“Cass,” says Jacob, at my side. “She’s not here.”

But she has to be.

She can’t …

Tears prick my eyes, blurring my vision until the square is nothing but vague shapes and shades of gray, a world out of focus.

Focus.

My camera. Every time I looked at the Emissary through the lens, it was an inky mass, a pitch-black pool against the backdrop of the world. I lift the camera now, and look through it, sliding the focus on the lens as I scan the crowded square, looking for the darkness, the shadow on the frame, searching for something, anything out of place.

Nothing, nothing—and then I see it.

A horseless carriage.

It’s black as night, black as the space behind the skull’s eyes, and it’s cutting straight through the crowd, surging away and out of the square.

And I know Lara’s in there.

She’s not gone, not yet.

But I have to find out where she’s going.

I start forward after the carriage, colliding with a ghost.

He scowls and shoves me. “Watch it, girl.”

I lower my camera, and the square comes back into violent focus, a teeming mass of movement and spirits, too many starting toward me.

Jacob pulls me away from the ghosts, even as I lift the camera and slide the focus, still searching, searching. But I’ve lost sight of the carriage.

We cut back into the world of the living, the transition so jarring I have to brace myself against the wall for a moment until my vision clears. My heart races in my chest, with panic, but also with hope.

The horseless carriage must be going somewhere.

I just don’t know where.

I don’t know how long I have.

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

But I know people who will.

I take off, down one block and up another, skidding to a stop in front of Thread & Bone. I fling open the door. Or I try to, but it holds fast. I push again before noticing that the sign on the glass says CLOSED.

No, no, no.

I rattle the handle. I pound on the door. But the lights are off, and no one answers, and I can’t get through to the Society room and all the old members without being let in by a Society member.

Jacob peers through the glass, then pulls back, shaking his head. “No one’s here,” he says. “Except the cat.”

This can’t be happening. Not now.

I need the Society.

“Cassidy,” he says, “we know where one of them is.”

Of course. Lucas Dumont.

Official Inspecters guide. And Society historian.