“Another coincidence,” George said, “is that all this started up not long after we put an end to whatever was going on in Chelsea. Are you going to eat that chip, Kipps? If not, I can give it a happy home.”
“Chelsea’s another reason I got you involved, Quill,” Lockwood went on. “You were with us on that. If the Rotwell group stirred up that cluster, they’ve stirred this up, too. And among the things they’ve roused is this Shadow. A ghost that energizes other ghosts simply by strolling by! That’s terrifying. We’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”
“It could be part of the answer to the Problem as a whole,” George said. “Remember my map back at Portland Row, showing how the epidemic has spread steadily across the country, like a disease? Diseases need carriers. This Creeping Shadow may be one of them. What if there are lots of Creeping Shadows? Maybe that’s why the epidemic is spreading.”
“I’ve got no love for Steve Rotwell,” Kipps said slowly, “but I don’t quite see how he can be blamed for all that.”
“Nor do I—yet,” Lockwood said. “But we’re going to find out—tonight. No use waiting till tomorrow. Rotwell might be finished by then.” He sat back. “What do you say?”
Kipps blew out a slow, heartfelt breath. “Raiding fellow agencies? Is this what you all usually do?”
I nodded. “Sometimes. We broke into the Black Library at Fittes House once.”
“What?”
“Don’t look so shocked,” Lockwood said, grinning. “You’re not with them any longer, are you? You’re free to think for yourself for once. Which is a good point: you don’t have to be part of this.”
Kipps shrugged. “Oh, I’m part of it. I have nothing else to do. I might as well spend the next few years in prison….Keep your paws off my chip, Cubbins. Go find your own.”
“Good,” Lockwood said. “Then we’ll go. But before we do—Holly, you worked for Steve Rotwell, you must know him pretty well. What do you think drives him?”
It was a testament to how accepting I was of Holly now that all my attention had been taken up by Kipps’s incredulity and discomfort. He was the newbie; she’d been sipping her chocolate just as calmly as George and me while Lockwood spoke of breaking-and-entering into a national institution. Okay, she still managed to be effortlessly, annoyingly elegant while doing so, but it now seemed to be just her personal variation on the Lockwood & Co. way. She’d even taken a couple of chips.
“What drives him?” she said. She tapped her shapely nails against her mug, her mouth drawn down in sharp distaste. “He likes his wealth and money. Beyond that…” She looked into the fire. “Beyond that I’d say it was his desire to keep up with the Fittes organization. He’s always talking about them; always studying what they’re up to, the successes they’ve had. He’s always tallying the number of cases they’ve notched up each month, comparing them to the Rotwell figures. He’s striving to be number one.”
“Oh, Rotwell’s has been like that forever,” Kipps said. “You’ll know this from the history books. Old Tom Rotwell and Marissa Fittes started out as partners in the fight against the Problem. Then they had a falling out, and it was Marissa who started the first official agency. Rotwell got his going a few months later, but it was never as popular—at least in the early days. The firm’s been playing catch-up ever since. All this institute stuff, whatever pathetic commercial devices they may or may not be trying to create—that’s just part of their desperate attempt to match the Fittes Agency.” He sniffed. “It’s all quite sad, really.”
“Well, Penelope Fittes has her own little private thing going on, too, don’t forget,” Lockwood said. “The Orpheus Society seems to be under her influence, and they made your goggles, Kipps. But look, if we’re going to do this, we’d better get a move on. There’s only four hours till dawn.”
We did get a move on. Turns out the equipment for burglary isn’t that different from the equipment needed for ghost-hunting. For speed’s sake, we jettisoned some of the heavier chains and a lot of the spare iron; George found wire cutters; otherwise we left our belts and bags as is. There were too many Visitors around to risk traveling any lighter. We were ready to go in ten.
It still felt funny going through my backpack and not seeing the ghost-jar there. A few bags of salt, an extra flare or two; even the spirit-cape—my new defense, carefully folded—none of them quite made up for its absence. After Vauxhall, I’d more or less given up hope of ever locating the whispering skull. Perhaps, if Lockwood was right, it would be out there now, just a mile away in the compound in the fields. I hoped so.
Before leaving, we made ourselves as dark and unobtrusive as possible. Being agents, we all more or less wore black anyway, and had gloves to cover our hands. But our faces weren’t ideal for commando work; Kipps’s in particular almost seemed to glow like a second, freckled moon. So Holly went to work with her makeup brush and soon we were all nicely dimmed.
Five silent shapes departed the Old Sun Inn. It was just after two a.m.
There were spirits wandering in the woods; we saw their other-light from afar, but none approached us, and we took care to give them a wide berth. We stayed away from the lane, too, hopping over the little stream a few yards down from the wooden bridge, circling around the quarry, and then following the course of the road through the trees. We kept going until the stars shone bright between the trunks ahead and we knew we were reaching the brow of the hill.
As Lockwood and I had done the day before, we covered the last bit in a crawl. There were no alarms. Soon the five of us lay in a row on the hillcrest, looking down on the Rotwell Institute. By night, curiously, it looked more impressive than by day, the floodlights masking its ugliness, giving the buildings a smooth metallic sheen.
It wasn’t the floodlights that caught our attention as we lay there. They weren’t the only lights around. Here and there across the black expanse, faint glowing figures stood like posts risen from the ground, like nails hammered into the winter field. Their light was tenuous, palely golden, shimmering and twitching, as if at any moment they might be pulled apart by the wind. What form they’d ever had was lost with countless years.
“That’s why they aren’t too worried about posting sentries,” Lockwood breathed. “They’ve got Vikings to do the job for them.”
“Must be some bones still left out there on the battlefield,” George said.
“Not good.” Kipps was scowling through the goggles. “What do we do now?”
“I think it’s all right,” I said. “We can just steer around them. There’s plenty of space, and it doesn’t look as if they’ve moved for centuries. It’s not them we should worry about, anyway, if we’re talking psychic threats.”
“Still got that background hum, Luce?” Lockwood asked.
“Yeah. It’s really loud. And it’s coming from down there.”
In fact, the sound had been building up all the way through the woods. It wasn’t quite so heart-stoppingly immediate as when the Shadow was approaching the churchyard, but it was strong now, buzzing like insects in my brain. As with the bone glass months before, as in the hidden tunnels of Chelsea, it almost made me feel nauseous. There could be no doubt: it was coming from the site below.