I stop, admiring the poster. “I’ve been wanting to see this,” I say softly, as if to myself.

Mom wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Since when do you like rom-coms?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Lara told me about it.” She didn’t, of course, but as far as lies go, it’s pretty innocent. “It seems fun. Maybe I’m just feeling a little ghosted-out. This is my summer vacation, after all. And Paris is amazing, but I just— I’d really love to do something normal.” I point to the start time. “There’s even a showing now.” I look up at her. “Can I go? You can pick me up later.”

Mom sulks. “But we’re going to the Rue des Chantres! You wouldn’t want to miss that.”

I bite my lip and let my shoulders fall. “I guess not.”

Jacob claps his hands at my Oscar-worthy performance. Mom and Dad exchange a glance, and then a few quiet words, before Mom nods and says, “Okay.”

I throw my arms around her shoulders. “Thank you.”

Dad slides a few bills through the ticket window, and he even gives me some cash for a soda and popcorn.

“We’ll be back,” he says, “before the movie ends.” He points to the sidewalk. “Right here.”

I wave goodbye and head inside, buying a snack at the counter, letting the usher tear my ticket. He points to the first theater on the left, and Jacob and I make our way into the darkened theater.

“A movie,” Jacob says, sinking into the leather seat. “This is a nice change of pace.”

I sip my soda and check my phone, waiting for one minute to pass, then two. I set a timer on my phone for two hours.

Jacob watches me. “We’re not staying for the movie, are we?”

I get up, leaving the bucket of popcorn at my feet. “Nope.”

Jacob sighs. “Just once,” he says, “I wish we’d do the normal thing.”

I push open the door marked EXIT, and we slip down the hall and out onto the Paris street.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Paris is a big city, and as we stand on the street, blocks stretching in every direction, two hours suddenly doesn’t seem like very much time.

“Time to do what?” asks Jacob, for once unable to make sense of my jumbled thoughts.

I don’t blame him. My head is spinning with everything I know and everything I don’t.

I have to remind the poltergeist who he is—was.

In order to do that, I have to figure out who he is—was.

In order to do that, I have to find out more about him.

In order to do that …

I take a deep breath and reach for the Veil, pulling the curtain aside before Jacob can even think to protest.

I step out of the world, into a moment of free fall, like a missed step, a lurch of darkness. Then Paris settles around me again, stranger, grayer, older. The buildings look different, no longer uniform rows of pale stone but mismatched, like a ragged hem.

I cup my hands around my mouth and call, at the top of my lungs, “HEY, GHOST!”

The words echo away into the fog. I take a breath and shout.

“COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU AR—”

Jacob appears, clapping a hand over my mouth.

“What are you doing?” he hisses.

I pull free. “I’m tired of letting him call all the shots. I don’t want to do this on his terms anymore. I want to do it on mine.”

“So your best idea is to shout until he shows up?”

“We need a better look at him, right?”

“Yeah,” says Jacob, “but last time you came face-to-face, he pushed you off a roof.”

“Well, this time, my feet are on the ground. Besides …” I trail off. Over Jacob’s shoulder, a shadow is taking shape in the fog, moving toward us.

But when the figure parts the mist, it isn’t the poltergeist.

It’s a man in an old-fashioned suit. He lifts an old-fashioned pistol and aims it straight at me, and Jacob wrenches me back out of the Veil before the shot goes off.

I crash through a wave of cold water before landing on my butt on the curb in present-day Paris. Jacob looms over me, folding his arms. “You really should have seen that coming.”

I get to my feet, brushing off my jeans, and start walking.

As soon as I think I’m far enough away from the ghost with the gun, I take a deep breath and reach for the Veil again.

“Wait—” starts Jacob, but he’s too late.

I’m already through.

A shudder, a plunge, a second of darkness, and I’m back in the in-between.

The Veil is different here, the city still old-fashioned but a little newer than last time.

