City of Ghosts

by Victoria Schwab

  And then she simply steps back through the Veil. Out of the world of the living, and into the land of the dead. Findley goes toppling backward, arms empty, and strikes his head on a tombstone.

  But there’s no time to worry about him, because the Raven is there, right in front of us, solid and bright, with those black curls and that red, red cloak.

  “Your life is mine,” she says. Her voice is mesmerizing, hypnotizing, but I don’t let it draw me in.

  “You want the rest of this thread,” I say, “you’ve got to go through me.”

  “Us,” says Jacob.

  “All of us,” says Lara, from my other side. She’s recovered her necklace, and the mirror pendant spins from her fingers.

  “Is that so?” coos the Raven with a wicked smile. Her teeth are broken, sharp, and when she draws a breath to sing, I press my palms over my ears. So do Jacob and Lara.

  But she’s not singing for us.

  A second later, the children come.

  They stream into the graveyard, pass through the gates and around the tombstones. They rise from the ground and peer around the church.

  They come from everywhere.

  And they come for us.

  No—for Jacob and Lara.

  Because the Raven comes for me.

  There’s nowhere to run,” coos the Raven.

  But it doesn’t stop me from trying.

  I duck behind a tombstone, mind racing.

  “There’s nowhere to hide.”

  Her voice is right on top of me. Fingers curl around the top of the grave. I scramble up again, staggering backward out of reach.

  “You are mine, you are mine, you are mine,” she says, trailing me between the graves.

  Nearby, Jacob wrestles with a pair of child ghosts as they try to pin him down. A few yards beyond him, Lara’s trapped by a circle of them, her necklace useless against the hollow puppet children.

  It’s just me and the Raven.

  One life between the two of us.

  I dart between tombstones, wishing I had my camera, wishing I had anything but the frayed half of a ribbon. And then I see it. Moonlight catches on the glassy shards at the top of the Raven’s open grave.

  I know what to do.

  I run, as hard as I can, as fast as I can.

  I can hear the Raven coming.

  I can feel her at my heels.

  But I don’t look back.

  I lunge for the pile of dirt at the edge of the grave and—

  I almost make it.

  Almost.

  My hands sink into the fresh-turned soil as the Raven’s fingers close around my ankle, hard as talons. My hand finds the edge of something sharp as she drags me back across the ground.

  Pain lances through my palm but I don’t let go.

  Not when the Raven hauls me to my feet.

  Not when she wraps a hand around my throat.

  Not when she lifts me off the ground until we are face-to-face. Eye-to-eye.

  “Got you,” she whispers, her free hand diving into my pocket.

  “Got you,” I answer, holding up my prize.

  A shard of the camera lens, small and silver and bright.

  The edge is stained with blood where it cut my hand, but it’s all I have, so I shove it into the Raven’s face.

  This time, she is not fast enough. This time, her hands are full—one around my throat, one fishing for my life—and she cannot let go of either, not before she sees her reflection in the glass.

  “This is what you are,” I say.

  A gasp hisses like steam between her lips as her eyes go wide. Her face twists in fury and frustration before going vacant, smooth, like ice.

  I don’t know what the Raven sees in the mirror.

  A mourning mother wandering the streets, calling for her missing child?

  A vile woman stealing boys and girls from the safety of their homes?

  I don’t know who she was before she died.

  I only know what she is now.

  A specter made of loss and anger, fear and want.

  I reach through the Raven’s red cloak and into the empty hollow of her chest. The thread brushes my fingers, twitches under my hand as if it were a living thing, a snake in its cave, and I fight the urge to recoil. I swallow and take hold of the Raven’s thread, and draw it out. It is heavy in my hand, and in the half-light of the graveyard, I can see that it’s not a colorless ribbon, like the one I pulled from the mourning man’s chest, but a rope.

  A coil of thick black cord, made dense by dozens of thinner threads. Far more threads than should belong to a single person. Because, of course, they don’t. This is why I couldn’t find the thread in Matthew’s chest. It wasn’t there. It was here, each piece of the Raven’s power stolen from a child.

