The cat’s black tail flicks lazily from side to side, and I wonder, not for the first time, if cats—even totally useless bread-loaf cats—can see more than meets the eye, if they can sense the Veil, and the ghosts beyond, the way I can.
I grab my camera from the floor, loop the purple strap over my head, and load a fresh roll of film. My parents have asked me to document their show behind the scenes. As if I don’t have enough on my plate, keeping malicious ghosts from creating chaos.
But hey, everybody needs a hobby.
“I recommend video games,” says Jacob.
I peer at him through the viewfinder, sliding the camera’s focus in and out. But even when the room blurs, Jacob doesn’t. He’s always crisp and clear.
This camera, like everything else in my life, is a little strange. I had it with me when I almost drowned, and ever since, it has a way of seeing more.
Like me.
My parents, Jacob, and I head down the hall, which is decorated like our room: rich blues and purples, and wall sconces shaped like hands. Most of them are holding up lights. But here and there, a few of the hands are empty.
“Ghost five,” says Jacob, smacking one of the open palms. It rocks a little, threatening to fall, and I shoot him a withering look. He flashes me a sheepish smile.
To get downstairs, we bypass the ominous wrought-iron elevator that’s only large enough for one and opt for the sweeping wooden staircase instead.
The lobby ceiling’s been painted to show a table and empty chairs, as if I’m overhead, looking down—a dizzying effect.
I feel like I’m being watched, and turn to see a man in an alcove, peering out from around a curtain. Only as I get closer, I realize it’s not a man but a bust: a copper sculpture of a head and chest. He has a goatee and sideburns, and he’s staring intently at me.
The sign on the marble base tells me this is Mr. Allan Kardec.
Jacob leans against it.
“Looks grumpy,” he says, but I disagree. Mr. Kardec is frowning, but it’s the kind of frown Dad wears sometimes when he’s thinking really hard. Mom calls it his clockwork face, because she says she can see the cogs turning behind his eyes.
But there’s also something eerie in the statue’s gaze. The eyes aren’t made of copper, I realize, but glass: dark marbles threaded with wisps of gray.
Mom calls for me, and I turn to see her and Dad waiting by the hotel’s exit. Jacob and I back away from the statue’s ghostly stare.
“Ready?” asks Dad, pushing open the door.
And with that, we step out into the sun.
* * *
The heat hits me like a ball of lead.
In upstate New York, where we usually live, the summer sun gets hot, but the shade stays cool. Here, the sun is liquid heat, even in the shade, and the air is like soup. I swing my arm through it, and feel moisture clinging to my skin.
But the heat isn’t the only thing I notice.
A horse-drawn carriage rumbles past us. A hearse goes the other way.
And I’m not even in the Veil. This is the living, breathing version of New Orleans.
We’re staying in the French Quarter, where the streets have names like Bourbon and Royal, where the blocks are short and squat, and wrought-iron balconies run like ivy along the front of every building. It’s a collision of color, and style, and sound. Cobblestones and concrete, twisting trees and Spanish moss. I have never been somewhere so full of contradictions.
Edinburgh, the first city we went to for the show, was damp and gray, a city of old stones and hidden paths, its history right on the surface. Paris was bright and clean, gold filigree and wide avenues, its secrets buried underground.
New Orleans is—something else.
It’s not the kind of place you can capture in a photo.
It’s loud, and crowded, and full of things that don’t fit, the clop of horse hooves at odds with the honk of a sedan and a saxophone. There are plenty of restaurants, and tattoo shops, and clothing stores, but in between are windows filled with candles and stones, and pictures of saints, and neon signs with upturned palms, and crystal balls. I can’t tell how much of it is a show put on for tourists, and how much of it is real.
And on top of it all—or rather, behind it all—there’s the Veil, full of ghosts, wanting to be heard and seen.
Spirits sometimes get stuck there, caught in a kind of loop of their last moments, and it’s my job to send them on.
“Debatable,” says Jacob, who would rather pretend that it’s totally normal for a girl to hear the knock-knock-knock of ghosts and feel the constant pressure of the other side trying to pull her through. “I’m just saying, when has sending ghosts on made your life easier?”
I get his point, but it’s not about doing what’s easy.
It’s about doing what’s right.
Even if, now and then, I wish I could mute the other side.
A carriage goes by, decked out in red feather plumes and gold tassels, and I follow behind it, trying to get a good photo.
“Hey, Cass, watch out,” says Jacob, right before I run straight into someone.
I stagger back, blinking away the darkness. I’m already halfway through saying “Sorry” when I look up and see a skeleton in a pitch-black suit.
And just like that, the world slams to a stop.
All the air rushes out of my lungs, and New Orleans drops away, and I’m back on the train platform in Paris, the day we left, staring at the stranger on the other side of the tracks, wondering why no one else has noticed the smooth white skull beneath the wide-brimmed hat. I’m trapped in my skin, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to do anything but stare into those empty eyes as the stranger reaches up and pulls away the mask, and there’s nothing but darkness beneath.
And I’m falling, through those empty eyes, and back into New Orleans, as the skeleton here steps straight toward me, reaching out a bony hand.
And this time, I scream.
The skeleton pulls back.
“Hey, hey,” he says, recoiling. “Sorry, kid.” He lifts his hands in surrender, and they aren’t bone at all but flesh, fingertips jutting up from cut-off gloves. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
His voice is easy, human, and when he pulls off his mask, there’s a face beneath, warm and friendly and real.
“Cassidy!” says Mom, taking my elbow. “What’s going on?”
I shake my head. I hear myself mumbling that it’s fine, that it was my fault, that he didn’t scare me, but my heart is pounding in my chest, so loud it fills my ears, and I have to force myself to breathe as the man walks away. And if anyone thinks it’s strange to see a man dressed like a skeleton in the middle of the morning, they don’t say. Nobody so much as looks twice as he wanders, whistling, down the street.
“Cass,” says Jacob softly.
I look down, and see my hands are shaking. I wrap them around the camera case, squeezing tight until they stop.
“You okay, kiddo?” asks Dad, and both of my parents are now looking at me like I’ve sprouted whiskers or wings, transformed from their daughter into something skittish, and fragile, and strange.
I don’t blame them.
I’m Cassidy Blake.
I’ve never been squeamish. Not when a girl at school got a bloody nose and looked like she’d spilled a bucket of red paint down her front.