Purpose.

Jacob’s eyes flit toward me. “No,” he says, even as I get to my feet.

“Everything okay?” asks Mom.

“Yeah,” I say, “I need to use the bathroom.”

“No, you don’t,” whispers Jacob.

“I saw one, just past the food stalls,” says Mom, pointing.

“Cassidy,” whines Jacob.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell my parents.

I’m already moving away when Dad calls out, warning me not to wander off.

“I won’t,” I call back.

Dad shoots me a stern look. I’m still winning back their trust after the whole getting-trapped-in-the-Veil-by-a-ghost-and-having-to-fight-to-steal-my-life-back-by-hiding-in-an-open-grave thing (or, as my parents think of it, the afternoon I disappeared without permission and was found several hours later after breaking into a grave-yard).

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

I slip past the stalls and veer right, off the main path.

“Where are we going?” demands Jacob.

“To see if Jean the Skinner’s still here.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

But I’m not. I check my back pocket for my mirror pendant. It was a parting gift from Lara.

She would be furious at me for keeping the pendant in my pocket instead of out around my neck. She says people like us aren’t only hunters; we’re beacons for specters and spirits. Mirrors work on all ghosts, including Jacob, which is why I don’t wear the pendant. Lara would probably say that’s why I should.

Needless to say, she doesn’t approve of Jacob.

“Lara doesn’t approve of anything,” he quips.

They don’t get along—call it a difference of opinion.

“Her opinion,” he snaps, “is that I don’t belong here.”

“Well, technically you don’t,” I whisper, wrapping the necklace around my wrist. “Now, let’s go find Jean.”

Jacob scowls, the air around him rippling ever so slightly with his displeasure. “We were having such a nice night.”

“Come on,” I say, closing my fingers over the mirror charm. “Aren’t you curious?”

“Actually, no,” he says, crossing his arms as I reach for the Veil. “I’m really not. I’m perfectly content to never find out if—”

I don’t hear the rest. I pull the curtain aside and step through, and the world around me—

Vanishes.

The carnival lights, the crowds, the sounds and smells of the summer night. Gone. For a second, I’m falling. Plunging down into icy water, the shock of cold in my lungs. And then I’m back on my feet.

I’ve never gotten used to that part.

I don’t think I ever will.

I straighten and let out a shaky breath as the world settles around me again, stranger, paler.

This is the Veil.

The in-between.

It’s quiet and dark, full night. No carnival, no crowds, and thanks to the deep shadows and the tendrils of fog rolling across the lawns, I can barely see.

Jacob appears beside me a second later, obviously sulking.

“You didn’t have to come,” I say.

His foot scuffs the grass. “Whatever.”

I smile. Rule number twenty-one of friendship: Friends don’t leave friends in the Veil.

Jacob looks different here, fleshed out and colored in, and I can’t see through him anymore. Meanwhile I’m less solid than I was before, washed out and gray, with one glaring exception: the ribbon of light shining through my rib cage.

Not just a ribbon, but a life.

My life.

It glows with a pale blue-white light, and if I were to reach into my chest and pull it out, like some kind of gruesome show-and-tell, you’d see it’s not perfect anymore. There’s a seam, a thin crack, where it got torn in two. I put it back together, and it seems to be working well enough, but I have no desire to test how much damage a lifeline can take.

“Oh well,” says Jacob, craning his head, “looks like no one’s here. We better go.”

I’m as nervous as he is, but I hold my ground. Someone is here. They have to be here. That’s the thing about the Veil: It only exists where there’s a ghost. It’s like a stage where spirits act out their final hours, whatever happened that won’t let them move on.

My hands go to the camera around my neck, and the mirror pendant wrapped around my wrist chimes faintly as metal hits metal. The sound echoes strangely in the dark.

As my eyes adjust, I realize that buildings outside the park are gone, erased either by time—if they haven’t been built yet—or simply by the boundaries of this particular in-between, whoever it belongs to.

The question is, whose life—or, rather, death—are we in?

The night sky is getting brighter, tinged with a faint orange glow.

“Um, Cass,” says Jacob, looking over my shoulder.

I turn and stop, my eyes widening in surprise.

There’s no Jean the Skinner, but there is a palace.

And it’s on fire.

The fog isn’t fog at all, but smoke.

The wind picks up, and the fire quickens, the air darkening with soot. I can hear shouting, and carriages rattling over stone, and through the smoke I see a huddle of figures on the lawn, faces turned up toward the blaze.

I step closer, lift the camera’s viewfinder to my eye, and take a picture.

“Cass …” says Jacob, but he sounds far away, and when I turn to look for him, all I see is smoke.

“Jacob?” I call out, coughing as the smoke tickles my throat, creeps into my lungs. “Where are—”

A shape crashes into me. I stumble back into the grass, and the man drops the bucket he was hauling. It topples onto the ground, spilling something black and viscous. I know instantly that this is his place in the Veil. The other ghosts are just set pieces, puppets, but this man’s eyes, as they fall on me, are haunted.

I scramble to my feet, already holding up the mirror pendant, ready to send him on—

But there’s no necklace wrapped around my wrist, no mirror hanging in the air.

I look down, scouring the ground where I fell, and see the necklace shining in the grass, where it must have slipped off. But before I can reach it, the ghost grabs me by the collar and pushes me back against a tree. I try to twist free, but even though he’s a ghost and I’m not, the Veil levels the playing field.

“Jacob!” I shout. The man’s grip tightens as he spews at me in French, the words a mystery but the tone clear and cruel. And then he trails off, his eyes dropping to the camera at my chest.

No, not the camera, I realize with horror. The thread. The blue-white glow of my life. He grabs for it, and I squirm, desperate to get away from the reaching fingers—

“Hey!” shouts a familiar voice, and the ghost looks sideways just as Jacob swings the bucket at his head.

The man staggers, black tar dripping down his face, and I gasp, dropping to the ground. The instant I’m free, I lunge for the fallen necklace as the ghost takes one half-blinded step toward me. I grab the necklace and scramble up, holding the pendant out in front of me like a shield.

The ghost comes to a halt, his attention caught on the little round surface of the mirror.