Lara:

I’m not sure. They don’t exactly advertise.

Up ahead, Dad’s studying the hours of a museum dedicated to poisons, while Mom reads a sandwich board advertising séances. I walk over to join Mom, and I study the icon of the upturned hand, a crystal ball hovering in the air over the palm. I take a photo of the board and send it to Lara.

Me:

What about this? Real?

I watch the three blinking dots that signal she’s typing. And typing. Still typing. I don’t know why I expected a simple answer, but when the text comes in, it fills my screen.

Lara:

Psychics are real, but séances generally fall under the category of entertainment. This is because, unlike in-betweeners, psychics stay on this side of the Veil, and pull the curtain back to talk to someone on the other side. But séances claim to bring those spirits across the threshold into the land of the living. If the spirits are strong enough to cross over, they generally get out.

Jacob reads over my shoulder, shaking his head.

“She could have just said no.”

He’s standing in front of a café window, and he squints at a reflection only the two of us can see. He runs a hand through his hair, but it doesn’t move. It’s always sticking up, just like his superhero T-shirt is always wrinkled. Nothing about him ever changes, because it can’t. It hasn’t, since the day he drowned.

I’m glad he told me the truth about what happened to him in the river, I really am.

I just can’t stop thinking about it. About the Jacob I never got to meet. The one with two brothers and a family and a life. He sighs and shoots me a look, and I realize, I’m thinking too loudly. I start humming a song in my head, and he rolls his eyes.

Mom and Dad start walking again, and Jacob and I follow. I’m just about to turn my attention back to Lara’s texts when Jacob passes an open doorway. The shop beyond is filled with candles, and tinctures, and charms, and Jacob erupts into sneezes.

“Stupid—”

Sneeze!

“—spirit—”

Sneeze!

“—wards—”

Sneeze!

At least, I think that’s what he said.

It’s the same reaction he had back in Paris, when Lara sent over protective charms to keep a poltergeist at bay. Apparently, the charms work on all sorts of spirits, even increasingly corporeal best friends.

I take a photo of the shop—the word VOODOO ghosted on the glass—and send it to Lara.

Me:

Real?

I’m waiting for her answer when something catches my eye.

It’s a black cat.

It’s sitting on the shaded curb in front of a shop called Thread & Bone, grooming one leg. For a moment, I wonder if Grim somehow got out. But of course it’s not Grim—I’ve never seen Grim so much as lick a paw—and when the cat looks up, its eyes aren’t green but lavender. I watch the cat stretch, and yawn, and then trot away down an alley. There are probably a ton of black cats in a city like this, but I think of the Society and wonder if it might be a clue. Mom would call that “a little on the nose,” but just to be safe I snap a photo of the cat before it disappears. I’m about to send it to Lara when she texts me back about the voodoo shop.