Status Updates From La ciudad de los fantasmas ...

He says he doesn't know. He shivers and leaves. She thinks asking him, if he is okay, He nods. Her mom pulls outside to look at the area.

They are at the motel which C and J think is haunted. When they get to the room, behind the main door is a mirror. She goes behind him and sees two versions of him. One beside her and one in the mirror, they aren't the same. The one in the mirror is grayed out and gaunt, clothes soaked and river water pooling at feet. The Jacob in the mirror looks dead. She steps between them sand asks what that was.

Part 2-City of Ghosts. Her mom says how this is just a new storyline, new chapter. "We have a whole new book to write, and how do we write it?"
"one page at a time." They pack their bags and head to the airport. Jacob left, he said he gets carsick. She wish he stayed, when she sits in her window seat. She says how it is strange that she can't feel the Veil, 35, 000 ft in the air. She feels like something is missing.

Her mom askes what she thinks but she knows she doesn't have a choice. She shoots Jacob a look-maybe it will be fun. Her mom opens the folder and her eyes track down to Episode one in Edinburgh, Scotland. Title called, "City of Ghosts"! " I thought my life was already pretty weird. Apparently, it's about to get weirder."

She said she doesn't understand but they said they are going all over for this series. They said they didn't want to tell her incase, it didn't happen. Jacob says he is more concerned about the most haunted cities part. He isn't a fan of scary things or anything to do with the Veil. Jacob said it's cold, how you're warm coming out of snow but start shivering right away. "I feel like I'll never get warm again".

Jacob throws himself on the bed and Grim's ears twitch. He paws at air around Jacob. She is not sure if he can see Jacob or kind of senses a disturbance in force. She starts packing her bag for the summerhouse.

Her dad calls family meeting. They share they are starting a TV show that will be around the world visiting different cities for a documentary. They are playing themselves and she will be there with them.

When she enters, her mom has her interview voice on. She whispers into her that her dad's on his way and 'we need to talk". She wants a clue but her mom pulls away. Grim is asleep on her bed-sprawled out, paws up in the air like a dead dog. She scratches his eyes to make sure he's alive and then goes to the room in her closet. More information about her room. Jacob's there- he doesn't like stairs and doors.

Family Information.
Her parents write books-they are their sixth book now. It's called the Inspecters. It's a play on words-inspector is a person who searches for and examines something and a specter is another word for ghost. History books with ghost stories, truth and myth.
Her dad is a slim man with dark hair and glasses. Her mom has dark curls in a messy bun with pens struck through it. A black cat called Grim.

She thinks back in the auditorium, when she thinking that she could help the ghost boy, Jacob said, "That's not how it works." But Jacob doesn't talk like that-he doesn't know anything about the Veil or he doesn't know why she is drawn to the veil. "Rule number seven, don't be nosy." She thinks the first rule is not keep secrets. "I can't tell you everything, Cass. There are rules to being..."- gesture to himself

If they were in a comic book, this would be their origin story. She says how other people get a spider bite or a vat of acid. "We got a river."

The Veil itself didn't scare her, "but that sound, the sense of walking into someone's life-or death-scared me". She pulled free of that place like it was just a spiderweb stuck to her clothes. She didn't want to go back but then she did two weeks later. Jacob followed her grudgingly. Now, one year later. Something happened that day to her, Jacob and her got tangled. "Now, I'm not all alive and he's not all dead."

A week later, she found the Veil. Jacob and her were trying to wrap their head around their connection-she felt the tap-tap-tap of someone staring. She saw the gray cloth at the corner of her sight-she turned towards it and caught the curtain in her hands and she thought she was falling again, crashing through the surface but she didn't let go. When she blinked, Jacob was next to her and solid.

When she woke up, she was at the hospital with her mom and dad. Jacob was there too on a hospital chair. Her camera-the purple strap frayed and the viewfinder cracked. "It was damaged but not ruined, changed but not destroyed. Kind of like me."
Near death, she thought how she isn't a zombie. "Mom is right. I have one foot in spring and one in winter. One foot with the living, and one with the dead".

...falling away from the light. "The world did a kind of stutter, like when a movie freezes, gets jammed, skips forward, and then she was sitting on the riverbank, gasping for air as a boy crouched beside her-in jeans and a superhero shirt with blond hair. Maybe if she wasn't shivering or ..., she would have noticed how he had a strange gray pallor and how she could almost see through him. "I'm Jacob".

