City of Ghosts

by Victoria Schwab

  Cold water and numb skin and all the air knocked out of me, and then I’m through.

  It takes my eyes a split second to adjust.

  To the grayed-out world and the light inside my chest.

  To the tourists suddenly replaced by soldier ghosts marching in the castle square.

  To the sight of Jacob’s panicked face, visible for only an instant before he’s dragged backward into the prisons.

  I don’t think then.

  It never occurs to me to run away, to run any other direction except toward my best friend.

  “Jacob!” I shout, racing after him.

  Afterward, I will regret so much about this moment. The fact that I didn’t have a plan. The fact that I didn’t take the cap off my camera. The fact that I simply ran.

  But in this moment, all I can think of is saving Jacob.

  I plunge into the darkened prison.

  The cells aren’t empty anymore.

  Men in ragged uniforms rattle the bars, but I’m not paying attention to any of them because Jacob’s there, on the ground of a far cell, being pinned to the damp stone floor by a half dozen children.

  Two of them look like they belong in a fancy old painting, and one is dressed in rags. Others look more modern, like they could even go to my school. The only thing they have in common is the cold pallor of their skin, and the fact that they’re all attacking my friend.

  Hands clamp over Jacob’s mouth and knees pin his wrists. One frost-covered boy sits on his chest as the other kids fight to hold him down.

  “Get off him!” I order, hurrying toward the cell.

  Jacob tears his mouth free long enough to shout, “Run!” but I can’t, I won’t, not without him.

  “Get away from my friend,” I snarl, lifting the camera. But the cap is still on, and before I can get it off, a hand catches my wrist, and a voice whispers in my ear.

  “Sorry, love,” it says. “They only listen to me.”

  The hand tightens, and I’m wrenched around. For an instant, all I see is the red of her cloak. Then, glossy black curls, white skin, crimson lips that curl into a sweet smile.

  “Hello, dearest,” coos the Raven in Red. I know I need to fight, but I can’t, not with her fingers on my skin and her eyes on my eyes and her voice like music in my head.

  “You …” I murmur, but I can’t even hold on to my thoughts.

  Her other hand drifts up to my chin, tilting my face toward hers. “So much light, so much warmth.”

  “Cassidy!” screams Jacob, and I snap back to my senses, but it’s too late.

  The Raven in Red changes before me.

  Her cloak whips violently, as if caught in a gust of wind, and her fingers harden like claws. Her smile cracks and turns cruel, and she thrusts her hand straight into my chest.

  Cold rushes through me, a bone-chilling cold, worse than the bottom of the river. It feels like icy fingers wrapped around my heart.

  I can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t do anything but watch as the Raven draws out her hand, clutching a ribbon of blue-white light. My light. My life.

  She tears it free.

  And everything goes dark.

  Cass … Cassidy! Oh god, Cassidy, wake up!”

  I open my eyes and see gray.

  It takes me a second to remember where I am, another to realize I’m lying on my back. I stare up at the dim, slick stones of the prison ceiling.

  Jacob crouches next to me, nails digging into my shoulder, and I know something’s wrong because I don’t just feel his grip—it hurts. His hand is solid on my arm. Like flesh and bone.

  “What happened?” I ask. It comes out a groggy mumble.

  Jacob helps me sit up. I look down at myself and gasp. I’m washed out, faded like a picture, like Jacob, like every other ghost in the Veil. But it’s not the lack of color that startles me. It’s the lack of light. The glow behind my ribs, that steady blue-white coil, is gone.

  It all comes rushing back then.

  The Raven in Red.

  Her hand reaching through my chest.

  The bright ribbon wrapped around her fingers.

  Another memory collides with it—Lara putting her hand to her own chest.

  We’ve got something they want.

  If she got ahold of a life like yours … it would be disastrous.

  I stagger to my feet, head spinning.

  “Where is she?”

  The cells to every side are filled with prisoner ghosts, but I barely register any of them as I stumble up the stairs and out into the castle courtyard.

