Bridge of Souls

by Victoria Schwab

  She gestures to Michael, who pulls the curtain aside. Lara and I step through, out of the shop and into a narrow room. Jacob tries to follow us, but when he reaches the curtain, he begins to sniffle and sneeze. And when he tries to come through anyway, he … bounces off. Like there’s a plate of glass there instead of an open doorway.

  He rubs his forehead.

  “Oh yes,” calls Philippa, “I’m afraid that room is warded.”

  Jacob looks from me, to Lara, to the floor, and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I guess I’ll just wait out here, then,” he says, and I swear the temperature drops a little with his mood.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I tell Jacob.

  Philippa pats a stool by the counter. “Come and sit with me,” she says. “I’ll show you a fun trick.”

  Jacob frowns a little, and I realize there’s never been a place I’ve gone that he couldn’t follow. But he turns away, and the last thing I see is his back before the curtain falls shut between us.

  The Society room is filled with books.

  Shelves run along every wall, interrupted only by sofas and chairs, and a small round table in the center. It feels a little like a library, and a little like an office, and a little like the séance room in Muriel’s, just as cluttered but far less ominous.

  It’s so quiet in here, and it takes me a second to realize it’s because of the Veil. Or rather, the absence of it. Ever since I got to New Orleans, the other side has been a crush against my senses. But here, in the back room of the Thread & Bone, the Veil drops away, taking the whispers and the music with it.

  “I thought the Society would be …” Lara turns in a circle. “Bigger.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” says Renée with a shrug. “Have a seat.”

  I sit cross-legged on an ottoman, while Lara chooses a high-backed chair. Her legs don’t even reach the ground, and yet somehow she still looks dignified. Michael leans against the bookshelves, while Renée stands, arms folded, studying us behind her pink glasses.

  “In-betweeners,” she muses. “You’re both so young.”

  “Age is a number,” replies Lara briskly, “as I’ve said in my letters.”

  “Yes, as you’ve said. And as I’ve said, Miss Chowdhury, the Society’s restrictions on age are in place for a reason.”

  “Well, it’s a foolish reason, if you ask me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “can we please focus on the thing with the skull-face mask that keeps trying to kill me?”

  “It’s not trying to kill you,” says Renée.

  “Not in the strictest sense,” adds Michael, pulling a book from the shelf. “It’s trying to undo the fact that you lived.”

  Somehow, that isn’t very comforting.

  “Okay,” I say, “well, how do I make it stop?”

  Michael flips through the book, then shakes his head. “We don’t know much about Emissaries,” he says. “They really only come after Veil-walkers, or in-betweeners, as you say. And we haven’t had one of those since—”

  “Since he moved to Portland,” says Lara, “yes, we heard.”

  “And he didn’t make any notes,” says Michael, sliding the book back onto the shelf.

  “Okay,” I say, resisting the urge to put my head in my hands. “So you have no idea what I’m supposed to do?”

  “I didn’t say that,” replies Michael.

  “We don’t know enough,” says Renée. “But the other members might.”

  I look around the tiny room. “There are more?”

  Renée smiles and spreads her hands. “This is the oldest branch of the Society,” she says. “And former members tend to stick around.”

  Former members.

  Ghosts.

  I think of Lara’s uncle, lingering in their living room even though he wasn’t trapped there, even though he could have passed on. Staying behind because he wanted to help.

  “There are a few in-betweeners in the bunch,” says Michael. “Maybe one of them will know.”

  Lara and I exchange a look. We have to go back into the Veil.

  She holds out her hand. But I hesitate.

  “What if the Emissary is waiting there?” I say.

  “This is the Society, Miss Blake,” says Renée. “It’s warded a dozen different ways. Think of our Veil as a vault. Somewhere very safe.”

  Safe.

  If I’ve learned anything over the past couple of weeks, it’s that grown-ups throw around that word way too much. But I did see the shop repel Jacob. And I don’t have much choice.

  I take Lara’s hand, and together we reach for the Veil, and even though it hasn’t been loud or pushy, it’s right there, waiting beneath my fingers. I pull the curtain aside and hold my breath against the moment of dark, the flush of cold, the feel of falling.

