City of Ghosts Read online

  “Sorry,” I mumble, feeling guilty for ruining the take. “I saw …”

  The second cameraman swings his light into the shadows. It glances off the plastic sheen of a wax figure.

  “Oh,” says Findley. “Those are all over this place. For ambiance.”

  “That’s perfectly normal,” says Jacob dryly. “Not messed up at all.”

  Mom and Dad, the film crew, and Findley head down a hall. When I start to follow them, the tap-tap-tap weakens a little. I turn and survey the corridor, taking a step in another direction. The Veil gets stronger. If this were a game of Hot and Cold, I’d be getting warmer while my parents head straight into icy water.

  Mom and Dad may be brilliant, but they clearly don’t know a thing about finding actual ghosts.

  I wait until they’re between takes—the little red camera lights safely off—before calling out, “This way.”

  This way way way, my voice echoes.

  Mom and Dad double back, the crew trailing behind them.

  “Find something?” asks Findley.

  I shrug. “Just a feeling.”

  We move through a low doorway. The world closes in, the ceiling falling to just above Dad’s head. A narrow room. No windows. All stone.

  It reminds me of a tomb.

  The cameras start rolling. And the EMF meter goes off again.

  But this time, Jacob’s nowhere near it. The volume shifts from the low tone it made before to a high whine, practically a wail.

  “Well, this is a whole lot of nope,” says Jacob, backing away.

  Don’t you dare leave me here, I hiss in my head.

  I’ve never been that claustrophobic, but I’m starting to wish I’d stayed street-side. While Mom and Dad are filming, I retreat into the hall, and I don’t notice the tap-tap-tap rushing up behind me until it’s too late.

  The Veil reaches out.

  “When the lower streets were bricked over during the plague …” says Dad.

  It grabs at my shoulders.

  “… some of the victims were buried inside …”

  It clutches at my sleeves.

  “Cass,” warns Jacob as I squeeze my eyes shut.

  I won’t turn around.

  I won’t look.

  I won’t—

  But in the end it doesn’t matter.

  The Veil parts behind me, and I gasp, cold air flooding my lungs as I’m dragged under.

  Mary King’s Close is full of ghosts.

  They cough, call out, shuffle past. Someone lets out a hacking sound. A bundle of rags on the ground rolls over. There’s a person—was a person—in there.

  Bricks are piled on the damp ground, and half-built walls rise and fall to every side. Somewhere nearby, a fist pounds dully on stone.

  Jacob groans and runs a hand through his messy blond hair. “Cass.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say.

  “I know,” he answers, crossing his arms over his chest with a shiver. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  I look around.

  The film crew and Findley and my parents have disappeared, swept behind the curtain. If I strain, I can still hear them, their voices ghostly, echoing. But when I reach for the Veil, my hand finds something too solid. More like a wall than a curtain.

  That’s not good. I try to swallow the rising panic as a skeletal man hobbles past.

  An old woman sobs.

  A family huddles together for warmth.

  Jacob inches closer to me, the air around us thick with fear and loss and illness.

  A ripple moves through the ghosts, their heads turning as they notice me. An intruder in their deaths, their memories, their world.

  The skeletal man stops walking.

  The old woman narrows her milky eyes.

  The family glares.

  “Cassidy,” whispers Jacob. I reach for the Veil, hoping to catch the part in the curtain and cross back through, but it holds firm under my touch. I keep trying. This has never happened before.

  The ghosts are moving now.

  Toward us.

  “Jacob,” I say slowly, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “A little help?”

  “Stay calm,” he says. “I’ll get us out of here.” He puts his hand on my arm and I can feel the bones in his fingers as his grip tightens.

  Still, nothing happens.

  “Jacob?”

  He grunts, like he’s trying to lift something heavy.

  I can tell he’s trying to pull us back through the Veil, only it’s definitely not working, because we’re still here, and the ghosts are still coming toward us, bringing with them a wave of

  Menace.

  Malice.

  Anger.

