Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts #2)(45)

I toss the coat to Jacob and shove the mirror into the spirit’s face, reaping his thread as quickly as possible. By the time he vanishes, I’m already doubling back down the tunnel, searching for the right place to set my trap.

“Are you going to tell me what is going on?” asks Jacob, clutching the coat and hat as he follows me.

Finally, I find it.

A stretch of tunnel lit by an oil lamp, one side dissolving into darkness, and the other capped by a dead end.

I turn toward Jacob. “Time for a different kind of game. Put those on.”

He looks at me, aghast. “You want me to play dress-up in another ghost’s clothes?”

I pull out one of the photos. The shot of Richard, standing alone after Thomas’s death. “I want you to dress up as him.”

Jacob looks at the photograph for a long moment, and I wait for his witty retort, but he says nothing, only stares, his face unreadable.

“What?” I say. “You don’t think it will work?”

But when he answers, his voice is low, strangely sober.

“Actually,” he says, “I think it might.”

He shrugs on the coat, grimacing a little.

“I feel so gross right now,” he mumbles. The coat is big on him, big enough to cover the T-shirt, probably too big to look natural, but it’s all we have to work with. He rolls up the sleeves.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Well?” he says, adjusting the cap on his head. “How do I look?”

I look him up and down, surprised by the difference a few small changes make. In the coat and hat, Jacob could almost pass for an old-fashioned boy.

I glance from the photo of Richard to Jacob.

“One more thing,” I say. Then I drag my hand along the top of a low stack of bones and wipe the dirt along his cheeks.

Jacob grits his teeth. “Did you seriously just wipe dead-people dirt on me?”

The resemblance isn’t perfect, of course.

But it might just be enough.

It better be, because I’m running out of options.

And out of time.

My vision is beginning to swim a little, and I know I’ve been down here too long.

“You owe me so many comics,” Jacob says, but the joke is thin, and I can tell he’s unsettled. Even scared. I forget, sometimes, that so much of Jacob’s fear is an act, made to make me feel braver.

Seeing him genuinely afraid is, well, terrifying.



I tell Jacob the rest of my plan, then point to the nearest tower of bones.

The skulls form a wavy band every two feet, grinning out at us with empty eyes. I use them as a handhold, and Jacob laces his fingers and gives me a leg up, helping me hoist myself onto the top of the wall. That’s how I think of it. A wall. Not a stack of femurs and skulls, the bones shifting dangerously under my weight. Nope. Just a wall. A place to crouch, to hide, to wait. The ceiling overhead is low and damp, and I cringe as it brushes the top of my head, try not to think too hard about any of it.

From this angle, Jacob’s face is hidden by his borrowed cap, and it’s not hard to imagine he’s someone else. A boy looking for his little brother.

“Thomas!” he calls out, voice ringing through the tunnels.

Thomas … Thomas …

For a long moment, nothing happens.

“Thomas?”

… Thomas … Thomas …

And then.

The little boy comes out of nowhere. He doesn’t peer around a corner, doesn’t come running. One second, Jacob is alone in the tunnel. The next, he’s not.

Jacob doesn’t see him, not at first.

He’s got his back to the boy as he calls into the dark.

“Thomas!”

… Thomas … Thomas …

The boy tilts his head, confused, and the red light in his eyes flickers once, like a shorting bulb, but then comes back. He takes a step forward, then stops when his foot comes down on the slip of paper. One of the photographs I’ve scattered through this stretch of tunnel like bread crumbs, meant to lead a lost boy home.

I watch as Thomas crouches and picks up the photo. He stares at the shot of Richard with his hand on his little brother’s shoulder. His eyes narrow. The red light flickers again.

It’s working.

Jacob keeps walking, just like we agreed, and Thomas follows.

The bones beneath me dig into my palms as I creep forward.

Thomas kneels, picking up another photograph. And another. And another. The red light around him weakens with each slip of paper. Each memory.

I keep crawling, trying to keep pace as he makes his way toward Jacob.

The front layer of the wall is rigid beneath me, the bones locked to form a rough but stable structure. But the piles behind that facade are nothing but stacks of rotting old bones, so I’m careful to stay on the narrow strip of solid ground.

Up ahead, the tunnel ends.

Jacob stops, lifts one hand to the bones that bar his way, and then turns back.

I can’t see his face, but his whole body stiffens in surprise at the sight of the boy clutching those old photos. Either he’s a better actor than I thought, or he genuinely didn’t hear Thomas coming up behind him.

“Thomas,” he says, and I can hear him fighting to keep his voice steady.

Hold on, I think as the air coils nervously around Thomas.