“Speed it up. A mouse could pull that pebble out.”
“I’m trying.”
“I could do better, and I don’t have hands. Put some beef into it, woman.”
My only answer was a muttered curse. I had the crowbar wedged in, and the stone was moving, but the weeping noise was getting louder, and once again I could hear the soft tread of footsteps on broken glass. I looked around. Ice was spreading along the cobwebs in the room.
“She’s coming,” I said. “I’d prefer insights to insults at this stage.”
“Oh, with me you get the full package. This is a tight spot, Lucy. Why don’t you set me free? I’d put you out of your misery then.”
“I bet you would. I’ve almost got it….Just keep watch.”
“You want me to tell you when she’s creeping close?”
“No! Before that!”
“When her fingers are closing around your neck?”
“Just tell me when she’s in the room.”
“Too late for that. She’s here.”
The hairs on the back of my neck did that thing they always do when I’m no longer alone. I took one hand off the crowbar, picked up the mirror dangling at my belt, and angled it over my shoulder. The chamber was black, but a faint gleam shone in the center of the glass. It was the chilly blue glint of other-light, cast by a stick-thin figure, drifting toward me through the dark.
It was at this point I remembered I’d left the silver net draped over the looking glass on the far side of the room.
Desperation gave me strength. I dropped the mirror, plucked a salt-bomb from my belt, and threw. It burst and scattered. There was a smell of burned ectoplasm. The falling granules of salt picked out a woman’s form in tumbling, burning green. The shape became two snake-like strands that split and darted away. The salt burned out, and darkness fell again. I launched myself onto the crowbar and heaved; the stone came free. I danced aside as it dropped to the ground. Where was my flashlight? There, lying in the fireplace. I snatched it up, angled it into the shallow recess left behind the stone.
Inside: a large dark object, like an irregular-shaped soccer ball, heavily spun with cobwebs, and with spiders crawling on its surface. It was furry with dust and age.
“Oh,” I said. “A head.”
“Yep. Old. Mummified. Nice.”
“But not her head.”
“Nope. Or if it is, there’s another good reason her husband killed her: she had a beard.”
Even under the cobwebs you could see the wiry black tufts sprouting from the chin.
I picked up the head. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s the sort of thing we have to do.
“Where is she, skull?”
“The apparition has re-formed. Now she’s standing by the mirror. Ooh, there are cobwebs running through her wounds. That’s weird. Now she’s moving forward. She’s not happy you’ve got her Source—she has her hands stretched out….”
I could have thrown a flare, I guess, but there was nowhere for me to hide from the concussion. I could have used the rapier, but I couldn’t have held that and the mirror and the Source all at the same time. So I did what I’d learned to do, back when I’d worked with proper agents. I improvised.
I threw the head away from me across the room. I felt the wave of cold shift sideways, saw cobwebs ice over as the ghost moved instinctively after it. At the same moment I sprang the other way, over to the looking glass, where I seized the silver net, and spun around. I snatched up my hand mirror just in time to see the ghost turn back to me. There was a whole host of horrid details on show right then—you could take your pick of which was worse, the ravaged, bloody body or the deranged wickedness in the face—but I took no notice of any of them. I was doing the matador routine that Lockwood had taught me long ago, feinting with the silver net, darting in and out, keeping the Specter at bay. All at once I let my guard down, stood unprotected. The ghost surged forward, fingers raking; as it did so, I twisted aside and, with a flick of the arm, tossed the net directly into the face of the apparition.
Silver did what it always does: the ghost shimmered and went out.
I picked up the net again, bent down to the head, lying on its side against the wall, and covered it with the silver. Something popped in my ears; the feeling of immanent evil in the room burst and was gone.
I spoke in the general direction of my backpack. “How’s that?”
“Not bad, I grant you.”
I sank to the floor, and regarded the bundle at my feet. “This is some Source. Whose head do you think it is? And why did she want it?”
“She’ll have picked it up at a gallows, most likely. That was the usual way witches did it, back in the old days—to aid them in whatever useless spells they were attempting.”
“Ugh. That is so foul.”
“Yeah…” The skull left a significant pause. “Hanging out with a severed head…What kind of sick person would do something like that?”
“I know.” I sat there in the dark of the secret room until my breathing returned to normal and my heart stilled. Then I got stiffly to my feet, swaddled the head securely in the silver net, and went to find the others. I didn’t exactly hurry. The dangerous part of the night was over, but the worst bit was just beginning.
You might think that finding the head was the end of the matter. Ghost gone, Source suppressed, another building made safe—everything done and dusted. But no. Because we now come to the main drawback of being a freelance psychic detection agent: reporting to the adults at the end.
This was the central paradox of the agencies. Only children and teenagers had decent psychic Talent, so operatives were young. We were the ones who dealt with ghosts; we were the ones who risked our lives. Yet it was the grown-ups who ran the show. They called the shots, they paid the salaries; they were in charge of all the teams. The adult supervisors had zero psychic sensitivity and, since they were mortally afraid of going anywhere near an actual Visitor, never ventured far into a haunted zone. Instead, they hung around on the sidelines, being old and useless, and shouting orders that were utterly out of sync with whatever was going on.
Every agency worked like this. Every agency in London, except one.
Mr. Toby Farnaby, my supervisor from the Rotwell Agency that evening, was typical of his breed. He was a man well into rotund middle age, and thus hadn’t seen anything remotely supernatural for more than twenty years. Nevertheless, he considered himself indispensable. He had parked himself in the marble foyer of the house, close to the exits, and safe within a triple circle of iron chains. When I slowly emerged, limping, onto the second floor balcony, I could see him squatting below me like an enormous potbellied toad. His ample backside rested in a folding canvas chair; a hip flask and a stack of sandwiches sat on a trestle table beside him.
At his shoulder stood another man, slight, willowy, a plastic clipboard in his hand. His name was Johnson, and I’d never seen him before that night. He had a soft, forgettable face and nondescript brown hair. He also worked for Rotwell’s, and as far as I could make out, was supervising our supervisor. It was that kind of company.
Right now Mr. Farnaby was busy lecturing the other members of the team, who had evidently slinked down to report to him when I disappeared into the wall. Tina and Dave were standing slumped in attitudes of bored dejection. Ted, conversely, stood at attention, an expression of fatuous concentration on his face.