  Terror.

  Sickness.

  Sorrow.

  It feels like ice water in my lungs, like aching cold in my bones. I can’t peel the two apart. Can’t separate my memories from theirs, what I once felt from what they do now, over and over.

  “Jacob!” I gasp, breathless.

  “I’m trying!”

  I inch back until I’m standing against the wall. My hands fumble for the camera at my neck, clinging to it like a talisman, a reminder of what’s real. My fingers brush one of the buttons—

  And the flash goes off.

  A flare of light bursts from my hands, a sudden, dazzling slash of white in the darkened tunnels.

  The ghosts draw back, some shielding their eyes, others blinking, as if blinded. It won’t last. But in that stolen second, Jacob grabs my hand and pulls me through a gap in the line of ghosts, and we run.

  We bolt through the maze of underground alleys. I can feel the ghosts behind us, hear them coming, but I don’t look back, feet carrying me over rough stone, through doorways and rooms and down corridors.

  At last, I spot a set of stairs.

  Up. That’s all I can think. Up. Every step takes us farther from Mary King’s Close and its ghostly mob and that horrible wave of feelings.

  Halfway to the street, the Veil thins enough for me to reach out and grab the curtain—which is finally cloth again—and force it aside. We tumble through, out of the Veil and back into a world of pale light and fresh air.

  I gasp at the cold in my lungs, the sense of surging up from deep water. The weight of Jacob’s hand is gone, but he’s still there beside me. Sunlight filters through him as he leans back against the alley wall.

  I look around, lost.

  No, not lost—it’s hard to get lost when you can hear the noise of the Royal Mile in the distance. Plus, the ground slopes beneath me, so that up leads to one place, and down to another. I’m not lost—but I don’t know where I am, either.

  I was so focused on getting out of Mary King’s Close, out of the Veil, that I didn’t exactly pay attention to the route. I must have taken a different set of stairs, because Jacob and I are standing on a narrow street I’ve never seen before. It’s three parts gray stone to one part gray sky. There’s no bustle, no noise.

  I slump back against the wall and slide down until I’m sitting on the ground, which is probably unsanitary, but I don’t care. My skin still feels like it’s coated in cobwebs and every time I blink, I see the ghosts. The way they looked at me, with their want and their anger and their fear.

  I’ve been in plenty of haunted places, but I’ve never been to a place where the Veil was stronger than I am. Stronger than Jacob. He’s standing over me, arms crossed, and I wish for once I could read his mind because I can’t read his face.

  “We should have just gone for a walk in the city,” I say at last.

  He sighs and crouches down beside me. “Makes you miss creepy students in burning auditoriums, doesn’t it?”

  I try to smile. We sit for a moment, quiet except for the seagulls overhead and the faraway sound of bagpipes.

  “You okay?” Jacob asks, which I appreciate. He knows I’m not, but he still asks, and I know that if I lie, he won’t call me out on it. We’ll just pretend—that we’re normal, that he’
s not a mind-reading ghost, that I’m not … whatever I am. That I’m not drawn toward places full of death like a rock rolling down a hill. Constant as gravity.

  What’s wrong with me?

  “Where should I start?” he teases.

  I shoulder him, feel a prickle of cold as my arm goes straight through his sleeve.

  “That tickles,” he says, getting up. He holds out his hand and I wish I could take it. Instead, I push off the wall. I’m halfway to my feet when Jacob glances to his right and says, “No way.”

  I follow his gaze and see a girl crossing the road.

  I recognize her instantly. The brown skin, the black hair pulled back in a neat braid. The girl from the Lane’s End.

  Lara Jayne Chowdhury.

  As she walks, she holds her necklace in one hand, the mirror pendant spinning in her fingers, catching the light.

  “What is she doing?” wonders Jacob as Lara slips around a corner.

  “No idea,” I say, straightening up. “But I want to find out.”

  We follow her, rounding the corner just in time to see Lara stop, glance left and right, and then disappear.

  Right out of the street—and into nothing.