  And then we’re back.

  Lara looks a little flushed, and I wonder what she feels when she crosses over. But I know it’s not the time to ask.

  I look around for Jacob before remembering he isn’t there.

  It feels wrong, going through the Veil without him.

  Like a piece of me is missing.

  As for the Society room, it looks the same. A little faded, perhaps, and even more cluttered. No sign of Renée or Michael, of course, but we’re not alone.

  A girl my age, and just as pale, with a crown of dark hair and a yellow sundress, leans against the wall, twisting a Rubik’s Cube.

  A middle-aged man in a bow tie is napping on a sofa, while an ancient woman with wild gray curls sits beside him, fingers folded over a cane and staring at the wall as if it were a window.

  An older Black man with a mustache looks up from his book.

  A young white woman with a pixie cut wanders through the room, gripping a mug of coffee that reads THINK OF A NUMBER.

  “Oh, hello!” she says, as if the sight of two new in-betweeners is perfectly normal.

  She pokes a finger toward the blue-white light in my chest, and I pull away on instinct.

  She cackles.

  “A Veil-walker.” She looks from me to Lara. “Two of them! What a Wednesday! Is it Wednesday? It’s so easy to lose track.”

  “Does it matter?” asks the girl with the Rubik’s Cube, her accent pure Louisiana, syrup and sweet.

  “Time always matters,” says the older man with the book.

  “Until it doesn’t,” says the ancient woman.

  “Look at us, chattering away,” says the woman with the coffee mug. “Where are my manners? I’m Agatha.”

  Lara and I introduce ourselves.

  “Sit, sit,” says Agatha, “make yourselves comfortable.”

  There’s not a lot of space, but we perch on the edge of the dusty furniture.

  “That’s Theodore,” Agatha says, gesturing at the old man with the book. “Hazel,” she says, nodding at the girl with the sundress and the Rubik’s Cube. “Charles—wake up, Charles!” she shouts toward the napping man with the bow tie. “And Magnolia,” she finishes, nodding to the ancient woman bowed over her cane.

  “Are—were you all in-betweeners?” I ask.

  “Goodness no. And we use the present tense here, child. Makes us feel a bit more up to speed. Hazel and I are mediums.” The girl’s gaze flicks up from the Rubik’s Cube. “Charles—somebody wake him up?—is a historian. Magnolia handles the voodoo, and Theodore here, he is—or, sorry, Theo, I do have to say was—a Veil-walker.”

  I look toward Theo’s chest, where the light would have been. It’s gone now, of course.

  “And you all just stay here?” asks Lara.

  “We’re on shifts. Some of us are a bit more lively than others. But let’s see, Harry and Renata are out patrolling, Lex was supposed to be shoring up the wards on the shop after someone tried to get in”—she raises a meaningful brow as she says it—“and knowing Sam, she’s probably drinking gin and listening to jazz in the square.” She takes a swig from the mug. “And what about you two? You’re awfully young to be Society members.”

>   Hazel clears her throat. She doesn’t look any older than us.

  “Well, yes, but yours was a tragic end,” Agatha tells her, and then examines me and Lara again. “You’re not dead, though. Just visiting. So what can we do for you?”

  Lara straightens to her full height, which is still a good inch below mine. “We’re here to seek your guidance.”

  “No need to be so formal,” says Agatha. “Just tell us the trouble.”

  Lara glances at me.

  I swallow and say, “I’m being hunted by an Emissary.”

  For a second, no one says anything.

  Hazel stares at me with wide, sad eyes, and the ancient woman, Magnolia, thumps her cane thoughtfully on the floor.

  Agatha nods and says, “Right. Best tell us everything.”

  I do. I tell them about the stranger on the train platform in Paris. I tell them about the Place d’Armes and the séance, the skull in the stone and the voice in the dark, and what it said. I tell them about the close call in St. Roch, and when I’m done, the words hang in the air for a moment, like smoke.

  And then the napping man, Charles, sighs and sits up.

