Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts #2)

by Victoria Schwab

  The Veil ripples around me, details scrawling and erasing themselves across the paper of this place as I cut from one ghost’s world into the next, Jacob on my heels.

  The poltergeist is fast, too fast—he moves less like a running kid and more like a series of photos, skipping forward in time. And then, just when I think he’s going to get away, the Veil flickers around us, re-forms, and suddenly, I know where we are. I’ve been here before.

  The entrance to the Catacombs.

  It looks different here, in the Veil. Older. There’s no fresh green paint, no wooden door, only an iron gate. The boy, small as he is, slips through a gap between the bar and the frame, casts a final red-eyed glance back at me, and then vanishes into the dark.

  I slam into the gate seconds later, but it’s locked.

  I pull on the bars. They rattle but don’t budge. There’s no way I can fit through the gap.

  “We have to go after him,” I say, breathless.

  “No,” says Jacob at my side. “That’s exactly what we don’t have to do.”

  I push off the gate. “You’re a ghost!” I say to Jacob, waving my hand at the barricade. “Can’t you just—”

  “Just what?” challenges Jacob. “We’re in the Veil. I’m as close to flesh and bone as I get. And we still don’t know who that poltergeist is!”

  “He tried to kill me!”

  “Which, as far as I see it, is all the more reason NOT to go after him until we know enough to beat him. Lara explicitly told us not to engage the creepy dead child.”

  I glance back. “Since when do you agree with Lara?”

  He holds up his hands. “I know. I’m just as surprised as you are. And you can never ever tell her I said so.” He gestures at the entrance to the Catacombs. “But hey, now we know something.”

  I turn back to the gate.

  Jacob’s right.

  The poltergeist isn’t bound to a Veil, isn’t tied to any one moment or memory, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one. He could have gone anywhere, but he came here. Why? It could be just another place to hide, but I think it’s something more.

  I can feel the cold pouring out through the gate, see the faint shine of red on the bars. The strange light traces the entrance like a colored pencil, as if the poltergeist and the Catacombs are made of the same stuff, stained with it. And I remember the first time I saw that eerie red glow, down in the tunnels among the bones, and I wonder if this is where it happened.

  If this is where he died.

  “Come on, Cass,” says Jacob, reaching for my hand.

  I let him take it, but not before aiming a solid kick at the iron bars. “I’m coming for you!” I shout.

  You, you, you, my voice echoes into the dark. As if in reply, a shadow crosses the Veil, and a red mist reaches through the bars like fog.

  “Yeah,” says Jacob, “pick a fight with the poltergeist. That’s a great idea.”

  He pulls me away from the gate, and I let him.

  An instant later, the gray film of the Veil disappears, and the world springs back into sudden sharpness, color, light. The sun is warm and the block is packed, throngs of tourists lining up before the green wooden shack, waiting for their turn to descend into the tombs.

  Nearby, a clock begins to toll.

  “Uh, Cass,” says Jacob, but I’m already pulling out my phone to check the timer.

  Oh no.

  Trial by fire.

  That’s what it’s called when you learn to do something under pressure.

  Like navigating the Paris Metro.

  I really wish I’d been paying more attention to the routes the last time we were down here. Thankfully, I dropped a pin, marking the movie theater’s location on my phone, and the app tells me which Metro line to take. It’s even a direct route. No need to change trains.

  The journey, according to the phone, will take nineteen minutes.

  The movie, according to the timer, will end in twenty-four.

  Which seems like enough time until a little orange warning pops up on the screen to say the train is delayed two minutes.

  Jacob counts on his fingers, frowning, and I rock back and forth on my heels until the train finally pulls into the station, then launch myself aboard.

  Nineteen minutes later, I sprint down the block and through the back door of the movie theater, down the hall and to screen number three.

  I fall into the seat, knocking over the bucket of popcorn I left on the ground, and look up just in time to see the two leads kiss on a rooftop in New York as the music swells.

  “Maybe one day,” says Jacob as the credits begin to roll, “we can just stay and watch the movie.”