  Which isn’t possible.

  “Unless …” starts Jacob.

  I finish for him. Unless she’s like me.

  I remember the feeling of recognition. The way Lara looked at me and seemed to hear Jacob when he laughed.

  Do you believe in ghosts? she’d asked me.

  I cross to the spot where she vanished, and can feel the ripple of the curtain as it settles back into place.

  Lara didn’t step into nothing.

  She stepped into the Veil.

  And I’m already reaching out for it when Jacob cuts in front of me.

  “No,” he says. “Did you forget what just happened? Did you forget the part where we got stuck?”

  “Of course not,” I say, the memory of the ghosts still fresh. But I’ve never met someone like me. I have to see. Have to know. I catch hold of the curtain, pulling it aside.

  “You can stay here,” I tell Jacob, and for a second, I think he’s really going to, as if he can’t hear my thoughts pounding with my pulse.

  You can stay, but I don’t want you to.

  Jacob huffs. “Rule number nine,” he grumbles, following me through.

  The Veil is thinner here, the transition easy. The chill in my lungs is barely a breath, a shiver, and then it’s gone.

  We pass through. My feet land on old stone streets. The light shines from my chest. Beside me, Jacob is solid—and solidly ticked off.

  He gestures around at the alley. “Well?”

  It’s empty. No Lara. No ghosts. Nothing but a thin mist.

  But that’s not possible. I saw her disappear. I saw—

  A familiar English-accented voice cuts through the silence. “Watch and listen …”

  The words carry on the air, and when I follow them around the nearest corner, I see Lara standing at the bottom of a short set of steps. Her back is to us, and she’s grayed out, the same way I am, with the same burning light inside her chest.

  And there, sprawled back against the stairs, as if trying to escape, is a ghost. A man my father’s age. He’s got a short beard and a long coat that pools around him like a shadow.

  Lara’s necklace dangles from her outstretched hand, mirror side hanging in front of the ghost like a hypnotist’s pendulum. Only, it’s not swinging side to side. It’s not moving at all. It stays perfectly still, and so does the man.

  Jacob’s gone rigid beside me. I hold my breath.

  “See and know …” continues Lara.

  The words sound almost like a spell. Maybe they are a spell, because the ghost stays there on the steps, as if pinned. Lara stands tall, fingers splayed as she recites the third and final line.

  “This is what you are.”

  The air ripples with the force of the words, the whole Veil shuddering. As I watch, the ghost goes thin, like glass and fog instead of flesh and bone. I can see straight through him, can see the thing coiled in his chest. A coil of rope, a ribbon.

  Like mine, but without light.

  Lara reaches in and pulls the ribbon out. The end snags in his chest, but she gives it a swift tug. The dark thread comes free in her hand, hanging limply from her fingers for a moment before crumbling away to ash.

  An instant later, the man crumbles, too, just … falls apart. One second a ghost, and the next gone. A breeze sweeps through the alley, sudden and unnatural, and blows the dust away.

  Jacob lets out a small gasp, and Lara’s head snaps up.

  I shove Jacob sideways behind the corner and out of sight as she turns, brushing the last bits of dust from her hands.

  I stare in shock.

  She gives me a long, measured look, her brown eyes unblinking.

  “What?” she says at last. “You act like you’ve never seen a ghost hunter before.”

  What do you …” I trail off, unsure what to say.

  A ghost hunter? At the edge of my sight, Jacob shudders, and I’m suddenly glad she can’t see him.

  “I should have known,” she goes on matter-of-factly.

  “Known what?”

  “That you were like me.” She loops the necklace back over her head, tucking the pendant underneath her shirt. I notice that the light in her chest is a warmer hue, rose-tinted, while mine is bluer, colder. “I suppose I suspected, back at the Lane’s End. But you seemed so very clueless. Almost like you do right now—”

  “Hey.” I bristle. “I knew there was something weird about you, too.”

  She arches a perfect black brow. “Really, now?”