  The square is full of ghost soldiers carrying bayonets, men in fine-cut clothes, women in corseted dresses. But there’s no sign of the Raven.

  I reach out to grab the Veil, to wrench it aside and plunge back into the world of the living. But my fingers close on nothing but air.

  No.

  Not again.

  “Cassidy,” says Jacob, but I have to focus.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine the gray cloth against my fingers, the curtain brushing my palms, and—

  I catch hold of something, something thin, but there.

  I open my eyes, let out a shaky breath when I see the Veil in my hands. But when I try to pull the fabric aside, I can’t.

  I can’t find the part in the curtain.

  Because there is no part. The Veil warps around my fingers, bending slightly with the pressure, but no matter how I pull, the curtain doesn’t let me through. I throw my weight against the gray cloth, and it stretches, pulls tight, but doesn’t break.

  No wonder it’s so hard for ghosts to touch our world, to leave any kind of mark.

  But I’m not a ghost.

  I’m an in-betweener. A betwixter. A Veil crosser.

  That means I’ve got a foot on either side.

  That means I can get back.

  I have to be able to get back.

  Jacob’s saying something, but I can’t hear him, not over the white noise of panic in my ears.

  And the shock when I see her.

  She’s all the way across the courtyard, and on the other side of the Veil. But I can see her, clear as glass, as if someone cut a window through the fog. Her red cloak. Her black hair. The light of my life coiled around her hand.

  The Raven looks back at me, across the Veil, and smiles.

  And then she turns and slips through the crowd.

  I can’t let her get away with this.

  I can’t let her get away.

  But she’s already gone, and I’m left banging on the Veil as it hardens from curtain to wall against my hands.

  Jacob’s voice finally registers.

  “I’m so sorry, Cass. I tried to warn you it was a trap. You shouldn’t have come after me.”

  “I had to,” I say, but the words sound thin, even to me. I look down at my hands again. They’re not as bright as they should be. Not as colorful. Not as real.

  No. No. No. The word rattles in my head. I don’t know if it’s denial or the fact that I’m trapped in the Veil like all the other ghosts, and just like them, I can’t face the truth. The truth, that without that light, without that life, I’m … the opposite of living, I’m … I’m dea—

  “No,” says Jacob with sudden energy. “You are not the opposite of living. You are just temporarily without a life. And those are very different things. You see, one is gone forever and the other is simply misplaced, so all we have to do is find your life and get it back.”

  I’m usually the one dragging Jacob away from morbid thoughts. And even if he’s trying too hard to make me believe, I’m still relieved he’s trying. It gives me something to hold on to.

  “Cassidy … ?”

  I turn at the sound of my name. It’s coming from far away, distorted by the Veil, drawn out into something high and thin. But I know that voice. I have always known that voice. Mom.

  And suddenly, my panic turns a different shade.

  “Mom!” I call back, but my voice comes out like the opposite of a
n echo, muted. She’ll never hear me.

  I press myself against the Veil, straining to see out of the world of the dead and into the land of the living. It’s like shoving your face into a bowl of water, no air, and everything’s kind of swimmy.

  “Cassidy … ?”

  It’s Dad calling this time. At first, his tone is casual, as if they simply haven’t spotted me. As if I’ve wandered off again. Just like before. But every time my parents say my name, their voices get tighter, higher, the worry creeping in.

  “I’m right here!” I shout, and all around the courtyard, the old-fashioned men and women turn their heads.

  But beyond the Veil, my parents keep calling my name.

  I can see them, but they can’t see me.

  I can hear them, but they can’t hear me.

  And suddenly I believe what Lara said, about ghosts not being in the Veil by choice. About them being trapped.

  Ghosts don’t stay because they want to.

  They stay because they can’t move on.

  Dad pulls his cell phone from his coat and my heart picks up as I dig for the emergency phone in my pocket. I clutch it until my fingers ache. But I already know it won’t work.

