But I don’t.
I’m in a place that looks like a city. It is a city.
It’s just not my city.
SIX
MY CITY IS DARK AND MUTED, PAINTED IN BLACK AND GRAY. But the city I’m looking at is bright white—the cobblestone, the houses, and even the cathedral. It’s dazzling. It’s foreign. It’s unnatural.
White is the color of death. Everyone knows that.
I’m kneeling in an alley between two unfamiliar manors. I tentatively get to my feet and inch forward. The only thing in front of me that I recognize is the veil. It’s still high above, stretched over everything. It’s a bright, vivid red, like it always is during the middle of the day.
Behind me, a door slams. I whip around to see Ale. His face is as white as the scenery, and he’s very, very still, his back pressed against the entrance to the catacombs like he expects something to come bursting out.
He looks around slowly, and I wait for him to tell me I’m imagining things. I wait to hear that we’re back in our city, but I’ve simply lost my senses from hunger, and that’s the reason everything looks inexplicably not-Occhian.
“We’re dead,” he says. “That was a ghost. And we’re dead.”
I open my mouth. I shut it.
“We—we were in the bottom of the catacombs,” he says. “And a ghost killed us. And now we’re inside the veil. And this is what the afterlife looks like.”
“No,” I say automatically.
“Well,” he says, like he’s bracing himself, “the dying part actually wasn’t so awful. Yes, it was terrifying, but it didn’t hurt like I thought it would, so there’s that. What are we supposed to do now that we’re in the afterlife? Oh—we have to go atone for all our sins. Right. This is all fine. This is—”
“Ale,” I say. “We’re not—”
I try to say the word dead, but it gets stuck in my throat.
“That wasn’t a ghost,” I say instead.
“What?” he says. “Then what was it?”
“It was a person,” I say.
“It looked like a ghost,” he says.
“It was a person,” I insist. “I saw its eyes. They were… person-like.”
“I didn’t see any eyes,” he says.
“I was closer to them than you were,” I say.
“Well, it could have been a ghost with person-like eyes,” he says. “Remember that awful story your nursemaid used to tell us about the ghost that wore the face of its last victim—”
“It wasn’t a ghost,” I say with vicious certainty.
If the ghosts of Occhian lore were real, and one had come after me, I would know. If I were dead, I would know. I would feel it.
Ale is quiet. I wait for him to admit that he’s being hysterical and I’m being logical.
“So that means a person lurking in the catacombs killed us?” he says. “Is that better or worse?”
I whirl around and march to the mouth of the alley.
We’re not dead, because I refuse to be dead. I’m sure that once I take a proper look around, this will all make sense.
“Emanuela, wait—”
Ale scampers after me. I duck around the corner and, before he can catch up, I pull aside my pants to look at my hip.
I still have the same omen on my skin. Just one.
They haven’t spread. I’m alive.
I knew that. I was just making sure.
Ale joins me, and we both survey the street. The manors around us are towering and pristine—and absolutely smothered in plants. There are columns wrapped in vines and windowsills overflowing with white roses and flowerbeds of every color. The house just across the way has an entire wall covered in yellow blossoms. They’ve been meticulously placed to form an elaborate, spiraling design.
My mamma’s family, the House of Rosa, has a garden of heirloom roses in our courtyard. It’s our pride and joy. It’s small enough to cross in three steps. We can’t afford to make it any larger.
I cross the street to the house with the yellow blossoms. I rip off one of the petals.
“Emanuela,” Ale says, “don’t touch anything—”
It’s real. I drop it and look around again. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m just waiting for this place to make sense.
But there’s no explanation leaping out at me. All I see are a lot of beautiful manors, sitting in an unnerving quiet.
I start slowly down the street, peering in the windows we pass. The houses are empty, but they don’t look abandoned. I see a parlor with tiny sandwiches sitting out on a silver platter, waiting for teatime. I see laundry hanging in alleys. I see a manor that’s been terrorized by its children, who have left toys scattered all over the floor of every room.
The people of Occhia all leave their manors at the same time every day to gather for worship. For some people, worship is about the religion, and for some people, it’s the place to see and be seen, but for everyone, it’s an event.
I glance up at the spires of the cathedral.
This is a city. A city that looks like Occhia, but doesn’t. A city that’s like Occhia, but isn’t.
I can think the words, but when I try to wrap my mind all the way around them, it rebels. The idea that I got lost in the catacombs and wandered into another city doesn’t make any sense. Because that would mean everything I know about Occhia is wrong. My city is supposed to be all alone in the middle of the veil. My city is supposed to be everything that’s ever existed.
“Emanuela.” Ale whispers it directly onto the back of my neck.
I startle away. “Must you? The point of you being twice my height is that you stay out of my breathing space.”
“Look.” He follows me. He grabs my head and delicately turns it to direct my gaze down the street.
At the intersection of several winding lanes, there’s a statue made of white marble. It has three tiers, stacked like a cake, and on top is a figure of a woman. Her arms are outstretched benevolently.
“What is it?” Ale says.
“A ghost,” I say, just to be insufferable.
He stiffens. “You don’t think… you don’t think it followed us—”
“It’s clearly a statue, Ale,” I say. “A statue of a saint, probably. That’s what we make statues of in Occhia, isn’t it?”
“But…” he says. “We’re not in Occhia.”
I hesitate.
“I know,” I say.
We approach the statue cautiously. Like everything else on this street, it’s polished and pretty and unfamiliar. The woman’s white skirts are expertly carved to billow around her, as if she’s in the middle of a twirl. She has a white rose behind one ear and long, curly hair. She looks so real. I feel like if I climbed up and touched her, I’d find her skin warm and soft.
But I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to get any closer.
At the end of the next street, we find another statue. It’s the exact same woman, on top of the exact same tiers.
“Who is she?” Ale whispers.
He’s asking like he thinks I’ve somehow come up with an answer. I keep walking, hoping that maybe I will. With one eye on the spires in the distance, Ale and I wind our way up staircases and across walkways and past more identical statues. It quickly becomes apparent that there’s a statue at every single intersection.