Bridge of Souls (City of Ghosts #3)

by Victoria Schwab

  As if on cue, a door slams down the hall.

  I pull the necklace over my head and take a few steps toward the sound, but the moment I move, my vision doubles, blurs. The room multiplies, sliding in and out of focus around me. Furniture shifting, appearing, disappearing, changing, burning, smoke and laughter, light and shadow, all of it so disorienting I have to squeeze my eyes shut.

  I don’t understand.

  I’ve crossed into the Veil countless times. Back home, and in Scotland, and in France. I’ve seen places where the Veil is empty, nothing but a stretch of white, like unmarked paper. But this is different. This is more than one Veil in the same place.

  I remember what Dad said about Muriel’s, how it had been torn down and rebuilt, how it had belonged to several families and lived several lives.

  And suddenly this muddled, overlapping scene makes sense.

  Because the Veil isn’t really one place. It’s a collection of remembered spaces, stitched together, each tethered to a ghost, their life, their death, their memories. That’s why some parts are empty—no ghost to hold them up.

  And that’s why this one is full.

  Because Muriel’s doesn’t belong to just one ghost.

  It belongs to several. Each with their own story. And I’m standing in all of them.

  “It’s giving me a headache,” says Jacob, closing one eye and then the other.

  He looks silly, but it gives me an idea. I let go of the mirror pendant and lift my camera instead, peering through the viewfinder. I slide the lens in and out until only one version of the house comes into focus at a time.

  In one, I’m in the plush séance room, all elegant tapestries and low rosy light.

  In another, I’m standing on rough wooden boards, the clink and slide of chains somewhere below.

  In a third, the room is hot and dark, smoke seeping up between the floorboards.

  I don’t know where to start.

  And then another door slams. Loud and close. I slide the focus just in time to see a man surge across the doorway and down the hall. He’s not in the building on fire, or in the slave quarters. He’s in the ornate house.

  “No, no, no,” he mutters, dragging his hand along the banister. “It’s gone.”

  I catch up as he rounds the corner, follow him into a room with a poker table, chips piled in tiny mountains before empty chairs.

  “It’s gone.”

  In a violent motion, he sweeps his arm across the table, scattering the chips. They fall like rain around him. I step closer, and he rounds on me.

  “They took it all from me,” he snarls, and I know this must be Mr. Jourdan, the gambler who lost his whole house, and then his life.

  In another version of the house, someone wails, the sound sudden and sharp. It catches me off guard, and in that second, Mr. Jourdan lunges forward and grabs my shoulders.

  “Everything is gone,” he moans.

  And I forget I’m gripping the camera instead of the mirror until I hold it up toward his face and nothing happens. The ghost looks at me, and then down at the lens, and then past it, at the curl of light inside my chest.

  And something in him changes. His eyes darken. His teeth grit.

  A second ago, he was a desperate man, trapped in his last moments. But now he’s a hungry ghost. A spirit, longing for what it’s lost.

  I reach for the mirror pendant as he reaches for my life, and he might have gotten there first if a bucket of poker chips hadn’t hit him in the side of the head. Jacob has excellent aim.

  It gives me just the time I need to get the mirror up between us.

  The ghost goes still.

  “Look and listen,” I say as his eyes go wide.

  “See and know,” I say as his edges ripple and thin.

  “This is what you are.”

  It’s like an incantation. A spell. Say the words, and the ghost goes clear as glass. I reach through his chest and take hold of the brittle thread inside. It once was a life, as bright as mine. Now it comes away in my hand, dark and gray, already crumbling to dust.

  And just like that, Mr. Jourdan fades and disappears, and so does his version of Muriel’s.

  My vision blurs, and it’s getting a little hard to breathe. For a second I think it’s just my body, warning me I’m not supposed to stay too long in the Veil. And then I remember the smoke.

  “Uh, Cass,” says Jacob.

  And I see the smoke rising from the ground floor, seeping through the walls.

  The wail comes again, and I realize it’s not someone but something, a siren, a horn, a warning to get out.

  I reach for the curtain, but it doesn’t rise to meet my fingers.