  “That’s no good,” he says, which feels like a bit of an understatement.

  “The historian wakes!” scolds Agatha. “Honestly, Charles. This is a society, not a sunroom. Now, Theodore,” she says, turning to the man with the book. The in-betweener. “Have you ever seen an Emissary?”

  The old man with the mustache closes his book. “Only once. Gave me the shivers. Lucky it didn’t see me. But we did lose another Veil-walker, didn’t we? Some years back.”

  The historian, Charles, nods at the bookshelf. “Joanna Bent,” he says. “She’s gone on her way, but she made notes.”

  Hazel sets her Rubik’s Cube aside and studies the books, fingers trailing over the spines before she pulls down a slim journal and turns through the pages.

  “Dangerous things, Emissaries,” says Theodore. “Like spotlights, scanning the dark.”

  Hazel clears her throat.

  “ ‘Death’s Emissaries,’ ” she reads in her Southern drawl, “ ‘are drawn to things out of place. To life in the presence of death, and death in the presence of life. To people who embody both.’ ”

  “That’s why they’re so good at finding in-betweeners,” says Lara. “We’re life and death mixed up in one.”

  I shake my head. “But I don’t get why they want to find us. In-betweeners have a purpose. We clear out the Veil. We send spirits on. Shouldn’t Death be grateful?”

  Agatha purses her lips. “I don’t think Death cares about the dead. Think about what the Emissary said to you. ‘You stole from us.’ It was talking about your life. The ghosts in the Veil don’t have lives anymore. Just look at the threads in our chests.” She gestures to her own. “All the light’s gone out. But you—”

  I look down at the blue-white light glowing behind my ribs.

  “That’s what you stole, when you survived. That’s what Death wants back.”

  None of this is making me feel any better. I wish Jacob were here. I think everything, as loudly as I can, and hope that he can hear me through the wards and the Veil.

  I swallow and turn to Agatha. “Michael said the Emissary wants to undo the fact I lived. So if it catches me, it will—what?” A nervous sound escapes my throat. “Drown me?”

  The members share a long look, a silent conversation, before Magnolia says, in a rasping voice, “It will take you back.”

  “Back where?” I ask. “To the Veil?”

  “No,” says Charles, now very much awake. “To the place beyond the Veil. To the other side.”

  My chest tightens. I feel dizzy.

  “What are we supposed to do?” demands Lara, and I can hear the nervous energy seeping through her usual calm.

  “Hide,” says Hazel.

  But we can’t. “What good is hiding?” I snap, exasperated.

  “Cassidy’s right,” says Agatha. “No sense in hiding from a thing like Death.”

  I look around, suddenly nervous.

  “Don’t worry,” she adds. “Nothing can get into the Society, unless it’s been invited in.”

  “I knew it,” whispers Lara.

  “Like a vampire,” I say, because it’s what Jacob would say if he were here.

  Right about then, I start to realize another strange thing about this room.

  Normally, time in the Veil is a ticking clock. If I spend too long there, my head begins to swim, and I feel dizzy and lost. A reminder that even if I can move among the dead, I still belong to the land of the living.

  And yet, I don’t feel dizzy here.

  I don’t feel wrong, or out of place.

  I feel … safe.

  I wish I could stay here. But I know I can’t.

  “I’d avoid graveyards if I were you,” says Hazel, taking up her Rubik’s Cube. “Anywhere that’s all living or all dead. Best stick to confusing places,” she adds, “where the energy is as messy as yours.”

  “The good news,” says Agatha, “is New Orleans is a perfect place to blend in.”

  I think of the funeral party, all that life surrounding death. The way the Emissary broke apart and disappeared. Maybe it got overwhelmed. Maybe.

  But I can’t hide forever. I’m tired of being scared, of seeing that skull face everywhere I look and every time I close my eyes.

  “The Emissary will just keep coming, right? Until I kill it.” I look around the table. “So how do you kill an Emissary of Death?”

  “You can’t,” says Charles.

  My heart sinks.

  “You’ll have to banish it,” says Hazel.

