers. “Bobby is probably the kindest ghost you’ll find among these stones. Greyfriars is home to the bones of the murdered and the murderers alike.” He stops talking, lets the silence grow tense, then claps his hands. “Now, you’ve got one hour to have a look around. Try to avoid the poltergeist up on the hill.”

  The tourists break into smaller groups and wander up and down the paths.

  Mom brightens at the promise of a poltergeist. “Now that we’ve got to see.”

  “You go ahead,” I tell her. “I’ll stick to the normal graves.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Just don’t go too far.”

  She bounces off, with all the enthusiasm of someone rushing toward cake, not corpses.

  I turn, surveying the rise and fall of the graveyard. Tombstones are everywhere. They line the graveyard walls, as tall as coffins turned upright, and stick out of the ground like teeth. Some gravestones are new (well, relatively new) and others are little more than jagged bits of broken rock, slabs of concrete half-swallowed by green grass.

  A skull and crossbones sits beside a carved angel. A stone reaper looms over a set of anchors. A hangman’s noose, a cherub, a bouquet of stone roses. Here and there small gifts have been set on top of gravestones or left in the tangled weeds—bells and trinkets and folded bits of paper.

  Don’t go too far, Mom said, and I don’t mean to, but with every step, the Veil gets heavier, folding around me like river-wet clothes, like icy air …

  My lungs ache, and my vision goes gray, and by the time I realize what’s about to happen, it’s already happening.

  I’m being pulled through.

  I hear the scrape of handlebars, feel the rush of cold water in my lungs—and then I’m on the other side. The tourists are gone and the graveyard stretches, grim and empty.

  This has never happened before.

  Sure, I’ve been places where the Veil felt strong, but never strong enough to reach out and grab me, never strong enough to pull me through.

  I look down and see the coil of bluish light glowing through my chest. A tendril of fog circles my knees. It feels wrong, being here without Jacob, and I turn, already looking for the way back, but my feet feel rooted to the damp ground.

  The grass rustles, and my pulse spikes, but it’s just a terrier, trotting between tombstones—Greyfriars Bobby, the dog who lay down on his owner’s grave.

  I catch more movement, up at the top of the slope. There, a man paces outside of a crypt, smoking a pipe and muttering to no one. Shadows wick around his edges, smudging the air black.

  The poltergeist, I think, remembering Mom’s excitement. But he doesn’t stray from his crypt, and I’m starting to think this place isn’t so bad, when someone screams.

  I spin, and the Veil ripples around me as more figures take shape in the fog. A man being hauled toward a platform, where a noose hangs waiting. I turn away, only to find a procession of people making its way through the front gates.

  I shouldn’t be here, I need to go, need to pull myself out of the Veil, and I’m about to—when I see the woman watching me.

  The first thing I notice is the color of her cloak—a red so bright it’s like a tear in the gray fabric of the Veil. She moves through the graveyard, wisps of black hair curling like fingers around her hood. Her skin, where it shows, is milk white, her lips crimson.

  I want to take a photo, but my hands hang useless at my sides.

  Somewhere beyond the Veil, church bells begin to ring.

  Somewhere beyond the Veil, someone calls my name, but the voice is far away and fading, and I can’t take my eyes from the woman in red.

  She is staring straight at me. Not past me, the way other ghosts do, but at me, and it’s like a finger down my spine. Her dark eyes travel over my front, landing on the curl of light inside my chest.

  The look that crosses her face is hungry.

  “Cassidy …” comes the voice again, but it falls away as the woman in red begins to hum.

  Her voice cuts through the graveyard, low and smooth and sweet. It’s like someone plucked a string behind my ribs. The melody ripples through my bones, my muscles, my head.

  I’m getting dizzy in that lung-aching way, like I’ve been underwater too long, like I need to come up for air. The woman’s arm drifts up, and the next thing I know, I’m moving toward her, making my way between the tombstones, toward her outstretched fingers, and—

  “Cassidy!” Jacob cuts into my path. He takes my arm and pulls me back through the Veil. I fall through an instant of ice-cold air before landing on my butt in the grass.

  “What was that for?” I ask.

  “I kept calling you,” he says. “You didn’t answer.” He shakes his head. “You really shouldn’t cross the Veil without me.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say. “It kind of sucked me in.”

  His face is a mix of confusion and concern. I look past him, but of course the woman in the red cloak is gone, erased along with the rest of the Veil. The graveyard around us is full of chattering tourists and the sound of church bells as the kirk chimes the hour.

