Fear is like the Veil. It’s always there. It’s up to you to still go through.
My hand travels to the cord at my collar and I tug the necklace out, let the mirror pendant rest faceup in my palm.
Look and listen, you say when you see a ghost. See and know.
This is what you are.
Well, this is what I am.
This is what I do.
This is the reason I’m here.
I catch hold of the curtain and pull it aside, stepping through into the dark.
For one terrible second, I’m falling.
A downward plunge, a single shocking gasp of cold, the air knocked from my lungs—
And then I’m back on my feet.
The Veil takes shape around me, in mottled shades of gray. I take shape, too, a ghostly version of myself, washed out save for the bright blue-white ribbon glowing in my chest. My life. Torn, and stitched back together. Stolen, and reclaimed.
I press a hand to my chest, muffling the light as I look around the séance room. It ripples and shifts in my vision. The red light is gone, the room lit only by the soft glow of lamps. The masks leer down from the walls. The faces stare out from the paintings.
“Oh, look, it’s just as creepy,” says Jacob, appearing beside me. Here in the Veil, he’s solid, real, another reminder that I’m out of place.
He didn’t have to come.
But he always does.
“Rule number four of friendship,” he says. “Stick together. Now, can you just find a ghost and send them on so we can go back?”
As if on cue, a door slams down the hall.
I pull the necklace over my head and take a few steps toward the sound, but the moment I move, my vision doubles, blurs. The room multiplies, sliding in and out of focus around me. Furniture shifting, appearing, disappearing, changing, burning, smoke and laughter, light and shadow, all of it so disorienting I have to squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t understand.
I’ve crossed into the Veil countless times. Back home, and in Scotland, and in France. I’ve seen places where the Veil is empty, nothing but a stretch of white, like unmarked paper. But this is different. This is more than one Veil in the same place.
I remember what Dad said about Muriel’s, how it had been torn down and rebuilt, how it had belonged to several families and lived several lives.
And suddenly this muddled, overlapping scene makes sense.
Because the Veil isn’t really one place. It’s a collection of remembered spaces, stitched together, each tethered to a ghost, their life, their death, their memories. That’s why some parts are empty—no ghost to hold them up.
And that’s why this one is full.
Because Muriel’s doesn’t belong to just one ghost.
It belongs to several. Each with their own story. And I’m standing in all of them.
“It’s giving me a headache,” says Jacob, closing one eye and then the other.
He looks silly, but it gives me an idea. I let go of the mirror pendant and lift my camera instead, peering through the viewfinder. I slide the lens in and out until only one version of the house comes into focus at a time.
In one, I’m in the plush séance room, all elegant tapestries and low rosy light.
In another, I’m standing on rough wooden boards, the clink and slide of chains somewhere below.
In a third, the room is hot and dark, smoke seeping up between the floorboards.
I don’t know where to start.
And then another door slams. Loud and close. I slide the focus just in time to see a man surge across the doorway and down the hall. He’s not in the building on fire, or in the slave quarters. He’s in the ornate house.
“No, no, no,” he mutters, dragging his hand along the banister. “It’s gone.”
I catch up as he rounds the corner, follow him into a room with a poker table, chips piled in tiny mountains before empty chairs.
“It’s gone.”
In a violent motion, he sweeps his arm across the table, scattering the chips. They fall like rain around him. I step closer, and he rounds on me.
“They took it all from me,” he snarls, and I know this must be Mr. Jourdan, the gambler who lost his whole house, and then his life.
In another version of the house, someone wails, the sound sudden and sharp. It catches me off guard, and in that second, Mr. Jourdan lunges forward and grabs my shoulders.
“Everything is gone,” he moans.
And I forget I’m gripping the camera instead of the mirror until I hold it up toward his face and nothing happens. The ghost looks at me, and then down at the lens, and then past it, at the curl of light inside my chest.
And something in him changes. His eyes darken. His teeth grit.
A second ago, he was a desperate man, trapped in his last moments. But now he’s a hungry ghost. A spirit, longing for what it’s lost.
I reach for the mirror pendant as he reaches for my life, and he might have gotten there first if a bucket of poker chips hadn’t hit him in the side of the head. Jacob has excellent aim.
It gives me just the time I need to get the mirror up between us.
The ghost goes still.
“Look and listen,” I say as his eyes go wide.
“See and know,” I say as his edges ripple and thin.
“This is what you are.”
It’s like an incantation. A spell. Say the words, and the ghost goes clear as glass. I reach through his chest and take hold of the brittle thread inside. It once was a life, as bright as mine. Now it comes away in my hand, dark and gray, already crumbling to dust.
And just like that, Mr. Jourdan fades and disappears, and so does his version of Muriel’s.
My vision blurs, and it’s getting a little hard to breathe. For a second I think it’s just my body, warning me I’m not supposed to stay too long in the Veil. And then I remember the smoke.
“Uh, Cass,” says Jacob.
And I see the smoke rising from the ground floor, seeping through the walls.
The wail comes again, and I realize it’s not someone but something, a siren, a horn, a warning to get out.
I reach for the curtain, but it doesn’t rise to meet my fingers.
I try again, grasping for the gray cloth between worlds, but the Veil holds tight.
“No time,” shouts Jacob, pulling me toward the landing.
We race down the stairs, even though down is hotter, down is the direction of fire curling through the house. It stings my eyes and burns my throat, and the Veil shifts and slides around us. One step, the house is on fire and people are shouting. The next, it’s dark. And I don’t know which Veil I’m in with each passing step, but I know I don’t want to be here when the building comes down.
We reach the foyer, the front door hanging open on its hinges.
Outside, I see the Quarter is burning.
And it’s not.
It’s a mess of overlapping scenes, buildings on fire and unburnt, alarms ringing one second and music filling the air the next. Veils tangled together with the same chaotic energy of jazz. I squeeze my eyes shut as something cracks over our heads.
I look up in time to see a burning beam crashing toward us, and then Jacob’s pushing me forward, through the door and the curtain and the Veil, seconds before the beam collapses into smoldering wood and fiery ash.
The world shudders into life and color, and I’m sitting on the hot pavement in front of the bustling restaurant, listening to the clank of silverware and laughter. The scent of smoke fades a little with every breath.