Bridge of Souls (City of Ghosts #3)

by Victoria Schwab

  “Some events are so terrible,” says Mom, “they seep into the bones of a place. They stain its past, its present, and its future.” She gestures around her. “This is an angry house. As it should be. Madame LaLaurie was never punished for her monstrous crime. She and her husband fled to France, leaving pain and injustice in their wake.” Mom takes a deep breath, and steps, like a diver, down the darkened hall. But I’m not ready to follow.

  I’m relieved when Lucas steps in front of me.

  “You should go,” he says quietly. “This is no place for …” I wonder if he’s about to say in-betweeners, but after a moment he just says, “children.”

  Usually, I’d protest, insist I’m old enough for whatever’s waiting inside, but this time, I don’t want to get closer. I can’t bear the thought of those rooms. I wish I didn’t know what happened here, even though Mom says that knowing is a kind of respect. A way of honoring the dead.

  “Are you coming?” Dad asks me and Lara.

  “I don’t think they should,” says Lucas. My parents and our guide exchange a three-way look, the kind of silent conversation grown-ups have sometimes.

  And then Dad nods and says, “You’re right.”

  He hands me some cash and tells us to go get a snack, to meet them outside the mansion in an hour. With that, the Inspecters and their crew head deeper into the darkened house, and Jacob and Lara and I back out onto the street. The Veil retreats as we step beyond the iron gate. I lean against a lamppost, shaking from the force of it.

  “When I say we should skip the haunted house, you never listen …” Jacob mutters.

  We set out down Royal, eager to put as much distance between us and the LaLaurie Mansion as possible.

  As we walk and walk, I can’t help but wonder, where is the Emissary?

  My nerves were wound tight before the LaLaurie Mansion, but now they’ve officially snapped. “This isn’t working,” I say. “We tried waiting. And it hasn’t come.”

  “Maybe it gave up,” says Jacob. “Maybe it’s like a game of hide-and-seek, and we hid long enough, and now the game’s over.”

  “Do you honestly believe that?” asks Lara.

  Jacob frowns. “It could be true.”

  But we all know it’s not.

  And we all know what we have to do. We have to get Death’s attention.

  Jacob, of course, thinks it’s a bad idea.

  “No,” he says, “I think it’s a really bad idea. Like, a monumentally bad idea. First, it’s dangerous. Second, it’s full of things that could go wrong. And third, I hate it.” He sighs. “But if this is what we have to do, let’s do it. Um … how do we do it?”

  We stop at the corner, and I look up and down the streets. They’re crowded with cars and carriages and people. Jazz fills the air, along with laughter and horns. The Quarter is busy today.

  “It’s here somewhere,” I say. “It has to be. So why isn’t it showing up?”

  “It’s too crowded,” says Lara, gesturing at the street. “The girl with the Rubik’s Cube yesterday, Hazel? She said that New Orleans was a good place to hide, because it’s so busy. And we’ve spent all day in crowded places. So if we don’t want to hide, we need to find somewhere quiet.”

  I nod. “So that we stand out. Like I did in the graveyard.”

  We discuss going to St. Louis or Lafayette, but it’s a Sunday, and the weather is cooler, which means the cemeteries will be packed with tourists.

  “What about a séance?” asks Jacob.

  Lara rolls her eyes. “I told you those aren’t real,” she says, and she’s right. But so is Jacob. After all, we had a séance, and the Emissary came. Sure, it was only a voice, but it found me there.

  I don’t think we need all the bells and whistles of a séance. Maybe we just need to use the room in the Hotel Kardec.

  My spirits lift, until Jacob reminds me it’s locked up. Off-limits.

  I groan, running my hands through my hair as we start walking again.

  Think, think.

  The Veil rises and falls around me, carrying smoke and jazz, and the whispers I’ve come to recognize as Jackson Square. I slam to a stop. Turn left. And there it is, on the edge of the square.

  Muriel’s.

  Muriel’s, with its ivy-strewn restaurant, and its large stairs, and the weird, antique-filled room up top.