  I try again, grasping for the gray cloth between worlds, but the Veil holds tight.

  “No time,” shouts Jacob, pulling me toward the landing.

  We race down the stairs, even though down is hotter, down is the direction of fire curling through the house. It stings my eyes and burns my throat, and the Veil shifts and slides around us. One step, the house is on fire and people are shouting. The next, it’s dark. And I don’t know which Veil I’m in with each passing step, but I know I don’t want to be here when the building comes down.

  We reach the foyer, the front door hanging open on its hinges.

  Outside, I see the Quarter is burning.

  And it’s not.

  It’s a mess of overlapping scenes, buildings on fire and unburnt, alarms ringing one second and music filling the air the next. Veils tangled together with the same chaotic energy of jazz. I squeeze my eyes shut as something cracks over our heads.

  I look up in time to see a burning beam crashing toward us, and then Jacob’s pushing me forward, through the door and the curtain and the Veil, seconds before the beam collapses into smoldering wood and fiery ash.

  The world shudders into life and color, and I’m sitting on the hot pavement in front of the bustling restaurant, listening to the clank of silverware and laughter. The scent of smoke fades a little with every breath.

  “Could have stayed in the lounge,” says Jacob, sagging back on the sidewalk. “Just relaxed like normal people.”

  “We’re not normal,” I mutter, brushing off the Veil like cobwebs.

  “There you are,” says Mom, appearing in the doorway. “Hungry?”

  * * *

  I’m not thrilled about going back into Muriel’s, but the food looks really good.

  Jenna and Adan stash their camera equipment under the table, and Lucas puts away his notes as dishes arrive. Mom and Dad have this rule that when we travel, I can order whatever I want, but I have to take one bite of whatever they get. Which is how I end up with a plate of fried chicken and biscuits, but find myself facing down Mom’s bowl of gumbo, and Dad’s shrimp and grits.

  Gumbo, it turns out, is a kind of stew poured over rice. It’s rich, and full of flavors—and pieces of things I don’t necessarily recognize—but it tastes good. Grits, on the other hand, look like grainy porridge, like something that was supposed to dissolve but didn’t.

  But a deal is a deal, so I brace myself and take a bite of the grits, and they’re … good. Salty and buttery and simple, creamy without being rich. It reminds me of grilled cheese sandwiches, and chicken nuggets, the food I crave when I’m sick, or sad, or tired.

  Comfort food.

  I take another spoonful, and Dad offers to trade plates, but I think I’ll stick with my fried chicken. I glance around, trying to keep track of Jacob. I see him wandering from table to table, eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. Poking saltshakers and nudging napkins, having staring contests with people who can’t see him. He wanders into the kitchen and comes back a few minutes later, looking pale.

  “You don’t want to know how they make lobster,” he says.

  I roll my eyes.

  When we’re all stuffed and the plates have been cleared away, Adan leans his elbows on the table and says, “I’ve got a ghost story for you.”

  Everyone perks u
p.

  “It’s about the LaLaurie,” he adds, and the mood at the table changes around me.

  “What’s that?” I ask. I remember the name from the list of locations in the binder.

  “The LaLaurie Mansion,” explains Lucas, his voice quiet and tense, “is considered the most haunted place in New Orleans.”

  “And for good reason,” adds Mom, and for once, the topic of ghosts doesn’t seem to make her cheerful. There’s a crease in her forehead, and her mouth is a pale pink line.

  “What happened?” I ask, looking around, but no one seems willing to tell me.

  Adan clears his throat and presses on.

  “Right,” he says, “the LaLaurie Mansion has a gruesome past, but this story isn’t about way back then. This one’s new. It happened just a few years ago. People keep buying the house, you know, but no one stays too long. Well, a big-shot actor, he buys the house, and asks a friend of a friend of mine to stay in it, to watch the property. Alone.”

  Jacob and I exchange a look, and I don’t need to read my friend’s mind to hear him thinking, Nope.