  Mom and Dad are waiting outside, just as they promised they would be. No sign of the crew or Pauline, who’ve obviously gone home for the day.

  “How was the movie?” asks Mom.

  “Just what I needed,” I say. “How was the Rue des Chantres?”

  “Oh, marvelous!” says Mom. “And marvelously haunted.” She slings her arm around my shoulders. “Let’s head back to the hotel. I’ll tell you all about it on the way …”

  I know something’s wrong the moment we step into the hotel.

  There’s no icy chill, no sudden cold current, only a feeling in the air. There are too many people in the lobby, and about half of them look as if they’ve been caught in a storm. Which is weird, because it’s been nothing but sunny since we got to Paris.

  The desk clerk sees us and frowns, as if we’re responsible for whatever’s happened.

  I shift a little. Maybe we are.

  “What’s going on?” asks Dad, approaching the counter.

  The desk clerk’s frown deepens. “Ah, Monsieur Blake. There has been, as you can see, an incident.” She gestures to the damp patrons scattered across the lobby. Oh dear. “The sprinklers went off on the third floor. Most unusual. It seems the alarm was triggered from your room.”

  “Not it!” says Jacob quickly, holding up his hands. “Totally something I would do, but I didn’t.”

  I roll my eyes. Obviously.

  Dad shakes his head. “But we’ve been gone all day.”

  “Be that as it may,” says the clerk, “something in your room triggered the fire alarms, and thus, the sprinklers. Perhaps,” she adds, lifting something from beneath the desk, “it was le chat noir.”

  She sets Grim’s cat case on the counter.

  A pair of green eyes glares out, looking about as happy as the clerk as she slides the carrier toward us.

  “You think our cat somehow triggered a fire alarm?” asks Mom.

  “Je ne sais pas,” says the woman curtly. “What I think is that things usually run smoothly here in the Hotel Valeur …”

  Dad’s face flushes as the clerk continues. “We got your things out as quickly as possible. I assure you, they will be clean and dry in your new room. Unfortunately, as you can tell, those new rooms are not available just yet.” She nods at a drinks trolley, unsmiling. “Please enjoy some coffee while you wait.”

  Dad starts to say something, but Mom takes his elbow in one hand and Grim’s carrier in the other, and leads us to a set of chairs to wait.

  “He was thinner than that,” says Jacob, perched on the arm of a lobby sofa.

  I’m sitting cross-legged on the marble floor, with a piece of scrap paper and one of Mom’s chewed-up pencils. I’ve already made a list of things we know about the poltergeist, adding Catacombs beneath the words short and young and, on Jacob’s insistence, creepy. Now I’m trying to put together a sketch while Jacob leans over my shoulder, offering suggestions, some helpful, and most maddening.

  Dad’s reading a book, while Mom raps her nails absently on the show binder with a soft duh-duh-dum as we wait. The other guests disappear by ones and twos as they’re led to their new rooms, but we appear to be last on the list.

  I force myself to focus on the drawing.

  “No, his head was more like …” Jacob holds his hands as if gripping a basketba
ll. Or … a football? A lopsided football?

  “Not helpful,” I mutter, erasing my first attempt, focusing instead on the boy’s clothes. I wish I could thrust the pencil into Jacob’s hand. Unfortunately, only one of us is real enough to hold it, so I’m left wearing eraser marks into the thin paper.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if you had something that could capture people’s images … what’s that called again?” Jacob is saying. “Oh yeah, A CAMERA.”

  I roll my eyes. My camera picks up pieces of the Veil, but last time I checked, it didn’t do a great job of accurately rendering ghosts. And even if it did, I don’t exactly have a darkroom, or the time to develop a roll of film just so I can maybe get a photo of the creepy dead kid so I can go around asking people if they know who he was before he started haunting me.

  Jacob folds his arms. “Well, when you put it that way …”

  He’s been in a mood ever since the mirror incident.

