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of ghosts. “Is there a tavern down here?”
    “We’ll get to that in a second,” she whispered. “There’s something else we need to worry about first.”
    “What?” asked Jack.
    The crowd suddenly lurched forward. “Finally!” sniffed a gray-haired woman in a pillbox hat. Jack noticed that some of the ghosts were moving to the left, while others were moving to the right.
    “Hold on,” Euri said. “We’ll need to sneak away at the last moment.”
    “The last moment before what?” Jack asked. But Euri ignored him and steered him to the left.
    A series of barks rose over the shuffling sound. Euri froze. “The guards,” she whispered. She shoved her way across the stream of ghosts to a tunnel that split off to the right. Jack tried to follow her, but several portly men in vests began shoving him in the opposite direction. For spirits that didn’t take up any room at all, they felt surprisingly solid. “What a rabble!” one of them remarked.
    Euri grabbed his hand. Hers was cold but surprisingly firm. As she tugged harder, he had to stop himself from crying out as his shoulder pulled in the socket. Finally, he slipped in between two of the portly men, and Euri dragged him into the tunnel. The surging crowd swept them forward. Up ahead, Jack saw tiny circles of pale light filtering down from the ceiling.
    “You won’t be able to get out this way,” Euri whispered as she frantically tried to steer him in the opposite direction. “It won’t work. We’ve got to turn back.”
    “What’s going on?” Jack whispered. But Euri was too busy trying to pull him out of the flow of spirits to answer. “I can’t . . .” she huffed as they were pushed forward past a red line on the dirt and under the circles of light. A spirit in a Yankees baseball cap counted them with a clicker. “Have a nice trip,” he said mechanically. “See you at dawn.”
    Euri’s hand tightened around his own. Before Jack even had a chance to cry out, he felt himself rising toward the tiny circles. His body stretched until it was as thin as a wire and began to spiral up through greenish-gray copper pipes. He felt Euri’s fingers slip away. He opened his mouth and tried to shout, but he couldn’t make a sound.

X | The Angel of the Waters
    Euri’s hand closed back around his, and with a loud pop, Jack felt his body shoot out of the pipe and fly up into the cold, winter air like a champagne cork. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the snow-covered ground some twenty feet below. He gripped Euri’s hand as tightly as he could and frantically flapped his free arm and legs.
    “That was great!” exclaimed Euri, who was floating calmly beside him. “You actually made it through.” She leaned over and peered into his eyes. “They still look alive. Relax. You’re not going to fall.”
    Slowly, Jack stopped jerking his limbs. He tried not to look down. “Why am I not falling?”
    “I don’t know,” Euri admitted. “Maybe because we’re holding hands. We were holding hands when you went through the fountain too. Let’s test it.” She began to loosen her fingers.
    “No!” Jack squeaked as he tightened his grip on her hand.
    “Okay, relax,” Euri said. “You’re clearly alive, because you’re so afraid of death. It’s probably the hand-holding. That must be how you’re able to do the normal ghost things.”
    “What are the normal ghost things?”
    “Shuffle through dark passages, moan, rattle chains.” Euri chuckled at her own joke. “You’ll see,” she said. “The ghost powers will make our search for your mom a little easier. In the meantime, enjoy the view.”
    Jack looked around. Spindly trees were silhouetted against a darkening sky. Beneath him was a three-tiered bronze fountain. He felt a strange sense of déjà vu. “I know this place,” he said.
    Euri shrugged. “I’m not surprised. It’s Bethesda Terrace, one of the most popular spots in Central Park.”
    “No, that fountain. My mother took me