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.