I fall forward again, out of Paris.
I twist in time to see the bridge, my bike wrapped around the rail, before I hit the water’s surface and crash down into the river.
An icy shock, and then I’m under. I’m sinking. Drowning.
It is so cold and dark beneath the water.
A world of black—and blue.
A blue too bright to be natural light.
I look down, and see the ribbon glowing in my chest, the blue-white thread of my life, only visible in the Veil. It shines, bright as a beacon in the dark, but there’s nothing else to see. I’m all alone in the river.
Or so I think.
A hand grabs my wrist, and I gasp, twisting around.
But it’s just Jacob, his blond hair floating around his face.
“It’s okay,” he says, and his voice is crystal clear, even though we’re underwater. “It’s okay,” he says again, wrapping his arms around me. “I’m here.”
But instead of pulling me up toward the surface, he pulls me down, down, away from the light, and the air, and the world overhead.
I try to say his name, say wait, but all that comes out are bubbles. There is no air. I can’t breathe. I try to tear free, but his grip is iron, is stone, and when I twist enough to see his face, there is no face at all. Just a skull mask, the eyes empty and black. A skeletal smile, set in bone.
And when he speaks again, the voice is deep, and low, and unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I feel it in my bones.
“You belong here,” it says, holding me tight until my lungs scream, and the light inside my chest flickers, and dims, and goes out.
And we sink down through the bottomless dark.
* * *
I sit up with a gasp.
Morning light glares through the window, and through Jacob, who’s perched on the windowsill, tugging at a loose thread on his shirt. Mom and Dad bustle around, getting dressed.
I collapse back into the sheets, pulling a pillow over my head.
I feel headachy and wrong, and I can still taste the river in my throat, can hear the voice like a vibration in my chest.
You belong here.
Grim pads across the bed and paws at the pillow.
“Up and at ’em, sleepyhead,” says Mom. “Places to visit, spirits to see.”
“You know,” says Jacob, “I wonder if she’d be so fond of ghosts if she could see them.”
I groan and roll out of bed.
Mom is even more cheerful than usual, and I don’t find out why until we’re at breakfast in the hotel restaurant.
“Cemetery day!” she announces, the way a normal person might say, “We’re going to Disneyland!”
I look from Mom to Dad, a biscuit halfway to my mouth, waiting for one of them to explain.
Dad clears his throat. “As I mentioned, there are forty-two cemeteries in the city of New Orleans.”
“That seems excessive,” says Jacob.
“Please tell me we’re not going to all forty-two of them,” I say.
“Goodness, no,” Dad answers, “that would be impractical.”
“It would be a fun challenge,” says Mom, her face falling a little, “but no, we simply don’t have the time.”
“We are, however, going to six of them,” says Dad, as if six is a perfectly ordinary number of cemeteries. He ticks them off on his fingers. “There’s St. Louis Number One, St. Louis Number Two, St. Louis Number Three …”
“Somebody really dropped the ball on naming,” mutters Jacob.
“Lafayette, and Metairie—” continues Dad.
“And St. Roch!” adds Mom, sounding giddy.
“What’s so special about St. Roch?” I ask, but she only squeezes my arm and says, “Oh, you’ll see.”
Jacob and I exchange a look. Mom’s excitement is always a sign of trouble. And truth be told, I’m not in the mood for any surprises.
But Lara warned us to stay together, and cemeteries are usually pretty safe, as far as spirits go.
It can’t be worse than the séance.
We meet up with Lucas and the film crew in Jackson Square. The air is sticky again today, but the sun has been blotted out by clouds, the low, dark kind that warn of storms.
“Is it always this hot?” I ask Jenna and Adan while Mom and Dad chat with Lucas about the day’s schedule.
“Only in June,” says Jenna. “And July. And August.”
“And May,” says Adan.
Jenna nods. “And September,” she adds. “And sometimes April and October. But March is pretty nice!”
I try to laugh, but I feel like I’m melting.
I look around. The square is beginning to feel almost familiar, with its clashing music, its buskers and tourists. Despite the brewing weather, people linger all around, selling jewelry—pendants and charms designed to ward off evil or bring good luck.
“Hey, you.”
The voice comes from a young white woman in a lawn chair, perched beneath a blue-and-pink umbrella. At first I assume she’s talking to someone else, but she looks right at me, and hooks her finger.
“Come here,” she says.
I’ve heard my fair share of fairy tales; I know you’re not supposed to go with strangers—especially when you’re being hunted by a supernatural force. But she’s just sitting there, in the open. And as far as I can tell, she’s perfectly human.
I glance over at my parents, deep in conversation with the crew, and then I drift toward her, Jacob on my heels.
The woman’s hair is cut in a violet bob and she has freckled skin. There’s a fold-up table at her knees, with a large deck of cards facedown on top.
“Name’s Sandra,” she says. “Want to have your fortune told?”
I consider the question, and the person asking it.
Sandra doesn’t look like a fortune-teller.
In my mind, fortune-tellers are old, draped in velvet and lace, their skin weathered and their eyes deep. They don’t have purple hair and chipped nail polish. They don’t sit in lawn chairs under blue-and-pink umbrellas. They don’t wear flip-flops. But if I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s that things aren’t always as they seem.
“The first one’s free,” she says, fanning out a deck of cards. They’re beautiful, the backs decorated with swirling lines, suns and stars and moons. They were silver once—I can tell by the shine—but they’ve been worn away to gray.
Sandra turns the cards over, and I realize there are no hearts, no spades, no diamonds or clubs. Instead there are swords and cups, wands and rings. And scattered in among those, strange paintings of towers, and jesters, and queens.
They’re tarot cards.
I see a heart driven through with knives. Three wands crossed like a star. A single glowing ring. I shiver at the sight of a skeleton astride a white horse.
Sandra doesn’t put on an act. She doesn’t change her voice, lace it with mystery or theater. She just turns the deck facedown again, fans the cards between her fingers, and says, “Choose.”
I look down at the deck and ask, “How?”
The backs of the cards are all the same. Nothing but suns and stars and moons. No way to tell what I’m picking.
“The cards will tell you,” she says, and I don’t really understand, until I do. My hand drifts over the deck, the paper edges worn soft, like silk, under my fingers. And then my hand stops. There’s a pull, right under my palm, a steady draw, like the Veil rising to meet my fingers.