Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts #2)

by Victoria Schwab

  There’s no anger in this place.

  Just a shallow wave of sadness, and loss.

  “Cass,” says Mom, “don’t wander off.”

  And for once, it doesn’t feel like an idle warning. This place is huge, and it’s too easy to imagine getting lost. But that also means my parents won’t notice if I slip away.

  I fall back a little with every step, finally stopping to linger among the tombstones.

  If I were a poltergeist, where would I be?

  “Here, ghosty ghosty,” calls Jacob.

  I look up and see him perching on a large stone angel, one leg dangling over the edge and the other drawn up, his elbow resting on his knee. As I lift the camera to snap a photo, he strikes a pensive posture, surveying the cemetery.

  The camera clicks, and I wonder if he’ll show up on the film.

  There was a time when I knew he wouldn’t. Now I’m not so sure. I think of the last photo from Edinburgh, the one I keep tucked in the pocket of my camera bag. In it, Jacob and I are standing on opposite sides of a window. Me in the shop and him on the street, each of us turning to look at the other.

  He’s not really there, in the glass.

  But he’s not not there, either.

  It could have been a trick of the light, a warped reflection.

  But I don’t think it was.

  Spirits this strong have no place in our world.

  Lara’s warning fuses with her words from my nightmare.

  You have to send him on.

  Jacob clears his throat.

  “Well,” he says, jumping down from his perch. “No poltergeist.”

  “No,” I say, looking around. “Not here …”

  Jacob frowns. “I don’t like the way you said that.”

  Up ahead, Mom and Dad stop in front of a crypt, Anton and Annette readying their cameras, and I see my chance. I tug the mirror from my pocket.

  “Come on,” I whisper, reaching for the Veil. “If the poltergeist won’t come to us, we’ll go to the poltergeist.”

  I’m plunged from something into nothing and back again, all in the time it takes to blink.

  My feet land back on the cobblestone path, and Père Lachaise stretches out again, a ghost of its former self. Tendrils of fog curl around my legs, and the cemetery is vast and gray and eerily still. I draw the mirror from my pocket, wrapping the cord around my wrist as Jacob appears beside me. He looks around, nose crinkling a little.

  “What is it with graveyards and mist?” he asks, kicking at the cloudy air around our feet.

  “A-plus for atmosphere,” I say.

  Nearby, a crypt door swings on a broken hinge. Across the path, a crow caws and takes flight.

  “I’ll take creepy Halloween soundtracks for two hundred,” mutters Jacob.

  But for all the moodiness of this place, it’s quiet.

  The thing about cemeteries is that they’re not as haunted as you’d think. Sure, there are a few ghosts here and there, but most restless spirits are bound to the place where they died, not the place where they’re buried.

  So it shouldn’t be that hard to find our restless spirit.

  As long as it wants to be found.

  “And if it doesn’t?” asks Jacob.

  Which is a good question.

  How do you lure out a poltergeist?

  “Maybe if we ignore it, it’ll just lose interest in us and go away.”

  “It’s not a bee, Jacob. And you heard Lara. The longer the poltergeist is out, the more chaos it will cause. Which is bad on its own, and worse since this particular spirit seems intent on bothering us.”

  I scan the tombs.

  “Hello?” I call out, gripping the mirror pendant.

  “What do you think a poltergeist looks like?” whispers Jacob. “Is it human? A monster? An octopus?”

  “An octopus?”

  He shrugs. “More arms, more misch—”

  I lurch toward him, pressing my hand over his mouth. His eyebrows shoot up in confusion.

  I heard something.

  We stand, perfectly silent, perfectly still. And then it comes again.

  A child’s voice.

  “Un … deux … trois …” it says in a singsong way.

  The graveyard begins to fill with a soft red light, and a cold wind blows over my skin.

  I can hear the shuffle of steps, small shoes skittering across a path. I turn just in time to see a shadow dart between the crypts.

  “… quatre … cinq …” the voice continues, and I really wish I spoke French.