Water that was frozen solid-only days before. When she broke the surface, the force and the cold knocked air out of her lungs. Her vision went white then black. By the time, it came back, she was sinking. Somewhere beyond the water-she thought she saw a smudge of a person. The shadow went away and she didn't think about dying. She was thinking about the icy water in her lungs, .. and she thought how she is ....

This is about her accident. It was the first day, it was nice to ride her bike.
She rode her bike with her camera around her neck, she went on a bridge which wasn't big enough for two cars. She was halfway across when a truck whipped around the curve and towards her. She swerved out of the way and so did the truck. Her bike hit the railing and it was hard enough to send her over the railing. 20 ft down into water.

#2-Her mom says that since she was born in March, she has one foot in Spring and Winter. How that's why she can't sit still and to her- always searching for trouble (because she doesn't belong to one place).

#3-They live in a suburban town surrounded by fields and hills and a fair number of ghosts, Her 11th birthday, she got the camera. "I wanted something solid, something real"- then a phone.

She mentions how she mention 3 important things before we get into the story:
#1: She always takes pictures for as long as she remembers. Her dad says how the "world is always changing, every second of the day and so is everything in it, which means that the .... you you are right now is different from when she reading this sentence." How our memories change, but in a picture, it stays the same.

« The longer I’m on the wrong side of the Veil, the harder it is to get out. » The tapping never goes away to her- but now that she knows what’s on the other side- « its easier to ignore. » The schools bell rings (that lunch is over) as he says they have a rule to not leave the other in the Veil.

The boy doesn’t have anywhere else to go so he opens the trapdoor. She yells to the boy to not go in there but he doesn’t listen. A piece of burning set collapses on top of it. Jacob says her name. He grabs her by the shoulders and gives her a push, she falls backward. By the time, she hits the stage, it’s cold and the fire is gone. She talks about how she gets stuck.

Then the smoke rises and becomes a fire. She knows it’s a memory but she can feel the heat as it spreads. Jacob grabs her hand- pulling her away from the flames. She snaps pictures. Her head is beginning to feel foggy like she has been holding her breath. She knows she has been long enough but her feet won’t move. The dark haired boy, tries to stay low and the way, you’re taught in school …

The music starts, the boys eyes cloud over and she watched him take his place. Then she hears the hiss of a rope and turns to see the rigging-the boy got caught on-coming loose. A bag of sand slides, sinks, falls and it catches on a power box, knocking a fuse. It doesn’t start a fire first. There’s a spark-it leaps to the nearest thing, an unused piece of the paper forest. It starts as warmth and smoke.

She knows this timeline is based off the Ghost’s perspective.
…
She asks what do you mean about not looking for a source of fire. He opens his mouth when a boy appears. Then a guy with pale skin and a mop of blue curls comes-the ghost, there’s a feeling like the ground is tipping towards him. He drops his crown and backs up. She thinks he sees her. Jacob shakes his head and presses a hand over her mouth.

…through her ribs like the filament in a lightbulb. An adult’s voice, calls « Places! ». She knows what this is. It’s the night of the fire. She snaps a few photos, a shadow of what’s here. Jacob says they could be eating with normal people rn. She says he can’t eat and she sees ghosts. She tries to look for a source for the fire. Jacob says, « That’s not how it works. »

She mentions how her dad used to come in her room to check if there was any monsters in her room when she was little. « Crossing the Veil is like opening the closet door. » For a second, she was backstage but underwater. Jacob said her name and then the water went away. The stage is faded but not as dark now. Jacob looks solid. A light inside her chest- a coil of cool blue-white brightness that shines…

Right now, it dances between her fingers and waiting to be caught. She grabs hold of curtain, taking a deep breath and pulling.

She has seen « ghost whisperers » on TV talk about « crossing over, connecting with the other side like it’s flipping a switch. » For her, it’s this curtain and finding part in curtain and catching hold of fabric and pulling. The Veil is more smoke than cloth and hard to catch hold of. But when a place is really haunted, the fabric twists around her, practically pulling her through.

The Veil! « The boundary between this world and somewhere else, between the living and dead. This is what I’m looking for! » Jacob shifts his weight from foot to foot, « Let’s get this over with. » « Ghost five. »- putting up hands and them pretending they are touching. Both murmuring a soft smack sound on contact. They laugh and she feels a bit better- clearing our fear and nerves.