Tuesday groaned again when she saw we were driving home in the Acme Carpets van but agreed to get in when I pointed out that a long walk home was the only alternative. She scrunched down in her seat so as not to be spotted.
We didn’t go straight home. I’d spoken to Spike before leaving work, and he mentioned that he had some news about Mycroft’s haunting and agreed to meet me at Mum’s. When I arrived, she and Polly were in the kitchen bickering about something pointless, such as the average size of an orange, so I left Tuesday with them: Mother to burn her a cake and Polly to discuss advanced Nextian Geometry.
“Hiya,” I said to Spike, who’d been waiting in his car.
“Yo. Thought about what to do with Felix8?”
“Not yet. I’ll interview him again later this evening.”
“As you wish. I made a few inquiries on the other side. Remember my dead partner, Chesney? He said Mycroft’s spooking was what we call a Nonrecurring Informative Phantasm.”
“You have them categorized?”
“Sure. The A-list contains Pointless Screamer, Crisis Warner, Murder Avenger and Recurrent Dreary. From there it’s all downhilclass="underline" poltergeists, faceless orbs, quasi-religious visions and phantom smells-more usually associated with recently departed pet Labradors.”
We walked up the garden path to Mycroft’s workshop.
“I get the picture. So what does it all mean?” I asked.
“It means that Mycroft had something he wanted to say before he died-but didn’t manage to. It was obviously important enough for him to be given a license to come back, if only for a few hours. Turn off your cell phone.”
I reached into my pocket and did as he asked.
“Radio waves scramble their energy field,” he explained. “Spooking’s dropped big-time since the cell-phone network kicked in. I’m amazed there are any ghosts left at all. Ready?”
“Ready.”
We had arrived at my uncle’s workshop, and Spike grasped the handle and gently pushed the door open. If we were hoping to find Mycroft standing there in all his spectral glory, we were disappointed. The room was empty.
“He was just over there.”
Spike closed his eyes, sniffed the air and touched the workbench. “Yeah,” he said, “I can feel him.”
“Can you?”
“No, not really. Where was he again?”
“At the worktop. Spike, what exactly is a ghost?”
“A phantom,” said my uncle Mycroft, who had just materialized, “is essentially a heteromorphic wave pattern that gains solidity when the apparition converts thermal energy from the surroundings to visible light. It’s a fascinating process, and I’m amazed no one has thought of harnessing it-a holographic TV that could operate from the heat given off by an average-size guinea pig.”
I shivered. Mycroft was right-the temperature had dropped-and there he was, but a lot less solid than the previous time. I could easily see the other side of the workshop through him.
“Hello again, Thursday,” he said. “Good afternoon, Mr. Stoker.”
“Good afternoon, sir,” replied Spike. “Word in the Realm of the Dead says you’ve got something to tell us.”
“I have?” asked Mycroft, looking at me.
“Yes, Uncle,” I told him, “You’re a Nonrecurring…um-”
“Nonrecurring Informative Phantasm,” put in Spike helpfully. “An NIP, or what we call in the trade Speak Up and Shut Down.”
“It means, Uncle,” I said, “that you’ve got something really important to tell us.”
Mycroft looked thoughtful for so long that I almost nudged him before I realized it would be useless.
“Like what?” he said at last.
“I don’t know. Perhaps a…philosophy of life or something?”
Mycroft looked at me doubtfully and raised an eyebrow. “The only thing that springs to mind is, ‘You can never have too many chairs.’”
“That’s it? You returned from the dead to give me advice on furniture distribution?”
“I know it’s not much of a philosophy,” said Mycroft with a shrug, “but it can pay dividends if someone unexpectedly pops around for dinner.”
“Uncle, please try to remember what it is you have to tell us!”
“Was I murdered or anything?” he asked in a dreamy fashion. “Ghosts often come back if they’ve been killed or something-at least, Patrick Swayze did.”
“You definitely weren’t murdered,” I told him. “It was a long illness.”
“Then this is something of a puzzle,” murmured Mycroft, “but I suppose I’ve got the greater part of eternity to figure it out.”
That’s what I liked about my uncle-always optimistic. But that was it. In another moment he had gone.
“Thirty-three seconds,” said Spike, who had put a stopwatch on him, “and about fifty-five percent opacity.” He flicked through a small book of tables he had with him. “Hmm,” he said at last, “almost certainly a trivisitation. You’ve got him one more time. He’ll be down at fifteen to twenty percent opacity and will only be around for about fifteen seconds.”
“Then I could miss him?”
“No,” said Spike with a smile, “he appeared to you twice out of twice. The final appearance will be to you, too. Just have a proper question ready for him when you next come here-Mycroft’s memory being what it is, you can’t rely on him remembering what he came back for. It’s up to you.”
“Thanks, Spike,” I said as I closed the door of the workshop. “I owe you.”
Tuesday and I were home in a few minutes. The house felt warm and comfy, and there was the smell of cooking that embraced me like an old friend.
“Hi, darling!” I called out. Landen stopped his typing and came out of the office to give me a hug.
“How was work?” he asked.
I thought of what I’d been doing that day. Of firing and not firing my drippy alter ego, of a Superreader loose somewhere in the BookWorld, of Goliath’s unwelcome intrusion and of Mycroft as a ghost. Then there was the return of Felix8, the Minotaur, and my bag of Welsh cash. The time for truth was now. I had to tell him.
“I…I had to do a stair carpet over in Baydon. Hell on earth; the treads were all squiffy, none of the stair rods would fit, and Spike and I spent the whole afternoon on it-how’s the book going?”
He kissed me on the forehead and tousled Tuesday’s hair affectionately, then took me by the hand and led me into the kitchen, where there was a stew on the stove.
“Kind of okay, I guess,” he replied, stirring the dinner, “but nothing really spectacular.”
“No ideas?” I prompted. “An odd character, perhaps?”
“No-I was mostly working on pace and atmosphere.”
This was strange. I’d specifically told Scampton-Tappett to do his best. I had a sudden thought.
“What book are you working on, sweetheart?”
“The Mews of Doom.”
Aha.
“I thought you said you’d be rewriting Bananas for Edward?”
“I got bored with it. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Where’s Friday?”
“In his room. I made him have a shower, so he’s in a bit of a snot.”
“Plock.”
“A clean snot is better than a dirty snot I suppose. And Jenny?”
“Watching TV.”
I called out, “Hey, Jenny!” but there was no answer.
“Plock.”
“She’s upstairs in her room.”
I looked at the hall clock. We still had a half hour until we had to go to the ChronoGuard’s career-advisory pre sen ta tion.
“PLOCK!”
“Yes, yes, hello, Pickwick-how’s this?”
I showed her the finished blue-and-white sweater, and before she could even think of complaining, I had slipped it over her featherless body. Landen and I stared at her this way and that, trying to figure out if it was for the better or the worse.