  “So she goes to bed that night, and she’s just falling asleep when her cell phone rings. She doesn’t answer, just rejects the call. But an hour later, it rings again. This time, she’s annoyed, so she silences the phone, tries to go back to sleep. An hour later, it rings again, and she finally looks to see who’s calling her in the middle of the night.”

  Adan lets the question hang over the table. And then he smiles, just a little, the way Mom does when she hits the best part of a story.

  “It was the landline in the house,” he says. “Where she’s the only one home.”

  The table erupts into noise.

  Jenna says, “OH MY GOD,” and Mom applauds, and Dad laughs and shakes his head, and chills run across my skin, the kind I love, no danger, no fear, just the thrill that happens when you hear a good story.

  “Well, on that note,” says Mom as we stand to leave, “who’s up for a séance?”

  If you’ll follow me …”

  The voice belongs to Alistair Blanc, the Hotel Kardec’s resident Spiritist.

  “The proper title is Master of Spirits,” he said when he met us in the lobby tonight. Apparently Lucas called to schedule a séance for us earlier today, after Mom and I offered our enthusiastic yes at Café du Monde.

  The Master of Spirits is a small white man, with short silver hair and a sharp goatee, deep-set eyes, and a long thin nose topped by a pair of little round glasses. And he’s currently leading us through a door near Kardec’s copper bust and into a narrow hall, so dark we practically have to feel our way to the end. He picks up the edge of a velvet curtain, and holds it aside.

  “Come in, come in. Don’t be shy,” says Mr. Blanc, ushering us through into a dimly lit space. “Your eyes will adjust to the dark.”

  This séance room is nothing like the one at Muriel’s. There’s no clutter, no tinny music, just a stuffy quiet. There’s velvet everywhere, the space draped like a tent, so it’s impossible to tell what size it really is. But it feels too small for six people and a ghost.

  Lucas came along with us, and Jenna, too, but she left her camera supplies in the lobby with Adan, who seemed a little too eager to stay behind and watch their stuff. (“He’s not a huge fan of small spaces,” she whispered as we walked away, and I couldn’t help but think, Good thing he wasn’t with us down in the Catacombs beneath Paris.)

  A chandelier hangs in the center of the room, an elaborate sculpture of hands, each holding a candle in a foggy glass jar. Six high-backed chairs sit like thrones around a table covered in black silk. A large black rock, like a giant paperweight, sits in the center. The rock seems more ornamental than functional, but I can’t stop looking at it. And the longer I look, the more my eyes play tricks on me.

  If you’ve ever stared into a campfire, or the woods, or a blanket of snow, you understand. Your brain gets bored and starts doodling. Showing you things that aren’t there.

  I stare at the stone until I can almost see shapes. Smudged faces in the dark.

  Chairs scrape back, and I blink, dragging my attention back to the room, shivering.

  It should be warm in here, stifling even, with all the velvet, but the air is cold, a draft sliding over my arms and ankles as I sit down.

  I lift my camera, slide the focus in and out, but all I see is the room as it is.

  No hint of the Veil.

  No glimmer of something more.

  I take a photo of the narrow space, even though the only way I’d be able to capture the full room is from overhead. That makes me think of a ghost story Mom once told me, of hotel guests and the photos they found on their camera, the ones they couldn’t possibly have taken, because of the angle, which was right over their bed.

  Mr. Blanc takes his seat in a throne at the table. Candles rise at his back, and a large bell hangs on a hook by his elbow.

  He gave us permission to film the séance—seemed eager, even, to be on camera—but Lucas said that wouldn’t be necessary. I get the feeling Lucas shares Dad’s opinion when it comes to this kind of thing.

  According to Dad, séances are a spectacle of the supernatural.

  “Most people don’t believe in a thing unless they see it for themselves,” Dad had explained on our way back to the hotel. “And if they see it, they’ll believe it, even if it isn’t real.”

  “Who knows what’s real?” Mom had said, swinging an arm around my shoulder. “But anything is possible.”

  “Please join hands,” instructs Mr. Blanc once we’re all seated.

  Well, all of us except Jacob, who’s busy circling the room, walking the narrow path between the backs of the chairs and the velvet-curtained walls. He looks behind one of them and confirms there are air grates back there, causing the cold draft, the gently swaying velvet.