  Dad dials, waits, but the phone in my hand never rings.

  Findley appears beside my parents, his Scottish lilt little more than a whisper through the thickening wall. “… I’m sure she hasn’t gone far …”

  He has no idea how right he is.

  “We’ll find her …” he continues.

  I turn toward Jacob, desperate. “You have to get their attention. You have to do something out there.”

  Jacob pales. “Cass, I’ve never been able to—”

  “Please,” I beg. “You have to try.”

  Jacob swallows, then gives a determined nod. “Okay,” he says. “Stay here.”

  As if I have a choice.

  He reaches out, and the Veil manifests around his fingers, solid but pliant, bending. For a second, as he presses against the curtain and the fog thins, I can see the world beyond, and I think it’s going to work.

  But then Jacob’s hand begins to shake, and the Veil repels him. Jacob stumbles backward, and my heart sinks.

  “I don’t understand,” he says, rubbing his fingers.

  But I think I do.

  Jacob and I have always been tangled up, tied together. And he’s always been able to cross over, but that was when I could, too. He could come into my world, and I could go into his. But now that I’m trapped here, so is he.

  A soldier ghost cuts in front of us, blocking my view. The Veil ripples, and the world beyond it fades like a dream.

  “S’no place for children,” growls the soldier, gesturing at the castle yard. “Get ye gone, or I’ll toss you in a prison cell.”

  My parents’ voices are fading.

  “Wait,” I say, trying to slip past the soldier. He cuffs me around the collar and shoves me backward into Jacob. We go stumbling onto the cobblestones, the soldier glowering at us. Jacob gets up and pulls me to my feet.

  “Come on,” he says in my ear. “We can’t stay here.”

  But I can’t just leave my parents, either.

  Jacob wraps his arms around me and squeezes. “We’re going to figure this out.”

  His voice is an anchor. His words are a raft.

  “You’re right,” I say.

  I have to get my life back.

  I pull free and start toward the castle gate, forcing myself away from my parents and Findley and the crew, away from the sound of my name on the air. Jacob doesn’t have to ask where we’re going. He can read my mind, so he already knows.

  We’re going to get help.

  Sometimes help is a place and sometimes it’s a person, and sometimes it’s a bit of both.

  We set out on foot, racing off the castle grounds, through the portcullis and the front gate.

  We have to get to the Lane’s End.

  We have to find Lara.

  We hurry down the broad set of steps, and it spits us out at the top of the Royal Mile. The other Edinburgh is gone, swept behind the curtain. Here in the Veil, a stranger, older city takes shape, brimming with—well, not life, but movement. People.

  This is the real city of ghosts.

  They’re everywhere, some in modern dress and others in old-fashioned clothes. As I watch a dozen different scenes play out, it’s clear enough that Lara was right—every ghost is trapped inside their own time, their own loop.

  Mourners gather under a sea of umbrellas.

  A woman in a long dress pushes an ornate stroller, cooing to its hidden contents.

  A cluster of men wearing kilts stumbles past, their accents too thick to understand.

  “Get back here!” bellows a man, and I turn, thinking he’s talking to me, but a second later, a small boy darts past us clutching a loaf of bread. The vendor charges after as the boy races into the street, right out in front of a horse and carriage.

  I reach to catch his arm, but I’m too late. The boy trips, and the horse rears up, and I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the crash, the screams, but they don’t come. A moment later, the boy and the man and the horse and carriage are gone. Somewhere the loop begins again.

  “Come on, Cass,” says Jacob, taking my hand.

  We turn off the Royal Mile and the world flickers, shifts. It’s like moving from room to room in an endless house. There are moments when it seems empty, a blank gray canvas, and others when the ghosts and memories layer so thick it’s hard to focus.

  A woman in vintage clothes storms out of a doorway.

  Threads of smoke billow up from a building down the street.

  A man in a hooded cloak warns people to stay inside.

