Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts #2)

by Victoria Schwab

  “Well done, ghost,” says Lara grudgingly. “All right, that’s interesting.”

  “Do you know what it means?” I ask.

  “He was counting,” says Lara. “Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix. That’s one through ten in French.” She lowers her voice, talking to herself as much as us. “But why would he be counting up instead of down?”

  “You speak French?” I cut in.

  “Of course,” says Lara briskly. “And German. They make us take two foreign languages in school. I also know a little Punjabi, thanks to my dad. My parents say language is the most valuable currency. Don’t you know any other language?”

  “I know how to ask for the bathroom in Spanish,” offers Jacob.

  “Um.” I chew my lip. “I memorized all the incantations in Harry Potter.” I look at Jacob. “And I can speak to ghosts.”

  “Obviously not,” says Lara, “or you wouldn’t need me to translate. Look, until we find out who this poltergeist is—was—you don’t stand a chance of winning.”

  “Thanks for the confidence,” I mutter as the film crew reappears, Mom and Dad in the lead. Anton and Annette follow, cameras hoisted on their shoulders as my parents make their way down the aisle toward the stage. They’re shooting B-roll, the snippets of footage that will go behind a voiceover, help set the scene.

  “I suggest,” Lara is saying, “you start by figuring out where he came from, how he died. Call me when you have a solid lead. And, Cassidy?”

  “Yeah, I know. Be careful.”

  We both hang up, and I stand, picking my way through the seats. I play Lara’s conversation again in my head.

  “Hey, Jacob,” I say. “You remember, don’t you?”

  His face darkens a little. “Remember what?”

  I swallow. “Who you were, before. How you …” I don’t say the word, but I think it. Died. Jacob’s face shutters like a window, all the color and humor suddenly gone.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “I’m not a poltergeist, Cassidy,” he snaps, the hair rising around his face.

  I shiver, suddenly cold, and for a second, I think the chill is coming from him before something snaps onstage and a massive piece of the set begins to fall forward.

  Straight toward my parents.

  Look out!” I scream, already running.

  “Cass, wait!” calls Jacob as I leap over a seat and into the aisle.

  Mom and Dad turn toward me and then look up, their eyes wide as the wooden frame tips forward. Shouts go up across the stage, and I crash into my parents, hoping to force them out of the way, but at the last second, the massive set piece shudders to a halt. It stops a few feet above our heads, half a dozen ropes and cables pulled tight.

  “Désolé!” calls a stagehand. Pauline shakes her head and answers in a flurry of French, sounding furious.

  The tirade goes on for several long seconds before she shakes her head and turns back toward us. “Theater.”

  Mom laughs, a breathy, relieved sound, and Dad pats my shoulder. I must be looking as shaken up as I feel because he soothes me, saying, “It’s okay, Cass. We’re all okay.”

  “That’s why they have more than one rope,” adds Mom.

  But my heart is still pounding in my chest as I follow my parents outside onto the street. They could have been hurt. They could have been killed.

  I swallow. One thing is for sure: The poltergeist is after me, not my parents. If we split up, then at least they’ll be out of harm’s way.

  “And we’ll be right in it,” says Jacob. “Besides,” he adds, waving a hand at my parents, “how exactly are we supposed to get away from the Inspecters here?”

  Good question.

  My mind races as I try to think. Then we round a corner, and I slow down at the sight of a movie theater.

  I have an idea.

  Most of the movies are in French, of course. The only ones showing in English are a horror film—no thank you—and a teen rom-com, one of those generic feel-good stories, the poster featuring a girl with a series of boys in thought bubbles over her head.

  And there’s a showing in ten minutes.

  I stop, admiring the poster. “I’ve been wanting to see this,” I say softly, as if to myself.