  The rope resists, but I wrap the dark cord around my fingers and pull.

  And when the rope comes free, there is no pop, no crack, only the feeling of a great weight giving way.

  The rope crumbles, dark and viscous, like mud, before dissolving into nothing.

  And as soon as the rope is gone, so is the Raven.

  One second she is right there, black hair curling around the hood of her red cloak, fingers knotted in my collar, and the next, she’s a cloud of ash and smoke and I’m falling through her vanished grip, back to the loamy earth.

  All around the graveyard, the stolen children shudder, like candles in an open window, and then, in a single gust of wind, they simply … go out.

  Lara slumps, breathless, against a tree, her braid half-undone.

  Jacob stands atop a grave, holding a stick in both hands like a bat.

  But there’s no one left to fight.

  Lara clears her throat. “Well, now,” she says, the faintest tremble in her voice as she smooths her stained shirt. “I told you we would sort things out.”

  I crouch over the dark remains of the Raven, digging through the ash until I find it. The frayed ribbon of blue-white light.

  The other half of my thread.

  Lara sucks in a short breath at the sight of it. I don’t blame her. I’m willing to bet she’s never let a ghost steal her life, never seen her own thread outside the safety of her body, let alone torn in two.

  I dig the piece from my pocket and bring the two halves together in my hands.

  At first, nothing happens, and for a terrible second, I think I’ve ruined it, this life of mine. But Jacob rests a hand on my shoulder, and as we watch, the threads begin to weave together, mending until there’s only a thin line, like a crack, where the ribbon tore.

  It seems … fragile. Less like a lightbulb, and more like a candle, something I need to shield against the wind. But the bluish light is steady in my palm, soft and bright. The opposite of the rope I pulled from the Raven.

  I bring the ribbon to my chest. I have no idea how this works, if there are words you’re supposed to say, or a series of gestures, like casting a spell.

  So I’m pretty relieved when the ribbon simply sinks back through my ribs, simple as a rock in the river, there, and then—

  I gasp, my vision going white.

  My life is—

  Air in starving lungs.

  A hand grabbing mine.

  A light in the dark.

  The pebbles beneath me on the frozen bank, and water dripping from my hair, and Jacob saying, “I’ve got you.”

  And then I’m back, not in the Veil, but in the real world, flesh and bone, shadow and light, surrounded by grass and dirt and gravestones.

  I’m alive.

  The air parts around Lara as she steps out of the Veil, Jacob in her wake. I want to throw my arms around them both, but Lara doesn’t look like the hugging type, and Jacob and I are no longer made of the same stuff, so I settle for a grateful nod and a ghost five.

  And then I see it, lying by the grave, half-buried by dirt. The broken purple strap.

  The camera. It came back with me, somehow, again. When I pull it out of the dirt, I half expect to see it me
nded, whole, like me.

  But the lens is still shattered.

  My heart sinks.

  Lara clears her throat. “Um, Cassidy …”

  I follow her gaze, from the open grave to the teenage boys staring dazedly at the shovels in their hands, to Findley on the ground, who groans and rubs his head, to the sound of sirens and the men cutting the lock on the front gate, and all I can think is:

  We are in so much trouble.

  For the first time since we got to Scotland, there’s not a cloud in the sky. The sun is out and the air is warm as Dad and I (and Jacob) make our way up the Royal Mile toward Bellamy’s Photo Store.

  It’s been two days since the graveyard, and I’m officially not allowed to go anywhere without adult supervision. Mom and Dad look at me like I might slip away at any second, vanish right before their eyes.

  Trouble, it turned out, was kind of an under-statement.

  My parents had to come and get me from the police station. They walked in to find me with Findley on one side and Lara on the other (and Jacob, though it turns out you can get away with a lot when no one can see you), all of us dazed and covered in grave dirt.