  The séance room.

  I glance at Lara and Jacob. “Follow me.”

  The downstairs restaurant is packed for lunch. We head straight for the staircase, but a waiter stops us.

  “Are you kids lost?” he asks.

  Lara bristles visibly at being called a kid, but I just shake my head.

  “We have a date with Death,” says Jacob, but thankfully the waiter can’t hear him.

  “School project,” I say, holding up my camera.

  The waiter eyes us with suspicion, but then someone somewhere drops a tray, and he waves us on and says, “Just don’t touch anything.”

  “Of course not,” says Lara, in her best, brightest British.

  As we climb the staircase, a couple comes down the other way, arm in arm, drinking and chatting about how spooky it is up there, what wonderful ambience. We pass them, and Lara looks back over her shoulder.

  “Is this part open to the public?” she asks me.

  I nod, and she looks around, then grabs an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on a chain and hangs it across the top of the stairs behind us.

  “This way,” I say, leading her past the cushioned lounge, into the red light of the séance room, with its eerie darkroom glow.

  “Well, this is charming,” says Lara, scanning the old paintings and the grinning masks, the strange combination of statues and animal prints and fancy furniture.

  “Ten out of ten for atmosphere,” agrees Jacob.

  A quick survey, and I’m satisfied that no one else is up here with us. For right now, at least, we have the séance room to ourselves.

  “Ready?” asks Lara, and the question feels so much bigger than it is, but I nod.

  “Let’s do this.”

  We dump the supplies out of Lara’s red backpack, matches and oil and grave dirt tumbling out onto an ottoman. There’s an ornate silk rug on the floor, and I pull it aside, exposing the bare wood floors beneath, mottled with age.

  The last thing we need is to start a fire.

  “I thought that was exactly what we’re doing,” says Jacob.

  “You know what I mean,” I say. “A bigger fire.”

  The kind that gets out of control.

  Lara opens the pouch of grave dirt and tips some out into her palm. It looks more like sand than soil, dry and gray, but there’s a faint odor, not like something rotting, exactly, just like something gone. The lifeless smell of old, abandoned places.

  She traces out a circle with the small black stones, roughly the size of a séance table, then begins to pour the grave dirt out onto the floor, not in a pile but in a thin line, the way Magnolia told us to when we were in the Veil.

  “I have to admit,” Lara says, dusting off her palms, “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  She hands me the bottle of oil, and I tug the stopper out.

  “Which part?” I say as the room fills with the scent of sage. “Co-opting a séance room, preparing a ritual ceremony, or banishing an agent of Death?”

  “All of it. It’s rather exhilarating,” she says, and then, seeing my face, she quickly adds, “if you don’t think too hard about why we’re doing it.”

  Lara draws a groove in the grave dirt, a narrow channel that goes all the way around the circle, and I pour the oil in, careful to save enough that it will reach, from start to end. When it’s lit, the oil will burn through the grave dirt, creating a line of fire and ash, life and death, and when it does, it should cut the line between the Emissary and me.

  As long as the Emissary is standing inside the circle.

  Now all we have to do is lure it here, and get it to pass within the circle, and light
the oil, and burn the space between us clean.

  Oh no. This is a terrible idea.

  It will never work.

  It will never—

  “It will,” says Jacob firmly. “It has to.”

  He heads out into the lounge to be our lookout, for both humans and Emissaries, and after that, there’s nothing to do but wait.

  So we wait.

  Lara wanders the room, admiring the strange and morbid decorations. I perch on the edge of a velvet sofa, get up, switch to a chair, get up again, unable to sit still. Silence settles over us like a sheet, and my ears adjust, not only to the Veil, but to the sounds in the living world.

  The tinny old-fashioned music that drifts through the room.

  The guests outside, murmuring as they reach the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign, saying that they thought it was open before drifting back downstairs.

  The faint groan of the floorboards as Jacob rocks back and forth on his heels beyond the door.