  “How does a séance work?” asks Mom, with an enthusiasm reserved for the strange and the morbid.

  Mr. Blanc strokes his goatee. “That depends. To reach out to someone specific, someone you’ve lost, I need a possession, something of theirs to call them forth. Or, if you like, I can simply reach out to the spirit realm and see who answers.” He considers us. “I am only a humble conduit, but I believe that, for some such as you, the spirits would have much to say.”

  “I certainly do,” says Jacob, who’s stroking his chin in a near-perfect imitation of Mr. Blanc.

  Don’t do anything, I think pointedly.

  Jacob sighs. “You’re no fun.” He gestures at the room. “This place is like a spectral playground!” he says, right before his arm passes through one of the candles. The flame shudders and goes out.

  Mr. Blanc raises a brow. “The spirits, it seems, are eager to begin.”

  I scowl at Jacob, who flashes me a bashful grin. Sorry, he mouths.

  “Do you wish to call on a specific spirit,” asks Mr. Blanc, “or shall I open the gates and see what comes through?”

  I tense a little, but remind myself of what Lara said. Séances aren’t real. And unless Mr. Blanc is an in-betweener, which I seriously doubt, there’s no risk of him letting anything through.

  “Ohh,” says Mom. “Let’s let the ghosts decide.”

  “Very well.” The lights dim around us, and Dad, ever the skeptic, raises a brow. Mom kicks him lightly under the table. Jenna squirms excitedly in her seat. Lucas looks straight ahead, his face carefully blank.

  Mr. Blanc clears his throat, and I realize I’m the only one who hasn’t joined hands.

  “Don’t worry,” says Mr. Blanc. “The spirits cannot hurt you.”

  Well, that’s a straight-up lie, I think, remembering all the ghosts I’ve met in the Veil who’ve tried to kill me.

  But this is just a game. A bit of fun, as Lara would say.

  So I take the hands on either side of me, completing the circle.

  I can still feel the Veil, but it’s no stronger here than it was out in the street. If anything, it’s softer, the tap of ghosts r
educed to a gentle press. I stare at my own warped reflection in the black stone centerpiece.

  “Close your eyes,” says Mr. Blanc. “And quiet your minds. We must create a clear channel.”

  If Lara were here, she would scoff, and say that isn’t how it works. That we’re on one side and they’re on the other, and unless someone died really close to this spot, there’s probably no one to talk to.

  But Lara’s not here, so everyone, including the Spiritist, closes their eyes.

  Everyone except for me.

  Which is why I see the strings, the seams, the tricks that make it easy to believe.

  I see the pale smoke spilling between a break in the velvet curtains. I see Mr. Blanc shift something between his teeth. I see his shoe move under the table, just before we hear a knock.

  Everyone opens their eyes, blinking in surprise at the fog, the subtle changes in the room.

  “Is anyone there?” asks Mr. Blanc.

  Jacob holds his breath, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s resisting the urge to cause a scene, or if he genuinely thinks he might be summoned and forced to answer.

  But when Mr. Blanc speaks again, his voice is higher, stranger, a little muffled, as if there’s something in his mouth, which I know there is.

  “My name is Marietta,” he says. “Marietta Greene.”

  It’s like watching a ventriloquist, except Mr. Blanc is both the master and the doll. His lips are always moving.

  “I don’t know where I am,” he continues in that strange, squeaky voice. “It is so dark, I think they must have boarded the windows and locked the doors …”

  It sounds like a speech; the words trip out too easily.

  I feel the cold draft, and slight tremor of the table, all the things I know are tricks, part of the performance. But I don’t feel anything ghostly.

  And then I do.

  The air in the room changes. The draft drops away, and the mist holds still, and the bell at Mr. Blanc’s elbow begins to ring, even though he never touched it.

  Mr. Blanc stares down at the bell, and for a second, he looks totally surprised.

  But then his head lolls forward, like a puppet without any strings. His hands drop from Jenna’s and Mom’s, landing on the table with the dull smack of dead weight.