As soon as we’re out of sight, Lara takes out her phone. A map of New Orleans fills the screen. “The trick with grown-ups,” she says, setting off down the block, “is not to give them time to think.”

She’s always been a fast walker, and I have to jog to keep up.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she says. “We’re going to find the Society.”

Part Three: The Society of the Black Cat

Chapter Twelve

Lara moves like a girl on a mission.

I mean, we are on a mission, but she always walks this way. Like she knows where she’s going. Even when it turns out she doesn’t.

“I thought you didn’t know where the Society was,” I call out, struggling to keep up.

“I don’t,” she says, readjusting her red backpack. “But it’s a secret society dedicated to the paranormal, so there must be some kind of sign.”

I look around at the placards in store windows advertising palm readings and tarot, voodoo and vampire tours. This city has plenty of signs, but as far as I can tell, none of them are for the Society.

Lara finally slows, and stops. “If I were running a paranormal society—and someday I will—I would put that sign somewhere other paranormal people would see it.” She turns back toward me with a meaningful look.

“Like the Veil,” I say, catching on.

“Precisely.”

Lara turns on her heel, reaching for the curtain.

Jacob and I follow.

The air splits open, and I feel the now-familiar rush of cold, the momentary sense of falling, before the world comes back, grayer and stranger than it was before.

So does that weird double vision, the sense that I’m standing in multiple places at once—or multiple versions of the same place. One second smoke fills my vision, carrying the searing scent of fire. The next, I see people walk arm in arm on a sunny day. Jazz pours through the streets, along with laughter, and shouting, and a far-off siren’s wail.

“Well, that’s disconcerting,” says Lara, closing one eye and then the other as she tries to focus. She cups her palm against one eye like a patch and sets off walking. We pass long cars, and carriage horses, and a group of men in oversized suits. Fire engulfs one balcony, and on the next, a couple dances.

I press my hand to my chest, trying to stifle the blue-white light. “I thought you said to stay out of the Veil.”