  “ ‘Because I could not stop for Death,’ ” says Lara under her breath, “ ‘He kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves, and Immortality.’ ”

  I stare at her for a long moment.

  “Emily Dickinson,” she says, as if that explains everything.

  She goes quiet after that, and we wait for what feels like an hour, but, according to a clock on the wall, is only about ten minutes.

  Jacob drifts back into the room. “Nothing,” he says, looking nervous. “What now?”

  My heart sinks. All of this, for nothing. We can’t get oil back into the bottle. We can’t get the grave dirt back into the bag. We have to go through with this. We have to get the Emissary here. Now.

  I get to my feet.

  “Where are you going?” asks Lara.

  “Into the Veil.” Jacob and Lara both look horrified, so I explain. “We need to get the Emissary’s attention, right? Well, Renée said the light in my chest was a beacon. That if I go into the Veil, I’ll stand out, and it will be easier for the Emissary to find me.”

  “Right,” says Lara.

  “So … if you want to catch a fish …”

  Lara nods. “You need bait.”

  “I don’t like this,” says Jacob.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Of course not!” he says, and then groans. “Come on, let’s do it.”

  “Be careful,” says Lara.

  “Be ready,” I answer.

  I fling aside the curtain, brace myself against the drop, the instant of cold, and then I’m back, in the séance room, the same, and not the same. I look down, and see the echo of the circle we’ve made on the floor, a shadow of it, as if it’s burned through one world into the other.

  And I think, this might actually work.

  I take a deep breath, and shout as loud as I can.

  “I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!”

  The Veil swallows up my words, smothering them, but I don’t care.

  “COME AND GET ME!” I call, screaming out my anger and my fear. I shout until my lungs start to ache, and my head starts to swim, and Jacob takes my hand.

  “I think you made your point,” he says, pulling me back through the Veil.

  A shudder, a gasp, and the red-lit séance room comes into focus. I steady myself as Lara looks up from the floor and shakes her head.

  Nothing.

  We hold our breath and wait, but the seconds tick by, and no one comes.

  Lara holds out the unbroken evil eye charm. “I don’t think it’s working.”

  “This doesn’t make sense!” I snap, right before I hear the sound.

  The same sound my mirror made back in the graveyard, when the Emissary flung it against the tomb. The quiet crack of glass.

  Lara and I both look down. The evil eye lies splintered in her palm.

  And we both know what that means.

  It’s coming.

  “Are you sure?” asks Jacob. “There’s no sign of …” He trails off. Or really, his voice fades out, along with all the other sounds in the room. The tinny music drops away. The world goes silent.

  The temperature falls.

  I tie the white string around my wrist, and Lara takes the other end, a tether between us, an anchor.

  I grip my camera, just so I can hold on to something, keep my hands from shaking and my nerve from failing as the Emissary appears.

  It doesn’t walk through the door.

  Instead, it comes together like a storm. Slides like smoke between the pictures on the wall, through the cracks and gaps in the room. Gathers itself into a shadow, a shape: skeletal limbs in a pitch-black suit. A broad-brimmed hat and long, gloved fingers and bottomless black eyes behind a skull mask.

  “We have found you, Cassidy Blake,” it says in that tangled rasp.

  No, I think, I’ve found you.

  But the Emissary isn’t standing in the circle yet.

  I need to make it step forward. I need to step back.

  But my legs are locking up again. It’s the skull mask, or rather, the thing behind it. That darkness that reaches out and pins me still.

  The Emissary holds out its hand, as if I’d simply take it. As if, after fighting so hard to stay alive, I’d give up that easily.

  And yet, I feel my fingers twitch.

  My hand drifting up.

  I can’t get away. I can’t look away.

  “Cassidy!”

  Jacob’s voice cuts through like a flash.

  A flash. My camera.

  I force the camera up and look through the viewfinder, use the lens instead of my own eyes, and instantly my head clears. My legs come unstuck from the floor.

  “Come and get me,” I snap, trying to keep my voice from shaking as I step back out of reach. And the Emissary steps forward, over the line of the circle.