  “Mirrors don’t work,” I say, losing hope. “I’ve tried.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” says Theodore. “An Emissary knows exactly what it is. And it’s caught you, like a fish on a line. You won’t get away, as long as it can reel you in.”

  “Great,” I say, summoning as much of Jacob’s sarcasm as I can.

  “But,” says Magnolia, holding up a withered finger. “With the right tools, you could cut the line.”

  Lara and I exchange a look. “How?” Lara asks.

  A short debate breaks out between the members, first on whether it’s possible, and then, when they agree that it is, on what we’ll need to do it.

  I can’t exactly take notes in the Veil, but Lara has a scary good memory.

  “And you’re sure it will work?” I ask when the Society members have explained.

  “It’ll be dangerous,” says Agatha, “but you’re used to that by now, aren’t you?”

  We thank them for their time and help.

  “Nonsense,” she says, lifting her mug, “we enjoy the company.”

  “Good luck,” adds Hazel as we reach for the curtain.

  And I know we’re going to need it.

  Lara and I step back through the Veil.

  A shiver, and a sigh, and then the Society room is warm and solid around us again. Michael and Renée are seated at the table, in the middle of a discussion with someone else, but they trail off when they see us.

  “Never got used to that part,” says Michael, gesturing to our sudden reappearance, but I’m staring past him, at the new arrival.

  “Ah, yes,” says Renée, gesturing to the man in the chair. “This is our current historian.”

  I stand there, mouth open.

  Because the man in the chair is Lucas Dumont, our guide.

  Surprise flashes across his face, but it only lasts a second.

  “Actually,” he says, rising to his feet, “we’ve already met. Admittedly, it was under different circumstances. Cassidy …” He trails off, as if waiting for me to explain. Lara looks at me, too, and I realize that they haven’t met.

  “This is my parents’ guide, Lucas,” I explain.

  “Ah, the paranormal show,” says Renée. “Small world, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” says Lucas, polishing his glasses. He nods at Lara. “And you
are?”

  “Lara Chowdhury,” she says, standing even straighter. “Future member of the Society. And Cassidy’s friend.”

  “I see,” he says in his measured way. “And what exactly are you doing here, Miss Blake?”

  I don’t know if he expects me to tell him the whole story from almost-drowning to being an in-betweener to my current predicament, so I just say, “I’m kind of … being hunted.”

  “Emissary,” says Renée, “nasty business.”

  “Were the others able to help?” asks Michael.

  I try to drag my focus away from the fact that my parents’ very skeptical historian is a member of a paranormal secret society. We’re definitely going to have to talk about that later.

  “Yes,” says Lara. “I think we have a plan.”

  “Excellent,” says Renée. “Who did you meet? Agatha? Theo?” She leads me and Lara back through the black curtain and into the brightly lit store. Jacob is sitting on a stool by the counter, having a staring contest with the cat and chatting with Philippa.

  But he looks up as soon as I come through.

  “Lucas Dumont is in the Society!” he announces.

  “Yeah, I know,” I say, nodding at the curtain as Michael and Lucas follow us out. “I guessed that when I saw him in there.”

  Jacob’s shoulders slump. “Well, you weren’t here to be surprised with me,” he sulks, “so I had to save it.” He hops down from the stool. “Well? What did you learn?”

  “You couldn’t hear me thinking?”

  Jacob shakes his head. “No. It was just … quiet. Like white noise.”

  “That would be the warding,” says Philippa, and I wonder, just for a second, if there’s a way to ward my thoughts all the time.

  Jacob scowls, reading my mind, and I say, a little too loudly, “Privacy is important!”

  And even though Renée, Michael, and Lucas can’t see Jacob, and it must look like I’m having a very tense discussion with empty air, they don’t seem thrown. I guess it’s probably not the strangest thing they’ve come across.

  “We learned,” explains Lara, “that Emissaries are drawn to those marked by life and death. That’s how this one caught Cass’s … scent.”

  This is the part where Jacob would usually make a joke, but he doesn’t, and when I glance his way, he looks … pale, what little color he has draining out of his face.