  I get to my feet, brushing grass from my jeans. “Where have you been?”

  Jacob ducks
his head. “Sorry. I guess I … got a little lost …”

  I think back to the mirror, the blank expression that followed him out of the bedroom. Jacob shudders, as if not wanting to remember, so I try to forget.

  “Did you see her?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  My eyes drift back to the place where she stood. “A woman in a red cloak …”

  “There you are!” Mom calls, heading toward me. “I’ve been looking everywhere.” She squints up at the sky. “I think you might be right about the rain. Ready to go?”

  “You have no idea,” I say, right before the first drops begin to fall.

  By the time we get back to the Lane’s End, Jacob is the only one still dry. We had an umbrella, but now it hangs from Mom’s hand, a mangled mess, thin metal arms snapped and broken by the first strong gust of wind. Mom doesn’t seem the least bit fazed, but water drips into my eyes and sloshes in my shoes as we mount the front steps, my jacket wrapped tightly over my camera.

  Mom heads off to talk to Mrs. Weathershire, but Jacob and I continue up the broad wooden stairs. All I want is a hot shower and some dry clothes. The image of the beach house comes to mind, sudden and taunting.

  “What was she like?” asks Jacob. “This woman in red.”

  I shake my head, trying to remember. But the pieces in my mind don’t add up to what I saw. What I felt.

  “I don’t know,” I say slowly. “But she wasn’t like the other ghosts. She was too bright, too real, she didn’t blend in, and when she saw me, she saw me, like, really saw—”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  The question comes out of nowhere. That is, until I climb the last few steps and see the girl from earlier. She’s sitting primly in the window seat on the second-floor landing, a book open in her lap and her dark braid draped over one shoulder.

  “Well?” she presses. Her accent is proper, so crisp I can’t tell if she’s actually a year or two older than me, or just really British. “Who were you talking to just now?”

  “Myself,” I say, trying not to cheat a glance at Jacob. “Don’t you ever talk to yourself?”

  She purses her lips. “I don’t make a habit of it,” she says, her gaze dropping back to her book.

  “Come on, Cass,” whispers Jacob. But that déjà vu sense is back, like the tap-tap-tap of the Veil, only this is a tug, pulling me closer.

  “Are you staying here long?” I ask the girl.

  “Who knows,” she says, without looking up.

  Okay, so, not the chattiest.

  “Well, I should go change.” I gesture at my clothes. “My pants are soaked.”

  A small sound escapes the girl’s mouth, something between a snort and a scoff.

  “You mean trousers.”

  I look at her blankly.

  “Pants are … what you wear underneath.”

  Jacob cracks up at that, and it’s crazy, but I swear the girl’s gaze flicks toward him. Just for a second. It’s so fast, I almost don’t notice. So fast, I can’t be sure. But Jacob goes quiet, and he moves to stand behind me.

  “Biscuits, flats, lifts, trousers,” I say. “I thought American people and British people spoke the same language.”

  “Hardly.” She closes the book and gives me a sweeping look. “What brings you to Scotland?”

  “Ghosts.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

  “My parents,” I explain. “They’re filming a show about famous ghosts around the world. This is our first stop.”

  The tension bleeds out of her face. “Ah. I see.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “apparently Scotland is, like, really haunted.”

  “Apparently.” She rises to her feet. That’s when I notice the necklace.

  It’s a pendant on a long silver chain. As the girl straightens, the pendant spins. I realize it’s not a pendant at all, but a small round mirror. It tickles something in the back of my head, but I don’t know what. She’s already tucking it beneath her collar.

  “I’m Cassidy Blake,” I say, thrusting out a hand.

  She eyes me a moment before taking it. “Lara Jayne Chowdhury.”

  She starts past me down the stairs, and it’s crazy, but I can feel her walking away, as if there’s a rope spooling out between us. And maybe she can feel it, too, because she glances back and considers me a moment, forehead wrinkled in thought. “Do you believe in ghosts, Cassidy?”

  I don’t know how to answer that.

  I mean, you’re supposed to say no. But it’s kind of hard to do that when Jacob’s standing there, arms crossed, beside me. In the end, I guess my silence speaks for me, because Lara’s mouth quirks into something like a smile.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she says, vanishing down the stairs before I can ask what she believes.

  Jacob waits until she’s gone to speak.

  “I’ve got a weird feeling about that girl,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That makes two of us.”

