“A very dangerous kind of ghost,” says Lara. “They feed on chaos.”

“Cassidy!” calls Mom, knocking on the door. “Everything all right in there?”

“Yep!” I call back. “Just brushing my teeth.” I lower my voice as I turn back to Lara. “But how can a poltergeist cause trouble in the real world? Shouldn’t it be locked in the Veil?”

Lara pinches the bridge of her nose. “Poltergeists are wanderers. They’re not stuck in a loop or a memory, and they aren’t tied to the place they died. They’ve come loose from the in-between. They can move freely through it, and even reach across the Veil into our world.”

“Like the Raven in Red,” I say, recalling the ghostly woman who haunted Edinburgh, stealing its children before she stole my life.

“Yes,” says Lara. “And no. Even the Raven couldn’t leave the in-between until she had your life. That’s why she had to lure you in. But poltergeists already have one foot on either side. So congratulations, you’ve managed to wake something even more dangerous.”

My stomach drops at the thought. The Raven wasn’t exactly a piece of cake.

“It’s like a video game,” says Jacob, “where the boss on each level is harder to beat.”

Lara frowns. “That’s an overly simplistic way of looking at this. But I suppose so.”

“Okay,” I say, mind spinning. “But a poltergeist is still a spirit. So I just need to find it and send it back.”

“Yes,” says Lara. “As soon as possible. Poltergeists start with little things, acts of mischief, but eventually they turn to menace and then mayhem. Violence.” I think of the torn awning, the glass shattering on the table, how lucky I was I didn’t get cut. “They don’t have any qualms about hurting people, even killing them,” warns Lara. “And the more trouble a poltergeist causes, the more powerful they get.” She looks to Jacob, and then back at me, her next words pointed. “Spirits this strong have no place in our world, Cassidy. Every minute they’re loose, they cause damage to the balance, and the Veil.”

Jacob looks down at the floor, hands closing into fists. We both know she’s talking about more than the poltergeist.

I clear my throat. “Well, great,” I say, “thanks for the pep talk. Sure you don’t want to make a trip down to Paris?”

A sad smile flickers across Lara’s face. “I wish,” she says. “But I’m here, if you need me. And, Cassidy?”

“Yeah?”

“Do be careful. And, you”—she glares at Jacob—“as long as you’re here, make yourself useful.”

She hangs up, and I’m left staring down at the darkened screen.

“You know,” says Jacob dryly, “I think she’s starting to like me.”

I sigh and kick him out so I can brush my teeth for real.

I need my sleep—tomorrow I’m going to hunt a poltergeist.

By the time I climb into bed, Jacob’s nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t stick around at night, but the truth is, I don’t know where he goes.

Sometimes, even psychic ghost best friends have secrets.

Something jerks me out of a heavy, dreamless sleep.

I don’t know what it is—a weight on the edge of my bed, Grim walking around—only that I’m awake, and the room is dark. The night is still thick beyond my window. My door is ajar, and I hold my breath and listen, straining to hear something, anything—Dad’s snoring, the ambient sounds of late-night tourists on the street—but the suite is unnaturally quiet.

Until I hear the click of a lock, the faint groan of the hotel door swinging open.

The poltergeist.

Thin red light spills in from the hall, and I’m on my feet, padding barefoot through the dark. By the time I reach the doorway, the crimson glow is sliding down the stairs. I step into the hall and reach for my mirror pendant, only to realize I’m not wearing it. I must have left the necklace on the bedside table. As I turn back to get it, the hotel door swings shut, locking me out.

A draft rolls down the hall, sudden and cold, and I fight back a shiver.

“Cassidy …”

My name is a whisper on the air, faint and far away, but I know that voice.

“Jacob?” I call out, trying to keep my voice low.

“Cassidy …” he calls again, his voice drifting up through the floor. Something crashes, and I hurry toward the stairs, sure that the poltergeist has Jacob, that he’s in danger.

Hold on, Jacob, I think, plunging down the stairs. Hold on, hold on.

They don’t have any qualms about hurting people, Lara said.

Hold on.

With every downward step, the temperature falls.

By the second floor, I’m cold.

By the first, I’m shivering.

“Jacob?” I call again, my breath fogging in front of me as I reach the lobby, slipping on the marble floor. I scramble to my feet, ready to fight, ready to save my best friend—

But there’s no one else here.

No poltergeist attacking him, only Jacob, on his knees in the center of the lobby. His head is in his hands as the air around him churns into a frenzy. The chandelier swings, and the paintings shake, and a chair scrapes across the floor, and I realize with horror that all of it is coming from him.

“Jacob!” I shout over the howling wind. “Can you hear me?”

He lets out a low groan. “What’s happening to me?” His voice sounds strange and hollow. “Cassidy …”

He trails off, the color seeping out of his clothes, his skin. Water drips from his hair, his jeans, pooling around him on the marble floor until he looks the way he did that one time I saw him in a mirror.

He looks gray and wet and lost.

He looks dead.

No. No. No.

“Cassidy!” calls a voice, but it’s not coming from Jacob.

It’s Lara.

She’s standing behind the front desk, bracing herself against the worst of the chaos, her black braid whipping in the wind. Lara, who always seems to have an answer, who always knows what to do. But her eyes aren’t wide with worry. They’re furious.

“I warned you this would happen!” she calls, her voice warping from the force of Jacob’s whirlwind. “I told you he was getting stronger.”

I duck as a vase shatters against the pillar over my head, raining down shards of glass and broken flowers that are then yanked back up before they ever hit the marble floor.

“Cass!” screams Lara as the chaos in the lobby reaches a high, keening pitch. “You have to send him on.”

But I can’t. I won’t. There has to be another way.

Jacob curls in on himself at the center of the storm, and I try to get closer, to grab his hand, to pull him back from wherever he is. I can save him. I know if I can just get close enough—but the whirlwind around him is too strong, and it slams me backward until I hit a marble pillar and—

I sit up, gasping in the dark.

It was just a bad dream.

“You’re acting weird,” says Jacob the next morning.

He looks like Jacob again. No ghoulish face, no empty eyes, no pool of water at his feet, just my best friend in all his semitransparent glory. I wish I could throw my arms around him. Instead, I do my best to clear my mind, grateful he can’t read my dreams as well as my thoughts.