  Mom wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Since when do you like rom-coms?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Lara told me about it.” She didn’t, of course, but as far as lies go, it’s pretty innocent. “It seems fun. Maybe I’m just feeling a little ghosted-out. This is my summer vacation, after all. And Paris is amazing, but I just— I’d really love to do something normal.” I point to the start time. “There’s even a showing now.” I look up at her. “Can I go? You can pick me up later.”

  Mom sulks. “But we’re going to the Rue des Chantres! You wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  I bite my lip and let my shoulders fall. “I guess not.”

  Jacob claps his hands at my Oscar-worthy performance. Mom and Dad exchange a glance, and then a few quiet words, before Mom nods and says, “Okay.”

  I throw my arms around her shoulders. “Thank you.”

  Dad slides a few bills through the ticket window, and he even gives me some cash for a soda and popcorn.

  “We’ll be back,” he says, “before the movie ends.” He points to the sidewalk. “Right here.”

  I wave goodbye and head inside, buying a snack at the counter, letting the usher tear my ticket. He points to the first theater on the left, and Jacob and I make our way into the darkened theater.

  “A movie,” Jacob says, sinking into the leather seat. “This is a nice change of pace.”

  I sip my soda and check my phone, waiting for one minute to pass, then two. I set a timer on my phone for two hours.

  Jacob watches me. “We’re not staying for the movie, are we?”

  I get up, leaving the bucket of popcorn at my feet. “Nope.”

  Jacob sighs. “Just once,” he says, “I wish we’d do the normal thing.”

  I push open the door marked EXIT, and we slip down the hall and out onto the Paris street.

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  Paris is a big city, and as we stand on the street, blocks stretching in every direction, two hours suddenly doesn’t seem like very much time.

  “Time to do what?” asks Jacob, for once unable to make sense of my jumbled thoughts.

  I don’t blame him. My head is spinning with everything I know and everything I don’t.

  I have to remind the poltergeist who he is—was.

  In order to do that, I have to figure out who he is—was.

  In order to do that, I have to find out more about him.

  In order to do that …

  I take a deep breath and reach for the Veil, pulling the curtain aside before Jacob can even think to protest.

  I step out of the world, into a moment of free fall, like a missed step, a lurch of darkness. Then Paris settles around me again, stranger, grayer, older. The buildings look different, no longer uniform rows of pale stone but mismatched, like a ragged hem.

  I cup my hands around my mouth and call, at the top of my lungs, “HEY, GHOST!”

  The words echo away into the fog. I take a breath and shout.

  “COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU AR—”

  Jacob appears, clapping a hand over my mouth.

  “What are you doing?” he hisses.

  I pull free. “I’m tired of letting him call all the shots. I don’t want to do this on his terms anymore. I want to do it on mine.”

  “So your best idea is to shout until he shows up?”

  “We need a better look at him, right?”

  “Yeah,” says Jacob, “but last time you came face-to-face, he pushed you off a roof.”

  “Well, this time, my feet are on the ground. Besides …” I trail off. Over Jacob’s shoulder, a shadow is taking shape in the fog, moving toward us.

  But when the figure p
arts the mist, it isn’t the poltergeist.

  It’s a man in an old-fashioned suit. He lifts an old-fashioned pistol and aims it straight at me, and Jacob wrenches me back out of the Veil before the shot goes off.

  I crash through a wave of cold water before landing on my butt on the curb in present-day Paris. Jacob looms over me, folding his arms. “You really should have seen that coming.”

  I get to my feet, brushing off my jeans, and start walking.

  As soon as I think I’m far enough away from the ghost with the gun, I take a deep breath and reach for the Veil again.

  “Wait—” starts Jacob, but he’s too late.

  I’m already through.

  A shudder, a plunge, a second of darkness, and I’m back in the in-between.

  The Veil is different here, the city still old-fashioned but a little newer than last time.

  There’s a bridge just ahead, a stone arch garnished with statues and lampposts. As I start across it, a carriage rattles past the other way, pulled by a pair of glossy black horses.