  Needless to say, there was a scene. A minor vandalism charge, though luckily I wasn’t the one who desecrated a grave. At least, not directly. The teenage boys claimed they didn’t remember anything, and even though I knew they were telling the truth, the cops still wrote them up. I felt bad for them, but they’re pretty lucky to be alive.

  And I was in plenty of trouble myself.

  Apparently Lara had told my parents that I’d explain everything when I got back. Only, I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain where I’d gone or what had happened to me. I couldn’t explain anything—well, I could, but it was the kind of explanation that led to more questions than answers.

  It didn’t stop me from trying to tell them the truth.

  “Ten points for story,” said Mom when I was done, but Dad still grounded me for life. In the end, I think they were just really scared, and really glad I was alive.

  So was I.

  Filming for the first episode of The Inspecters finished yesterday. Mom’s back at the flat packing up and looking through the footage with the crew. It took an hour of begging for Dad to take me to Bellamy’s, and in the end, I think he only said yes because the weather’s so nice and he wanted an excuse to go out.

  My camera may be broken, but its back stayed on. There’s still film inside. And I want to see what it saw.

  Dad and I reach the top of the road and turn to look back down the Royal Mile, the street rolling away like a ribbon down the hill.

  “It’s quite a city,” Dad says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It really is.”

  Bellamy’s is open but empty. No customers. No one behind the counter. Jacob and Dad stay outside while I head in. It feels strange, coming here. I miss my darkroom, and I feel weird leaving the photos with someone else. Weird not being the first one to see how they turn out, to watch the pictures rise up through the pool of developer. But I don’t have much choice.

  “Hello?” I call.

  I hear a shuffle, and then a second later a girl pops out from a room in the back. She’s older than me, but not as old as I expect, maybe eighteen, with short blue hair and rainbow nails.

  “Hiya!” she says with a strong Scottish lilt.

  “I was wondering if you develop black-and-white film?” I ask.

  “Wouldn’t be much of a photo shop if we didn’t! Truth be told,” she says, leaning her elbows on the counter, “it’s my favorite kind. There’s just something about that old film—the world looks different in black-and-white. Stranger. More magical. You know what I mean?” Her eyes go to the camera in my hands. “Goodness, what have you been doing, playing football with it?”

  I set the battered camera on the counter.

  “I know it’s broken,” I say, “but there’s film in there, and I was hoping …”

  She pokes it with a nail. “Can I?” she asks, already taking it up. She handles the camera gingerly, lovingly, as she turns it over. “This is an old model, hard to match.”

  “Match?”

  “Aye, it’s just a broken lens. Well, and a cracked viewfinder. I can’t help you there, but …” With a deft motion and a soft click, the ruined lens comes free in her hand. “Some silvering on the glass … hmmm …” She vanishes into the back and returns a few minutes later with a new lens. Well, not a new one. It’s clearly as old as the camera. With a quick turn, she attaches it. “There we are.”

  My heart soars at the sight of the mended camera, then sinks. “I can’t afford—”

  She sets the camera on the counter. “Can’t sell this lens, actually.” She turns it toward me, and for a second, I flinch, remembering the mirrored surface, the memory, but when I look at the lens, I just see me. Or at least, mostly me. For a moment, it looks like my hair is floating, and a light hovers over my chest. But it could just be a lens flare, a trick of the eye, because when I blink, it’s gone.

  “See?” she says, tapping the lens. “It’s got a defect. Right there.” I squint and see a small smudge, like a cloud of fog, on the inside of the glass. “Makes pictures come out a little funny. You’d be taking it off my hands.”

  I bite my lip. “Are you sure?”

  “Aye!” she says, taking up the camera. “I’ll get this film sorted for you and—oh, you’ve got one left, did you know?” She wiggles the camera. “Want me to take it?”

  I glance around, suddenly uncomfortable at the idea of being in the shot instead of taking it. And then I spot Jacob through the front window. He’s got his back to me as he watches people pass.

  “Hold on a sec,” I say.

  I go to the window and lean my back against the pane so that Jacob and I are side by side, with only the glass and the curling script of BELLAMY’S between us.