  That night, Mom, Dad, and I sit on the floor around a low coffee table, eating takeaway fish and chips from a local shop. I’m skeptical about the idea of “fish and chips,” but we passed six different places advertising this dish between the airport and the Lane’s End, so there must be something to it.

  I open the carton and stare down at the contents. A giant piece of fried fish sits on top of a sea of oversized French fries.

  I look up, confused. “These aren’t chips.”

  “Sure they are,” says Mom with a devious grin, and I realize this is yet another one of those things that got lost in translation.

  “Um, no,” I insist. “These are fries. Chips come in a bag.”

  “Ah, here those kind of chips are called crisps.”

  It’s official. Nothing is safe. I look around, peering under the stack of napkins. “What about ketchup?”

  And at this point, Mom informs me that there is no ketchup, because the whole thing’s been covered in salt and vinegar. The scent filling the room is a weird combo of fried food (good) and vinegar (a thing that I’m pretty sure does not go on food).

  I’m about to rebel when Mom scoops up a chip/fry and holds it toward my face.

  “Come on, Cass,” she prompts, “just try it. If you hate it, we’ll order pizza.”

  With my luck, pizza is the British word for octopus. I wrinkle my nose.

  “Scaredy cat,” teases Jacob from his place on the sofa, which isn’t fair because it’s not like he has to taste it.

  I accept the thick “chip” from Mom and take a cautious bite.

  My mouth fills with warm potato and salt, the bite of the vinegar weird but refreshing against the oil of the fries. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted.

  And it’s totally delicious.

  I try the fish, and it’s just as good. “Wow.”

  Mom beams. “See?”

  “It’s really good,” I say, but the food is hot and my mouth is full so it comes out isreagoo.

  “We’ll have you eating haggis before the trip is done.”

  I have no idea what that is, but at the mention of it, even Dad cringes, so I decide not to ask. File it under: Things better left a mystery.

  The chips, it turns out, are amazing as long as they’re hot. The moment they get cold, they turn into a salty, soggy mess, which is what’s happening to the contents of Dad’s tray.

  He hasn’t touched his food. He’s too busy poring over Mr. Weathershire’s journals. They’re a collection of accounts taken from neighbors, friends, fellow drinkers at the local pub.

  “Fascinating,” Dad murmurs. “The way they tie it all together, history and myth. You can see the pagan underpinnings and—”

  “John,” says Mom patiently. “Your dinner.”

  Dad makes a noncommittal sound and plucks a cold chip from the pile, popping it into his mouth. This is a pretty common sight at home: Dad, bent over his laptop, typing away while the remains of a meal sit forgotten to the side. Mom and I are used to it.r />
  Jacob squints, narrowing all his focus on a soggy chip leaning halfway out of Dad’s carton. If he were human, he’d probably have given himself a nosebleed by now, from all that concentrating. Instead, his whole body ripples from the effort as he reaches out and rests a finger on the chip. A second later it actually tips, and falls.

  Jacob thrusts both arms into the air, the picture of triumph.

  “Behold my telekinetic prowess!” he says, even though I’m pretty sure the chip was already losing its battle with gravity.

  Dad turns the page of a weathered journal and hmms to himself.

  “Anything good?” I ask.

  “It’s a mix,” he says. “Some are just ramblings and some are level-headed, but they all talk about these myths and legends as if they’re fact.”

  Mom gives a triumphant smile. “Stories have power,” she says. “So long as you believe them.”

  Dad nods absently. “Like here.” He taps the page. “These are a series of stories about Burke and Hare.”

  The names sound familiar. Then I remember—I heard one of the street performers mention them on the Royal Mile.

  “Who are they?” I ask, intrigued.

  “Well, back in the early 1800s,” Dad explains, “medical students needed bodies to practice on, and there was a shortage, so grave robbers would dig up the newly dead and deliver them to the medical theaters. But William Burke and William Hare decided that instead of digging up corpses, they would simply create their own.”

  Jacob shudders beside me.

  I hold my breath.

  “They murdered sixteen people before they were caught and tried. Hare testified against Burke and was eventually freed, but Burke was hanged, and then dissected in an anatomy theater, just as his victims had been.”

  Jacob and I exchange a horrified glance.

  Dad turns the page. “According to this narrator, William Burke’s bones are still in the university’s medical school. His ghost haunts the halls, bringing with it the scent of death and grave dirt.”

  For a moment, none of us talk.

  The wind picks up outside, an ominous whistling through the old window frame.