There’s a bridge just ahead, a stone arch garnished with statues and lampposts. As I start across it, a carriage rattles past the other way, pulled by a pair of glossy black horses.

A man plays an accordion along the banks of the Seine below, the music high and thin, as if carried on a breeze.

A pair of women walk arm in arm in fancy dresses, the skirts as wide as the sidewalk, their heads bowed as they whisper.

I pull the mirror pendant from my back pocket and wrap it around my palm as I walk, willing the ghosts not to notice. Their eyes flick toward me, as if they know I don’t belong, but they don’t come after me, and I don’t go after them.

“You know the definition of insanity, right?” asks Jacob, appearing beside me. “It’s doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”

“I’m not doing the same thing,” I point out. “You’re right, shouting was a bad idea.”

“Great,” says Jacob. “So what’s your new strategy?”

“I’m taking a walk.”

“To where?”

“The end of the Veil.”

I reach the other side of the bridge, and a block or so later, the in-between finally shifts again, thinning between one ghost’s Veil and the next, until it’s nothing but an empty stretch, a seam, a place where no ordinary ghost can go. But a poltergeist, a spirit not bound to the Veil …

I stand there, the blue-white light shining from my chest like a beacon.

Come out, come out, I think.

But there’s no sign of him, or anyone else.

“Maybe he’s playing hard to get,” observes Jacob.

The words ping inside my head, landing on something, a thought I can’t quite reach. I’m starting to get light-headed from the time in the Veil, the air thinning in my lungs.

I groan in exasperation and cut back into the land of the living, sagging onto a bench to steady myself.

Think. Think. Think.

Jacob sinks down beside me.

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” he says, trying to comfort me and also clearly hoping I’ll give up, and we can go watch the rest of the movie.

But I can’t. I’m almost onto something. The poltergeist has been staying close to me this whole time, so there’s no reason to believe he’s totally disappeared now. No, he must be hanging back, waiting. For what?

Playing hard to get.

Playing.

I straighten and look at Jacob. “I think you’re right!”

He crosses his arms. “Don’t sound so surprised.” And then he adds, “Right about what?”

But I’m already on my feet, reaching for the Veil.

The world vanishes, springs back, and I steady myself against a lamppost, already dizzy—it’s like diving for pennies on the bottom of a pool. Hold your breath, go down one too many times, and it gets harder to come back up. But this time, instead of shouting or searching, I look around the bleak gray world and find the front of a building, decorated by pillars.

I tug Jacob behind the nearest one and crouch low, pressing my camera to my chest to smother the light.

A few seconds later I feel cold air on the back of my neck, and I nearly jump before I realize it’s just Jacob.

“You’re breathing on me,” I whisper, trying not to shiver.

“Sorry,” he whispers back. “But what exactly are we doing?”

“We’re hiding,” I say.

All this time, the poltergeist has been playing a game. And so far, he’s made all the rules. All this time, he’s been following us. So why don’t we follow him? Maybe he’ll lead us somewhere. Maybe we’ll find a clue. Maybe we’ll figure out— “That’s a whole lot of maybes,” says Jacob.

“Maybe is a match in the dark,” I murmur, half to myself.

It’s one of Mom’s favorite sayings, for when she gets stuck on a story. She starts giving herself options, potential threads, turning every dead end into a new path with one simple word: maybe.

Maybe is a rope in a hole, or the key to a door.

Maybe is how you find the way out.

We just have to wait for him to show up.

We wait. One minute. Three. Five.

Until my head begins to pound, until it’s hard for me to breathe. A reminder that I shouldn’t be here; I’m not made of the right stuff.

But I swear I can feel the poltergeist nearby, a trickle of cold creeping through the air.

“Cassidy,” warns Jacob, but I don’t move.

Just a little longer.

“Cass.”

I’m sure he’ll show up.

My vision blurs a little, and when I try to swallow, I taste the river in my throat. Panic ripples through me as I try to breathe, try to stand, but the Veil sways and darkness sweeps across my eyes, followed by nothing.