  He sees me, glances back over his shoulder, smiles. I smile back, and I hear the soft click of the camera as the shop girl takes the shot.

  “Nice light this time of day,” she says, winding the film. “That should turn out well.”

  “Thanks,” I say, returning to the counter. “I hope so.”

  She pops the back of the camera open and plucks out the canister. My fingers tickle and I have to fight back the urge to reach for it. Instead, I watch it disappear into an envelope.

  “Come back tomorrow morning,” she says. “I’ll have it ready for you.”

  Back at the Lane’s End that night, we order fish and chips and gather around—the crew, Mom and Dad, Findley, Jacob, and me—to watch a rough cut of the footage from The Inspecters “Episode 1: City of Ghosts.” I wish Lara were here, too, but I haven’t seen her since the night of the Greyfriars incident. (I’m pretty sure Mrs. Weathershire thinks I’m a bad influence.)

  Jacob and I sit side by side on the sofa, my arm against his, while on the TV screen, Dad recounts the history of Mary King’s Close. Mom offers notes on where to cut, and scribbles down lines they might want to add in voiceover. Grim sits on Findley’s lap, despite the fact Findley bellows with laughter whenever anyone jumps on camera—he calls it “catching fright.”

  Findley claims he doesn’t remember anything about that night in the graveyard, but there’s a bruise on his cheek, half-hidden by the scruff of his beard, and a glint in his eye whenever it catches mine.

  On the screen, Mom’s voice echoes through the prison cells at the castle.

  It feels so long ago, so far away. I guess in some ways it is.

  When it’s time for everyone to leave, Findley wraps me in a bear hug.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, “for everything.”

  “There’s a mark on you, Cassidy,” he says, suddenly sober. “You be careful now.”

  Tears prick my eyes. I’m not sure why.

  But it’s still hard to let go.

  The next morning, it takes half an hour to catch Grim, who’s decided, in a rare burst of basic feline dignity, that he is never going bac
k in his crate.

  “Come on, kitty,” says Jacob, trying to scare him out from under the sofa. I take the approach of making a trail of cat treats across the room.

  While Jacob and I wrangle Grim, Mom and Dad finish packing, and for a little while everything feels normal. The air is buzzing with excitement and nervous energy, all of us ready to put this city behind us, albeit for different reasons.

  Finally, Jacob and I slump onto the sofa with a crated Grim between us.

  “Did he scratch you?” asks Mom, coming into the room.

  I frown, confused. “No, why?”

  “Your palm.”

  I look down. She’s right. Not about Grim, but about my hand.

  I rub my thumb over the shallow red line, the place where the lens shard sliced me in the graveyard. There’s no cut, but it still aches.

  “No,” I say, “I’m fine.”

  When it’s time to go, we drag our bags downstairs, where Mrs. Weathershire is waiting.

  “Off, then?” she asks cheerfully. “I’ll phone a cab.”

  Mom and Dad head out to the curb. I’m right behind them, but I stop and turn around when footsteps sound on the stairs. It’s not the ghostly Mr. Weathershire this time. It’s Lara. She pulls up, breathless, as if afraid she was going to miss me. A few flyaway hairs escape her braid. She smooths them down.

  “Hey!” I say, glad to see her.

  “Hey,” she says, shooting Jacob a measuring look before turning back to me.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like my life’s been torn in two,” I say dryly.

  Her eyes widen. “Really?”

  I shake my head and laugh. “I feel fine. Normal. Well, as normal as it gets. Are you in much trouble?”

  Lara shrugs. “Nothing I can’t handle.” I’m surprised to see a glimmer in her eye, something close to mischief. “It might surprise you to know that I have, on occasion, broken a few rules.”

  She takes one of my bags, following me out to the curb. “We need to talk.”

  Jacob hovers.

  Give us a second, I think, and he frowns but shuffles away.

  Lara waits until he’s gone. “You’re not doing him a favor,” she says, “keeping him here.”