  A man plays an accordion along the banks of the Seine below, the music high and thin, as if carried on a breeze.

  A pair of women walk arm in arm in fancy dresses, the skirts as wide as the sidewalk, their heads bowed as they whisper.

  I pull the mirror pendant from my back pocket and wrap it around my palm as I walk, willing the ghosts not to notice. Their eyes flick toward me, as if they know I don’t belong, but they don’t come after me, and I don’t go after them.

  “You know the definition of insanity, right?” asks Jacob, appearing beside me. “It’s doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”

  “I’m not doing the same thing,” I point out. “You’re right, shouting was a bad idea.”

  “Great,” says Jacob. “So what’s your new strategy?”

  “I’m taking a walk.”

  “To where?”

  “The end of the Veil.”

  I reach the other side of the bridge, and a block or so later, the in-between finally shifts again, thinning between one ghost’s Veil and the next, until it’s nothing but an empty stretch, a seam, a place where no ordinary ghost can go. But a poltergeist, a spirit not bound to the Veil …

  I stand there, the blue-white light shining from my chest like a beacon.

  Come out, come out, I think.

  But there’s no sign of him, or anyone else.

  “Maybe he’s playing hard to get,” observes Jacob.

  The words ping inside my head, landing on something, a thought I can’t quite reach. I’m starting to get light-headed from the time in the Veil, the air thinning in my lungs.

  I groan in exasperation and cut back into the land of the living, sagging onto a bench to steady myself.

  Think. Think. Think.

  Jacob sinks down beside me.

  “It wasn’t a bad idea,” he says, trying to comfort me and also clearly hoping I’ll give up, and we can go watch the rest of the movie.

  But I can’t. I’m almost onto something. The poltergeist has been staying close to me this whole time, so there’s no reason to believe he’s totally disappeared now. No, he must be hanging back, waiting. For what?

  Playing hard to get.

  Playing.

  I straighten and look at Jacob. “I think you’re right!”

  He crosses his arms. “Don’t sound so surprised.” And then he adds, “Right about what?”

  But I’m already on my feet, reaching for the Veil.

  The world vanishes, springs back, and I steady myself against a lamppost, already dizzy—it’s like diving for pennies on the bottom of a pool. Hold your breath, go down one too many times, and it gets harder to come back up. But this time, instead of shouting or searching, I look around the bleak gray world and find the front of a building, decorated by pillars.

  I tug Jacob behind the nearest one and crouch low, pressing my camera to my chest to smother the light.

  A few seconds later I feel cold air on the back of my neck, and I nearly jump before I realize it’s just Jacob.

  “You’re breathing on me,” I whisper, trying not to shiver.

  “Sorry,” he whispers back. “But what exactly are we doing?”

  “We’re hiding,” I say.

  All this time, the poltergeist has been playing a game. And so far, he’s made all the rules. All this time, he’s been following us. So why don’t we follow him? Maybe he’ll lead us somewhere. Maybe we’ll find a clue. Maybe we’ll figure out—

  “That’s a whole lot of maybes,” says Jacob.

  “Maybe is a match in the dark,” I murmur, half to myself.

  It’s one of Mom’s favorite sayings, for when she gets stuck on a story. She starts giving herself options, potential threads, turning every dead end into a new path with one simple word: maybe.

  Maybe is a rope in a hole, or the key to a door.

  Maybe is how you find the way out.

  We just have to wait for him to show up.

  We wait. One minute. Three. Five.

  Until my head begins to pound, until it’s hard for me to breathe. A reminder that I shouldn’t be here; I’m not made of the right stuff.

  But I swear I can feel the poltergeist nearby, a trickle of cold creeping through the air.

  “Cassidy,” warns Jacob, but I don’t move.

  Just a little longer.

  “Cass.”

  I’m sure he’ll show up.

  My vision blurs a little, and when I try to swallow, I taste the river in my throat. Panic ripples through me as I try to breathe, try to stand, but the Veil sways and darkness sweeps across my eyes, followed by nothing.