  “Have not,” he mutters. I bite my tongue, suppressing the urge to ask Jacob again about his past, his memory. But I know he hears me thinking, because he scowls and looks pointedly away.

  I keep working on the sketch until I have a decent rendition of the poltergeist. A boy in tall black socks, shorts that come down to his knees, and a top that might be a shirt and might be a jacket, a wide collar clasped in front like a kerchief.

  Brown curls cover the top of his round face, but something’s missing.

  I dig a red pen out of my bag and draw little circles around his eyes.

  There.

  I snap a photo with my phone and send the drawing to Lara. She texts back almost immediately.

  Lara:

  Did you take an art class in your American school?

  Me:

  No.

  Lara:

  I can tell.

  Jacob snorts. I resist the urge to text back a snarky reply, but only because I see she’s still typing.

  Lara:

  These clothes look like they belong to the early 20th century.

  Lara:

  Did you find out his name?

  Me:

  Not yet.

  Duh-duh-dum.

  I look at Mom again, the show binder under her hand, and sit up.

  “Can I see that?” I ask, reaching for the binder as Mom nods. I tug it into my lap and begin turning back through the location pages, flicking past the Eiffel Tower, the Jardin du Luxembourg …

  And then I find it: the Catacombs.

  I skim the information sheet, which is mostly about the history of the tomb’s construction, the different graveyards it drew from.

  “Whatcha looking for?” asks Dad, leaning in as if he can smell research. Always the teacher, his eyes brighten at my obvious quest for information.

  My mouth is already open, the word nothing bubbling up in that automatic way, when I stop myself.

  Dad is Dad, but he’s also a historian.

  He’s the perfect person to ask.

  “When we were down in the Catacombs,” I say, “you mentioned that there were people who’d gotten lost down there.”

  He nods gravely. “Yes, it’s really no place to go wandering. Not that danger has ever stopped fools. There’s an entire history of people who simply thought, ‘Nothing bad will happen to me.’ ”

  “Sure,” I say quickly. “But do you have any of their names?”

  It’s a long shot, I know, more hope than certainty, but the way the red light stained that place, the way it exhaled the same strange cold, all of it felt like an extension of the boy. Like it belonged to him, or he belonged to it.

  I hold my breath as I wait for Dad to answer.

  “Not in there,” he says, and my heart sinks a little before he adds, “But I’m sure I wrote them down.”

  He produces a battered leather notebook, the kind he always keeps in his back pocket. I’ve never been so glad my dad is such a nerd.

  “Your mom and I come across a lot of stories,” he says, turning through the pages. “We don’t use them all in the show. Ah, here we are. There were a pair of teenage backpackers, Valerie and Michel Gillet.”

  He licks his thumb and turns the page.

  “An older American man, George Kline. A young boy named Thomas—”

  “How young?” I cut in, heart slamming in my chest.

  His lips move as he does a bit of math, then says, “He would have been seven.”

  That’s it. That’s him. I know it, straight down to my bones.

  “What did you say his name was?” I ask Dad.

  “Thomas,” answers Dad, pronouncing it like Toe-MAS. “Thomas Alain Laurent.”

  I turn the name over on my tongue.

  “What happened to him?” I ask.

  “That I don’t know much about. He disappeared in 1912—snuck down into the tombs with his brother and never came out.” He raises a brow. “Why the sudden curiosity?”

  I hesitate. “I don’t know. Ever since we went to the Catacombs, I just can’t stop thinking about the people who weren’t supposed to be buried down there.”

  “You sound like your father,” says Mom. “Always searching for answers.”

  Dad beams, clearly proud to have raised a researcher. Even if the answers I’m looking for are decidedly paranormal. I’ve got plenty of my mother in me, too.

  “Monsieur Blake,” calls the clerk at the front desk. “Your new room is ready.”

  We gather our things—one camera, one footage briefcase, a show binder, and a very annoyed cat—and head upstairs. Our room is on the second floor this time, and as Mom unlocks the door, I send Lara an answer to her last text.