  “Come out!” I call. “I just want to talk.”

  “… sept …” continues the voice, now behind me.

  I spin, but there’s no one there, only tombstones.

  “… huit …” Its voice is softer now, drifting away, taking the strange red light with it.

  “Pretty shy for a spirit,” says Jacob.

  I chew my lip. He’s right. For all the tricks the poltergeist has pulled, I haven’t caught more than a glimpse of it. And if I want to catch this ghost, I’m going to have to get it to come to me.

  “How do you plan on doing that?” asks Jacob. “Do you have any poltergeist bait lying around?”

  I rub my temples. What did Lara say?

  They thrive on creating trouble. Making mischief.

  Okay. So I just need to give the ghost a chance to make some. I look up at the crypts, some of them as tall as houses.

  Jacob reads my mind, and then says, “No.”

  “This is a terrible idea,” says Jacob as I hoist myself up on top of the grave.

  “You always say that.”

  I look down. I’m only two or three feet off the ground. Not high enough. I grab the carved corner of the nearest crypt and begin to climb higher.

  “Yeah, and I’m usually right,” he calls up. “What does that say about your ideas?”

  My shoes slip on the side of the crypt, but finally I haul myself up and straighten, balancing on the gabled roof. I scan the graveyard.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I call.

  Nothing happens.

  I will myself to walk along the pointing roof, moving closer to the edge. I hold my breath and wait.

  “Oh well,” says Jacob, shifting from foot to foot, “you tried your best. Guess you better come on down and …” He trails off as the voice returns, suddenly much closer.

  “… dix.”

  A flush of cold brushes my skin and a tile slips somewhere behind me, shattering on a tombstone below. The sound sends spectral crows into flight, and I turn toward the crash and see him, standing on the top of a tombstone ten feet away.

  The poltergeist.

  I don’t know what I expected.

  A monster, perhaps. A shadow creature seven feet tall, all claws and teeth.

  But it’s just a boy.

  A little kid, maybe six or seven, with curly brown hair and a round face smudged with dirt. He’s dressed in old-fashioned clothes, a button-down shirt and trousers that bunch around his bony knees. His edges flicker a little, as if he’s not entirely here, but it’s his eyes that stop me.

  They aren’t brown, or blue, but red.

  The red of a burning ember, or a flashlight against a palm. The kind of red that glows, casting a crimson light on the graves, and the crypts, and the fog.

  “Found you,” I say, and the boy smiles at me, right before he moves. Not the way a boy should be able to move, one foot in front of the other. No. It’s like he’s not bound by the rules of this place, and in the time it takes me to blink, he skips forward. One second he’s standing on a crypt ten feet away. The next, he’s a foot away, perching on the gabled roof.

  “Now!” urges Jacob, and my hand flies up, the mirror pendant right in front of the boy’s face.

  His red eyes widen as he gazes into the glass, lost in his reflection.

  “Watch and listen,” I recite. “See and know. This is what you are.”

  I reach for the thread in his chest,
but when my hand hits his shirt, it doesn’t go through. He’s still solid, or as close as a ghost can get. I clear my throat, my fingers tightening on the mirror as I start again.

  “Watch and listen,” I say, trying to make my voice forceful. “See and—”

  But the boy frowns, his red eyes flicking from the mirror up to my face, as if it has no hold on him.

  That’s not possible, I think.

  Right before he shoves me off the roof.

  There’s this moment when you start to fall, when you think, Maybe everything will be okay.

  Maybe I’ll catch my balance. Maybe a hand will steady me. Maybe something soft will break my fall.

  In this case, it doesn’t.

  I’m falling, and somewhere between the edge of the roof and the lawn below, I cross back through the Veil and land hard on the ground beside the crypt. The fall knocks all the air from my lungs and sends pain jolting up through my right arm, and for a second all I can do is blink away the stars and hope I didn’t break anything.

  Jacob appears, looming over me, and he’s worried enough that the first words out of his mouth aren’t even “I told you so” but “Are you okay?”