  I’ve never been in the Veil this long. Things should be getting murky by now, but instead, they’re getting clearer. I don’t feel dizzy, or foggy, or lost, or any of the other things that a living person is supposed to feel if they spend too long in the land of the dead.

  This is a bad sign, and I know it, and so does Jacob, who clutches my hand as we race toward the Lane’s End. But the closer we get, the more I feel like I’m going the wrong way. Which doesn’t make any sense.

  Turn around, say my legs.

  Go this way, say my arms.

  Follow me, says my heart.

  But I can’t trust any of them, not here in the Veil.

  The Lane’s End comes into sight, and a small sob of relief escapes my throat. I’m so glad to see that bright red door.

  I try not to dwell on what it means, that the Lane’s End exists here inside the Veil. That someone’s last moments must be rooted in this place.

  I throw open the door.

  “Lara!” I call into the front hall.

  “Lara!” shouts Jacob as we climb the stairs to 1A.

  She probably can’t hear us, not across the Veil, but we call out anyway.

  The door to her flat hangs open and we step inside. It looks older, stranger, piled with books and wallpapered differently. Of course, this isn’t Lara’s flat. But right now, it’s as close as I can get.

  I have to hope it’s close enough.

  I press myself against the Veil, trying to see through a curtain that seems to be getting thicker with every passing second. When the world beyond finally comes into view, it’s out of focus, like staring at two strips of film that haven’t been lined up quite right.

  My heart sinks, because blurry or not, I can see that the flat is empty.

  I should be surprised, but I’m not. I knew she wouldn’t be here. I just don’t know how I knew.

  “Hullo, hullo,” says a low voice behind me.

  Jacob jumps, and I spin around to find an older man in a robe. He has a pipe between his lips and a book under one arm. He’s a ghost, that part’s obvious, but there’s something about him that also seems … solid. Present. With the grieving father in the freezing house, it was clear we’d stepped into his memory. Even when he talked to me, he was in a deep fog.

>   But this man doesn’t seem to be stuck in a loop. When he looks at me, at Jacob, I can tell he really sees us.

  “Can I help you?” he asks in a kind voice.

  “I’m … looking for Lara,” I stammer.

  “Ah, I’m afraid my niece isn’t home.”

  “Your niece?”

  “How rude,” says the man, holding out his hand. “I’m Reginald Weathershire. My friends call me Reggie.”

  Of course. Mr. Weathershire.

  The Lane’s End—this must be his Veil.

  “Cassidy Blake,” I say, shaking his hand.

  Mr. Weathershire frowns. “She mentioned you. But”—he shakes his head—“she said you were”—he gestures to my shirtfront, where the light should be—“like her.”

  “I’m not a ghost,” I say, cringing at the word. “It’s just been a very long day.”

  “Hi, I’m Jacob,” Jacob cuts in, “and not to be rude, but we’re kind of in a hurry. Do you know where your niece went?”

  Mr. Weathershire shakes his head. “Afraid I don’t get out much these days.”

  Panic fills my lungs like water.

  How am I supposed to find Lara?

  I turn in a slow circle, trying to figure out what to do. But the Veil doesn’t have any answers. I close my eyes and force myself to breathe, focus on the air going into my lungs, the tug inside my chest—

  Wait.

  A tug?

  It’s there, right behind my ribs, the same pull I felt when I first met Lara. Like there was a thread running between us. I feel it now, only it’s not pulling me into the flat but out into the hall, down the stairs.

  “We have to go.”

  “Wait, where?” asks Jacob.

  “I think I know how to find her,” I say, already heading for the door.

  But something makes me look back.

  Mr. Weathershire is across the room, sliding his book into a gap on his shelf. According to Lara, he’s a ghost, and he should be sent on. But he doesn’t look lost. He doesn’t seem trapped.

  “Why are you here?” I ask.

  He looks around fondly. “Suppose I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

  “And Lara lets you stay?”

  He chuckles softly. “We all need someone who sees us clearly.”