Bridge of Souls (Cassidy Blake #3)(29)

“Oh, hello!” she says, as if the sight of two new in-betweeners is perfectly normal.

She pokes a finger toward the blue-white light in my chest, and I pull away on instinct.

She cackles.

“A Veil-walker.” She looks from me to Lara. “Two of them! What a Wednesday! Is it Wednesday? It’s so easy to lose track.”

“Does it matter?” asks the girl with the Rubik’s Cube, her accent pure Louisiana, syrup and sweet.

“Time always matters,” says the older man with the book.

“Until it doesn’t,” says the ancient woman.

“Look at us, chattering away,” says the woman with the coffee mug. “Where are my manners? I’m Agatha.”

Lara and I introduce ourselves.

“Sit, sit,” says Agatha, “make yourselves comfortable.”

There’s not a lot of space, but we perch on the edge of the dusty furniture.

“That’s Theodore,” Agatha says, gesturing at the old man with the book. “Hazel,” she says, nodding at the girl with the sundress and the Rubik’s Cube. “Charles—wake up, Charles!” she shouts toward the napping man with the bow tie. “And Magnolia,” she finishes, nodding to the ancient woman bowed over her cane.

“Are—were you all in-betweeners?” I ask.

“Goodness no. And we use the present tense here, child. Makes us feel a bit more up to speed. Hazel and I are mediums.” The girl’s gaze flicks up from the Rubik’s Cube. “Charles—somebody wake him up?—is a historian. Magnolia handles the voodoo, and Theodore here, he is—or, sorry, Theo, I do have to say was—a Veil-walker.”

I look toward Theo’s chest, where the light would have been. It’s gone now, of course.

“And you all just stay here?” asks Lara.

“We’re on shifts. Some of us are a bit more lively than others. But let’s see, Harry and Renata are out patrolling, Lex was supposed to be shoring up the wards on the shop after someone tried to get in”—she raises a meaningful brow as she says it—“and knowing Sam, she’s probably drinking gin and listening to jazz in the square.” She takes a swig from the mug. “And what about you two? You’re awfully young to be Society members.”

Hazel clears her throat. She doesn’t look any older than us.

“Well, yes, but yours was a tragic end,” Agatha tells her, and then examines me and Lara again. “You’re not dead, though. Just visiting. So what can we do for you?”

Lara straightens to her full height, which is still a good inch below mine. “We’re here to seek your guidance.”

“No need to be so formal,” says Agatha. “Just tell us the trouble.”

Lara glances at me.

I swallow and say, “I’m being hunted by an Emissary.”

For a second, no one says anything.

Hazel stares at me with wide, sad eyes, and the ancient woman, Magnolia, thumps her cane thoughtfully on the floor.

Agatha nods and says, “Right. Best tell us everything.”

I do. I tell them about the stranger on the train platform in Paris. I tell them about the Place d’Armes and the séance, the skull in the stone and the voice in the dark, and what it said. I tell them about the close call in St. Roch, and when I’m done, the words hang in the air for a moment, like smoke.

And then the napping man, Charles, sighs and sits up.

“That’s no good,” he says, which feels like a bit of an understatement.

“The historian wakes!” scolds Agatha. “Honestly, Charles. This is a society, not a sunroom. Now, Theodore,” she says, turning to the man with the book. The in-betweener. “Have you ever seen an Emissary?”

The old man with the mustache closes his book. “Only once. Gave me the shivers. Lucky it didn’t see me. But we did lose another Veil-walker, didn’t we? Some years back.”

The historian, Charles, nods at the bookshelf. “Joanna Bent,” he says. “She’s gone on her way, but she made notes.”

Hazel sets her Rubik’s Cube aside and studies the books, fingers trailing over the spines before she pulls down a slim journal and turns through the pages.

“Dangerous things, Emissaries,” says Theodore. “Like spotlights, scanning the dark.”

Hazel clears her throat.

“?‘Death’s Emissaries,’?” she reads in her Southern drawl, “?‘are drawn to things out of place. To life in the presence of death, and death in the presence of life. To people who embody both.’?”

“That’s why they’re so good at finding in-betweeners,” says Lara. “We’re life and death mixed up in one.”

I shake my head. “But I don’t get why they want to find us. In-betweeners have a purpose. We clear out the Veil. We send spirits on. Shouldn’t Death be grateful?”

Agatha purses her lips. “I don’t think Death cares about the dead. Think about what the Emissary said to you. ‘You stole from us.’ It was talking about your life. The ghosts in the Veil don’t have lives anymore. Just look at the threads in our chests.” She gestures to her own. “All the light’s gone out. But you—”

I look down at the blue-white light glowing behind my ribs.