  I sit up, dazed, and grateful that my head missed the sharp corner of the nearest tombstone. My elbow zings and my fingers tingle, but as far as I can tell, I haven’t broken anything. Including my camera.

  Small miracles.

  I groan, wishing Jacob were solid enough to help me to my feet. Instead, I get up, rubbing my arm. “I’m okay.”

  “Good,” says Jacob, glancing back toward the crypt. “What happened up there?”

  I look up, and for a second I can still see the boy’s outline, a faint impression of the poltergeist scowling down at me from the roof. An afterimage, like a flash, against my eyes, but when I blink, it’s gone.

  “The mirror didn’t work.”

  “Why not?” presses Jacob. “Is it busted? Or fogged up or something?”

  I check, but my reflection looks back, sharp and clear—and confused.

  “What about the words?” asks Jacob. “Did you say them right?”

  I did. I did everything right.

  So why didn’t it work?

  I loop the necklace over my head and tuck the pendant beneath my collar. And then I do the only thing I can think of.

  I call Lara.

  “Wait, wait, slow down,” she says.

  Jacob and I have been talking over each other from the moment Lara picked up the phone. “What do you mean the mirror didn’t work?”

  I walk faster, scouring the graveyard in case my parents are close by. “I mean, it didn’t work.”

  Voices rise up somewhere to my right. Mom and Dad.

  “Well, you must have done something wrong,” says Lara. I spot my parents down one of the branching paths, narrating in front of a tombstone while Anton and Annette film them.

  “I did everything you taught me,” I snap. Pauline looks over her shoulder and holds a slim, manicured finger to her lips. “I cornered the poltergeist,” I say, lowering my voice. “I held up the mirror, I said the words, and then he just looked up. At my face.”

  “And then he pushed her off a roof!” adds Jacob.

  “What were you doing on a roof?” demands Lara.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I hiss, rubbing my arm, which is still sore from the fall. “What matters is that this poltergeist is still out there, and he’s apparently immune to mirrors.”

  Lara exhales, and I can practically hear her pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “Okay, okay,” she says softly, obviously talking more to herself than to me. “I’ll go talk to Uncle Weathershire and call you back. In the meantime, just stay out of the Veil, and on your guard.”

  As if on cue, the corner of a tombstone crumbles near the film crew. Anton jumps out of the way and nearly falls through the glass of an open crypt door.

  Jacob and I exchange a look, and then turn toward the phone, and Lara.

  “Hurry.”

  “Come on, Lara,” I mutter, tapping the phone against my palm.

  It’s been an hour, and she still hasn’t called back.

  The crew finished filming at Père Lachaise, and we headed for the Metro. Now I hold my breath as we make our way down to the platform, waiting for something to go wrong, hoping it won’t. It’s stuffy on the train, but I lie to Mom, telling her I’m cold, and she lends me the extra sweater she always keeps in her bag. I wrap it around me, pulling it close even though I’m sweating under all the fabric.

  “What exactly are you doing?” asks Jacob as my cheeks flush from the heat.

  So far the only warning I have that the poltergeist is near is that flush of cold. I want to be sure I can feel it.

  “You’re turning yourself into a ghost thermometer.”

  I pull the sleeves down over my hands. Basically.

  The lights flicker overhead, and I nearly jump out of my seat. But there’s no flash of cold, no warning chill, and a second later the lights come back on.

  “That happens sometimes on trains,” says Mom, scooting closer. “But don’t worry. I doubt this car is haunted.”

  She says it breezily, but my stomach tightens, a reminder that the poltergeist isn’t the only thing I have to worry about. The Veil is still ebbing and flowing around me, ready to drag me under the second I let my guard down. Jacob inches closer until our shoulders almost touch.

  “Not on my watch,” he says.

  We get off at a station called Opéra and step onto the street in front of a giant stone building with more piping than a wedding cake. This, according to Dad, is the Palais Garnier. The Paris Opera House.