  “I just didn’t know what it was,” I explain. “I didn’t realize there were other people … who could …”

  “Oh,” she says, adjusting her braid. “You thought you were the only one who’s ever cheated death? The only one able to move through the in-between? How novel.”

  “In-between?”

  She gestures around us.

  “Oh,” I say, “the Veil.”

  Lara raises a brow. “That’s what you call this place?”

  “It’s better than in-between,” I shoot back. Lara starts to protest when we’re cut off by voices, footsteps, the nearness of new ghosts. Plural. Lara and I both stiffen.

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” she says, turning on her heel and vanishing back through the Veil without a second glance. I’m about to go after her, when Jacob catches my wrist.

  “I don’t like this,” he hisses. “I don’t like her. Did you see what she did to that guy? Because I did, Cass. She turned him to ash.”

  I know. I saw. But my head is spinning with questions.

  Maybe Lara has answers. I pull free of Jacob’s grip and step through the Veil. There’s a flush of cold, and then I’m back on the solid side of things.

  Jacob didn’t follow me through.

  Lara pinches the bridge of her nose. “Edinburgh gives me a headache.”

  “What did you—” I start.

  “I thought the in-between back in London was bad, but there’s something about this city, can’t you feel it? Like a lead blanket—”

  “What did you do to him?” I ask.

  Her eyes flick up. “To who?”

  “The man on the steps.”

  She crinkles her nose. “He wasn’t a man,” she says primly. “He was a ghost. I sent him on.”

  “Where?”

  She shrugs. “To the great unknown? To the silent side? To peace and quiet? Call it what you like. I sent him to the place beyond. Where he’s supposed to be.”

  Supposed to be? “Why?”

  Lara’s eyebrows go up. “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  She bristles. “Because it’s my job.”

  “Someone hired you to hunt ghosts?”

  “Of course not,” she says. “But this is what we do.”

  We? Hunt ghosts? I don’t understand. And I
must have said so out loud because Lara sighs and says, “Obviously. Ghosts don’t stay in the in-between because they want to be there, Cassidy. They stay because they can’t move on. They’re stuck. It’s up to us to set them free.”

  Us.

  She frowns. “What have you been doing in your Veil, if not hunting ghosts?” Her eyes go to the camera around my neck. “Oh god, tell me you’re not sightseeing!”

  “Um …” My mouth opens, closes. I don’t know what to say.

  Her phone chimes with a text message, and she checks it. “Ugh, I have to go.”

  “Wait,” I manage, “you can’t just leave.”

  “I’m already late,” she says, starting up the alley. “I’m supposed to meet Aunt Alice at the museum. Mum and Dad insist on weekly bouts of cultural enrichment or some such … Oh,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. “You do know you’re being haunted, right? A boy,” she continues, holding up her hand, “about this tall, scruffy blond hair, bull’s-eye shirt …”

  I stiffen. No one else has ever been able to see Jacob.

  “Yes,” I say carefully. “I know.”

  Lara frowns. “And you haven’t done anything about it?”

  And there’s a rock in my stomach, because I know what she means by that. It’s in the job title: ghost hunter. “He’s my friend.”

  She purses her lips as if tasting something sour. “Bad idea.” She looks like she’s about to say more, but her cell phone dings again, and she just shakes her head and walks briskly toward the mouth of the alley.

  “Wait,” I say. “Please, I’ve never met anyone else who’s … who can … you said …”

  A dozen questions tumble through my head, and she must be able to see them because she says, “I’m in 1A.”

  “Huh?”

  “My flat, at the Lane’s End. Come by tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock.” She steps out onto the street. “Don’t be late.”

  I slump back against the wall, mind racing.

  This is what we do.

  My job … to hunt ghosts … to send them on … Is that why I’m able to cross the Veil?

  And an even more unsettling question: Does Jacob know?

  Has he always known?

  As if on cue, Jacob reappears. Rises right up through the cobblestones, his arms crossed and his eyes dark. I can tell he’s not happy.