  The next thing I know I’m sitting on the curb back in the real world, cars zooming through a busy intersection, the city full of color and noise. My head thuds dully, and I press my palms into my eyes and then look up, a translucent Jacob looming over me.

  “Enough,” he says, arms crossed. “That was way too close.”

  “It could have worked,” I mumble, getting to my feet. “It would have if—”

  I’m cut off by a sudden, violent shiver, and an instant later, a truck swerves around the corner.

  I catch the briefest glimpse of a shadow before the truck’s back door falls open and the contents begin to spill out. Boxes and crates smash into the street, followed by a massive golden frame that hurtles straight toward me.

  The crack of wood.

  The glint of glass.

  Move, I think, but my legs are frozen.

  “… CAS …”

  Jacob calls my name, but the word is all stretched out and slow.

  “… SI …”

  Everything’s too slow.

  “… DY … !”

  Everything except for the breaking pane of glass crashing toward me.

  “Look out!”

  And then something hits me. Not the frame, but a pair of hands. They plant themselves against my back and shove, and I stumble forward to the pavement, scraping my palms as the frame crashes into the stone wall and rains glass onto the street behind me.

  I twist around and see Jacob standing there, amid the shattered glass. And before I can wonder how he was able to do that, I look down at his feet and realize it’s not ordinary glass at all.

  It’s a mirror.

  A thousand fragments littering the pavement at his feet.

  “Don’t look!” I call, but it’s too late.

  Jacob looks down.

  His blue eyes widen. His whole body ripples, thins, the way it did the last time he saw himself, trapped in a reflection. A ghostly pallor begins to bleed across his front, hair darkening with water.

  But then—somehow—Jacob tears free.

  He shudders, and squeezes his eyes shut, and disappears, a faint flutter of gray in the air around him the only hint as to where he’s gone.

  The Veil.

  People on the street are rushing forward, but before they reach me, I’m on my feet, gra
bbing for the thin gray curtain. I throw it aside, rushing through after Jacob. A brief second of falling, and then I’m on my feet. The Veil stretches, quiet and gray. It’s thin here, the details faded, an in-between in the in-between. A place that doesn’t belong to any one ghost.

  There are places where the Veil is nothing, a stretch of blank paper. But Paris is too haunted for that, and even here, the Veil isn’t quite empty. A faint impression of the city, ghosted on the pale surface. And of course, there’s one thing in perfect detail.

  Jacob.

  He stands still, breathing heavily as he presses his palms against his eyes.

  “Jacob?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light.

  He doesn’t answer, but the pallor is gone from his skin, the traces of damp erased from his clothes and hair.

  “Jacob,” I say again, and this time he lets out a shaky breath and straightens, hands falling away from his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” he says.

  “How did you do that?” I ask, and I honestly don’t know if I’m talking about the fact he pushed me or the fact he pulled himself free from his own reflection.

  He just shakes his head.

  “Jacob—”

  “I said I’m fine.” The tremor is gone from his voice, replaced by something I almost never hear. Annoyance. Anger. His hair flutters slightly, as if caught in a breeze. I open my mouth, but before I can say anything else, I feel it.

  Cold.

  A chill, pressed between my shoulder blades. I turn, and so does Jacob. And there, half a block away, standing out like a drop of red ink on a blank page, is the poltergeist.

  The boy stands there, scuffing one old-fashioned shoe on the sidewalk, his brown curls falling to one side as he tips his head. He is haloed with crimson light, his eyes wide and burning with the same eerie glow.

  And when he looks up and sees that he has our attention, he smiles.

  I swing my camera up, already hitting the flash, but he blocks his eyes, and then he turns and runs.

  Not as if he’s frightened, no.

  As if it really is a game.

  Tag.

  You’re it.

  “Cass!” calls Jacob, but I’m already running.