  “Lara! Now!”

  She strikes a match. It doesn’t light.

  She strikes a second. It flares, and then goes out.

  “Lara!” I say, panic winding through my voice as the Emissary takes another step forward. It’s standing in the middle of the circle now, but soon, it will be at the front, and then it will be out, and—

  The third match strikes. And lights.

  Lara brings it to the oil, and the circle begins to burn.

  The Emissary stops.

  Looks down, its mask tilting to one side, clearly confused.

  I thought it would go up fast, a struck match, a sudden burst of flame. The circle lit, and closed, in an instant. Instead, the fire moves slowly. It pours itself in a narrow band around the Emissary’s feet.

  But it’s working. The Emissary twitches, caught in the trap, and the flame slides around the circle, closing the loop and—

  “Cassidy,” says Jacob, his voice unsteady. I turn toward him. I know Jacob—from his blond curls to his superhero shirt, his bright eyes and his playful grin. But right now, he looks wrong. He’s soaking wet, his clothes clinging to his narrow frame. He looks thin and gray, his hair floating around his face, as if he’s underwater.

  He says my name again, the word threaded with sadness and fear. “Cass?”

  And I don’t understand, until I do.

  The circle.

  The circle is designed to sever the line, to break the connection between the Emissary and me. But we’re not the only ones tied together.

  It’s cutting away Jacob, too.

  I’m the only thing holding him here.

  And the line is breaking.

  The oil continues to burn. The fire carves its thin bright way around the circle, and Jacob collapses to his hands and knees, the life going out of him.

  “No!” I shout, moving toward him.

  “Just a little longer!” calls Lara as the circle burns and the Emissary tries, and fails, to drag itself forward. Its edges begin to smudge, the rim of its hat dissolving into smoke. But Jacob is fading, too.

  “Cassidy, don’t!” warns Lara.

  But I drop to his side, pleading with him to hold on,
to stay. He shudders and rolls over, coughing river water onto the bare wood floor. But he’s stopped thinning, stopped fading.

  “I’m okay,” he says, gasping for breath. “I’m okay.”

  But he shouldn’t be. The spell’s still going. And then I look down and see that my shoe has crossed the line of the circle, breaking the flame.

  “Cassidy, look out!” screams Lara.

  I look up, and there’s the Emissary, freed from the ring and reaching straight for me. Its gloved fingers brush my skin, like an icy breeze.

  And then Lara is there, throwing herself between the Emissary and me.

  And the last thing I see is that gloved hand closing over her arm, before the ring of fire dies, and the grave dirt circle blows apart, and the Emissary is gone.

  And so is Lara.

  I sit, reeling, on the wooden floor.

  In front of me, the smudged remains of the circle are still smoking.

  It happened so fast. The white string is still looped around my wrist, but the other end drifts loose, abandoned. Lara’s red backpack sags against the sofa, the only sign she was here.

  This isn’t right.

  The Emissary was only after me.

  But the truth settles like a weight on my chest. Emissaries are drawn to in-betweeners. To all those who’ve cheated death. Which means even though it came for me, Lara was always in danger, too.

  “Cass,” says Jacob, still shaking off the spell.

  But I’m already on my feet. I have to find Lara. She can’t have gone that far.

  I scramble up, grabbing her backpack, as I reach for the Veil. I swing the bag over my shoulder, catch hold of the curtain, and throw it aside, trading one séance room for another. The smoldering ruins of our banishing circle scar the floor, but otherwise, there’s no sign of Lara, or the Emissary.

  I run down the stairs, through the burning–not burning house and out into the crowded square. My vision doubles again from the overlapping Veils, and everywhere I look, I see ghosts and phantoms, carriages and fires and parades.

  But there’s no sign of Lara.

  I close my eyes and try to feel the pull of her thread, the thing all in-betweeners share, but the Veil is so messy, so chaotic, I can’t think over the noise, can’t feel anything but panic, so I shout her name.