“Are you sure?” asks Mom. “We have the B-roll to film but—”

“It’s no trouble at all,” he says, and I gratefully follow him out the door, Jacob on our heels.

“What happened?” Lucas asks as soon as we’re outside, and it spills out of me: our idea to lure the Emissary, the setup in the séance room, how everything went right until the moment it went wrong, how the Emissary took Lara instead of me, the horseless carriage I saw in the square, the Society headquarters closed.

“I have a key,” says Lucas, pulling it out from his pocket as we hurry toward the shop.

“I don’t know where it’s taking her,” I ramble. “She wasn’t in danger until I—”

“She was always in danger, Cassidy,” Lucas says. “She understood that, even if you didn’t.”

Tears spill down my face, and I dash them away. She’s not gone. Lara Chowdhury is the smartest, most stubborn girl I know. She’s not gone.

I just have to find her.

I can’t read Jacob’s mind the way he reads mine, but I can tell he feels guilty, too. We couldn’t have known the spell would hurt him.

The tarot card reading whispers in my head.

No matter what you choose, you will lose.

“You should have let me go,” Jacob whispers now, and if he were flesh and bone, I would punch him.

Instead, I snap, “Well, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I won’t. I’m not losing either of my friends today.”

Lucas looks at me, but doesn’t seem flustered by the fact I’m yelling at someone he can’t see. I wonder if he’s ever been flustered. He reminds me of Lara in that way. If Lara were here instead of me, she would know what to do. I try to summon her voice in my head. Slow down, it would say. Stay calm, just think.

I take a deep breath. “One of the past members of the Society said that if the Emissary caught me, it would take me back, to the place beyond the Veil.”

Lucas nods, pushing his glasses up his face. “That makes sense. According to most of the accounts I’ve read, the world is broken into three spaces. The land of the living, the Veil between, and the place beyond.”

“I know how to get from the living to the Veil,” I say. “There’s a kind of curtain. But how do you get from the Veil to the place beyond?”