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Only the clock chimes from the mantel in answer. When it finishes, plunging the room into quiet once more, my temperature rises with each steadytick, tick, tickof its second hand.

Losing patience completely, I pick upHow to Commune with the Deadand hurl it across the room.

It doesn’t thud against the bedpost as expected. Indeed, it doesn’t thud at all, and I watch incredulously as the corner of the cover seems topiercethin air, ripping through the ether of the room and vanishing into an outstretched hand. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” a light, feminine voice asks, and a familiar head stoops to appear in the impromptu gash between my bedroom and—somewhere else.

With a squeak, I scramble backward, but it’s too late.

The strange gash near my bed continues to spread, stretching into a gaping maw, and with it, the temperature in the room plummets. The air thins and sharpens until I can scarcely breathe, until my lungs threaten to collapse, until reality blurs into dreamlike delirium with its muted colors and flickering eerie light. Indeed—instead of smoke—ash seems to drift from the candle flame. It lands like snow in my hair.

A ghost perches against the iron whorls of my footboard, her legs crossed as she peers at me intently.

“It’s you,” I whisper, my eyes widening in recognition before darting around the room once more.Because it worked.Itmust’veworked, yet I feel no building pressure in my ears, no splitting pain in my head. “You’re the one who—who looked through my keyhole on the first night. You spoke to me.”

The woman’s laughter is bright and infectious, like chimes in the wind, and her dark eyes gleam with mischief. “You make looking through keyholes sound indecent. Have you ever tried it? It’s quite my favorite thing to do.”

“What? Er—no. No, I haven’t.” My breath comes easier now, along with the sneaking suspicion that I need not breathe here at all. Whereverhereis. “Apologies, but... whereamI?”

“You’re through the veil, of course.”

“Through the what?”

“Do you really not know?” She sets the book aside, tilting her head curiously to consider me. Though youth radiates from her smooth skin and shining hair—long and thick and opaque, probably rich brown in life—there is something distinctly elegant about her too. Something wise. She could be my age, yes, or perhaps a few years older.No.A few years younger? I frown at her while trying to decide. “How is that possible after the theater?” she asks. “Did no one explain?”

“Forgive me for asking, but who—er, whoareyou? Were you at the theater too?”

She scoffs. “Absolutely not—and you shouldn’t have been either. L’Ange de la Mort is raucous at the best of times, suffused with all manner of rude and unsavory creatures. And my name is Mila.” She pauses with an air of great importance, sweeping the hair back from her face. “Mila Vasiliev.”

Mila Vasiliev.

The name is clearly supposed to mean something to me, but asI havenoidea what, I curtsy to hide my ignorance. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mila Vasiliev.”

“And to meet you, Célie Tremblay.”

She flashes a radiant smile before sweeping upward into a flawless curtsy. Though I open my mouth to askhow, exactly, she knows me, I change tactics abruptly, plunging straight to the heart of the issue instead. Who knows how long I have before Dimitri or Odessa or even—God forbid—someoneelsereturns? “Michal said L’Ange de le Mort is a rip in the fabric between realms. He took me to—to summon the ghosts there, somehow.”

Mila’s smile vanishes into a scowl, and when she rolls her eyes, I know I’ve calculated correctly—this ghost, at least, is no friend of Michal. “You cannotsummonus anywhere,” she says in distaste. “We are not dogs. We do not answer to any master, and we do not come when called. That you can see us at all is becauseyouhave approachedus, not the other way around.”

When she arches a brow at my rigid stance, I force myself to bend at the knee, to sit on the edge of the squashy chair as ash continues to drift around us. “But Ihaven’tapproached you. As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing my very bestnotto—”

“Of course you haven’tmeantto tear through the veil.” She waves a curt hand before settling back upon the bed. Or rather, hovering several inches above it. “Really, though, what do you expect when you repress your emotions? They have to go somewhere eventually, you know, and this realmisrather convenient—”

“Wait,wait.” I grip my fingers in my lap, knuckles turning white, and lean forward in my seat. Though my head remains miraculously without pain, it does start to spin at the ease with which she discusses the veil and—and—everything else. “Slowdown. What do you meanthisrealm? How many realmsarethere? The book just mentioned the realms of the living and the dead—”

“The authors of said book were presumably alive at the time of its writing. How could they possibly claim authority on the complexities of the afterlife?” Another bright, infectious laugh as she weighs the enormous book in her palm. When it falls open to a page at random, an illustration of a skull with a wide, gaping mouth leers back at us. I look away quickly. “EvenIdo not understand the whole of it, and I am quite thoroughly dead. What I do know”—she speaks louder when I open my mouth to interrupt, incredulous—“is this realm,myrealm, acts as an intermediary of sorts. It exists between the realms of the living and the dead, and as such, we spirits can see glimpses into both your realm and... beyond.”

“Beyond,” I repeat blankly.

She nods and examines the skull as if we aren’t discussing the whole ofeternity, as if she didn’t just throw my entire creed and covenant into question with two simple sentences. “Your realm is much clearer, of course, as we’ve already lived there, and the two are near identical.” She snaps the book shut. “But you didn’t come here to talk about life, did you? Rather the opposite, I think.”

Death.

Of course, death is the reason I sought an audience with ghosts in the first place.Focus, Célie.I force myself to unclench my fingers from my skirt, to dust the strange ash from my knees and square my shoulders. Despite all of this—thisdistraction, Coco must remain my first priority, and to protect her, I must first find a way to protect myself.

Before I can find a clever way to begin the interrogation,however, she tossesHow to Commune with the Deadaside and says, “I don’t blame you for seeking violence, but you must first allow me to apologize for my coven’s wretched behavior. Vampires always have been beastly creatures.”

My brow furrows at the word.Coven.“But does that mean— Are you a witch?”

“A witch?” She flashes another smile, this one with teeth, revealing two sharp points. I recoil slightly. “Of course not. I’m a vampire—or at least, Iwas. Do try to keep up, won’t you, darling? As previously discussed, I am now dead.”