  “I thought The Phantom of the Opera was just a Broadway show,” I say.

  “It is,” says Dad.

  “But you’re saying there really is a phantom here?”

  “I’m saying there’s a story.”

  “Most tales are inspired by something,” says Mom, craning her neck.

  We walk inside the opera house. The entire gallery is made of marble, the swirls of white-and-gray stone interrupted only by massive iron candelabras. The stairs are straight out of Hogwarts, giant steps that split off to the left and the right, as if leading up to the house common rooms. As we step into the auditorium, Jacob lets out a low, appreciative whistle. It’s full of red velvet seats and balconies, every surface covered in gold.

  Mom, Dad, Pauline, and the crew head down into the chambers beneath the opera. I decide to sit this one out, sinking into one of the velvet seats with the leftover macarons from yesterday. Dad shoots me one last stay put look as they retreat down the aisle.

  I watch as a handful of workers onstage maneuver pieces of a set. I get glimpses of the unfinished bits, the cables and ropes and undersides exposed. Soon, the set pieces come together into what looks like the front of a mansion.

  “This is nice,” says Jacob, perching beside me. “We should do this more often, the whole not-looking-for-ghosts thing.”

  “We’re not not looking for ghosts,” I say, thoughts turning.

  Every crack of the stagehand’s hammer, every scrape of wood, every creak and groan puts me on edge.

  When my cell rings, I yelp in surprise and bang my knee against the arm of the seat.

  I answer, rubbing my shin. “Hey.”

  “Is for horses,” chides Lara.

  “What?”

  “Never mind, just something my mother says. Can you talk? Where are you?”

  “The opera.”

  “Oh, have you seen the phantom? There are actually several. Uncle told me to leave them alone, though—they weren’t causing any trouble, and apparently a few ghosts can be good for business. Don’t know if I agree with him, but I figured the phantoms could wait till my next school trip.”

  Jacob clears his throat.

  “Anyway,” says Lara pointedly, “do you want the bad news, or the bad news?”

  “I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” comments Jac
ob.

  “Well, it’s how it goes now. Because we—or rather you—have a very large problem.”

  “Great,” I say, because I don’t seem to have enough of those. “Care to explain?”

  Lara clears her throat. “Remember how I said poltergeists are stronger than normal ghosts because they aren’t bound to the Veil?”

  “Yes.”

  “And as you already know, the Veil is tailored to fit the ghost, the place they died, which means it’s essentially tied to the ghost’s memory—that’s what binds it there. So if a poltergeist isn’t bound to the Veil, it’s because—”

  “They don’t remember,” I say as it hits me.

  Lara exhales. “Exactly. That’s why the mirror didn’t do anything to stop him. A reflection only works on ghosts because it shows them what they already know but simply haven’t accepted.”

  Watch and listen. See and know. This is what you are.

  “But if someone showed you something you didn’t remember,” continues Lara, “it wouldn’t have the same impact on you.”

  “But if the mirror doesn’t work,” says Jacob, “how are we supposed to stop him?”

  “It doesn’t work,” says Lara, “because he doesn’t remember who he was. Which means you have to remind him.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?” I ask. “It’s not like we have any clue who he is—was.”

  “Well,” says Lara, “what do you already know about him?”

  “Nothing,” I hiss, exasperated.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve seen him, haven’t you? What does he look like?”

  I close my eyes, trying to summon the only clear image I have, from the moment I was balanced on top of the grave. “He was short, only came up to my shoulder.”

  “Okay, so he’s young.”

  “He had brown hair. Old-fashioned clothes.”

  “What kind of old-fashioned?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “The kind with buttons.”

  Lara makes a short, exasperated sound. “Well, next time, pay more attention. Every detail is a clue. What he looks like, when he started following you, what he said—”

  “Wait,” says Jacob. “He did say something. Remember, Cass … ?” Jacob trails off, trying to sound out the words. “Un, du, twa, something about a ‘cat sank’ …” he fumbles, then adds, “The last word was definitely dees.”