  Me:

  Thomas Alain Laurent.

  The phone rings almost instantly.

  “Impressive,” says Lara. I can hear her fingers tapping on a keyboard. “That’s definitely a start.”

  I hang back in the hall. “A start? I know his name.”

  “He’s not Rumpelstiltskin,” says Lara. “A name doesn’t mean much without the memories that go with it.”

  I slump back against the wallpaper. “I miss the days when all I had to do was hold up a mirror.”

  “Nonsense,” says Lara. “Who doesn’t love a good challenge?”

  “Easy for you to say,” I reply. “So far I’ve been pushed off a roof, nearly crushed by a set piece, and narrowly avoided being hit by a giant mirror. Not to mention, he flooded our room at the hotel.”

  “You’ve had quite a day.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s safe to say we’ve moved past mischief.” I lower my voice. “I’m worried, Lara. About my parents. About myself. Worried he’ll catch me off guard. Worried about what he’ll do before I can face him.”

  “Yes, about that,” says Lara, “it sounds as though you could use some protection. Uncle Weathershire says you can use sage and salt to ward off strong spirits.”

  “Where am I supposed to get sage and salt?” I ask.

  “Lucky for you, you have me.”

  “And as grateful as I am,” I say, “you are in another country.”

  “Didn’t you get my package?”

  “What?” I finally walk into the hotel room, and see a small brown parcel, roughly the size and shape of a book, wrapped with black ribbon. Unfortunately, Mom notices it, too. She picks it up, reads the label, and stares at me.

  “Cassidy Blake, did you order something off the internet?”

  “It’s from Lara,” I say, swiping the parcel from her hands.

  I retreat to the bedroom and examine the box. A folded slip on top reads: For Cassidy Blake, with compliments.

  “After we spoke yesterday,” continues Lara, “I made some calls. Uncle has—well, had—a number of contacts throughout the paranormal world, including a couple there in Paris. Lovely people.”

  I turn the card over. On the back, it’s signed: La Société du Chat Noir.

  I remember the desk clerk calling Grim a chat noir.

  “The Society of the Black Cat,” Lara translates f
or me. “Fascinating group, very eclectic, and, of course, quite secret. They have chapters in most major cities, but you need to know someone who knows someone …”

  I study the card. First poltergeists, now secret societies? I’m starting to realize how little I know about the paranormal world beyond my parents’ show and my own experiences in the Veil.

  “And you’re a member of this society?” I ask, setting the card aside.

  “Not yet,” says Lara, sounding annoyed. “They have a rather stringent age restriction. But I’m petitioning for a special exemption.”

  “Of course you are,” mutters Jacob.

  I open the box, and he immediately begins to sneeze.

  “Oh, yes,” says Lara, “I should have mentioned. Sage and salt works on all ghosts.”

  “You totally—achoo—knew—achoo—this would—achoo—happen.”

  I slam the box shut.

  Jacob glowers, sniffling.

  “Thanks, Lara,” I say.

  “Yeah,” grumbles Jacob, retreating to the open window. “Thanks.”

  That night, I slip pouches of sage and salt into Dad’s jacket and Mom’s purse, hoping those will be enough to keep the poltergeist away.

  From my parents, at least.

  The sachets also seem to be working on Jacob.

  He usually waits to leave until I’m ready for bed, but there’s been no sign of him since dinner. He said he was going to patrol the hotel for Thomas. But I suspect he’s looking for residents to scare. Then again, maybe he just wants to get away from the extra herbs I’ve sprinkled on the windows and outside the door, because the thought of Thomas slipping in at night is more than I can handle.

  And even with the sachets, I can’t sleep.

  Finally, I throw off the covers and open the window, leaning out on the iron rail. The breeze is cool, the Veil whispering against my skin. I draw the pendant from beneath my collar, let the mirror spin on its chain between my fingers, my reflection there and gone, there and gone.

  A mirror shows us what we know.

  I think of Jacob, of his face as he stood over the shattered mirror today, the way he pulled free of his reflection.