“We’ll be going soon,” Lockwood said. “If we could just have a look at the room Mr. Benton stayed in, we’ll be on our way.”
How still they were suddenly, like gravestones rising in the center of the lounge. Over by the hutch, George ran his finger down the side of the ketchup bottle. It had a thin layer of dust upon it.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Mr. Evans said. “The room is made up for new guests. We don’t want it disturbed. All trace of Mr. Benton—and the other residents—will be long gone. Now…I must ask you to leave.”
He moved toward Lockwood. Despite the carpet slippers, the cardigan on the rounded shoulders, there was decisiveness in the action, an impression of suddenly flexing strength.
Lockwood had many pockets in his coat. Some contained weapons and lock-picking wires; one, to my certain knowledge, had an emergency store of tea bags. From another he took a small plastic card. “This is a warrant,” he said. “It empowers Lockwood and Co., as DEPRAC-appointed investigation agents, to search any premises that may be implicated in a serious crime or haunting. If you wish to check, call Scotland Yard. Inspector Montagu Barnes would be happy to talk to you.”
“Crime?” The old man shrank back, biting his lip. “Haunting?”
Lockwood’s smile was wolf-like. “As I said, we just wish to take a look upstairs.”
“There’s nothing supernatural here,” Mrs. Evans said, scowling. “Look around. See the defenses.”
Her husband patted her arm. “It’s all right, Nora. They’re agents. It’s our duty to help them. Mr. Benton, if I recall, stayed in Room Two, on the top floor. Straight up the stairs, two flights and you’re there. You won’t miss it.”
“Thanks.” Lockwood picked up his duffel bag.
“Why not leave your things?” Mr. Evans suggested. “The stairs are narrow, and it’s a long way up.”
We just looked at him. George and I shrugged our bags onto our backs.
“Well, take your time up there,” Mr. Evans said.
There was no light on upstairs. From the semidarkness of the stairwell, filing after the others, I looked back through the door at the little couple. Mr. and Mrs. Evans stood in the middle of the lounge, pressed side by side, ruby-red and flickering in the firelight. They were watching us as we climbed, their heads tilted at identical angles, their spectacles four circles of reflected flame.
“What do you think?” George whispered from above.
Lockwood had paused and was inspecting a heavy fire door halfway up the flight. It was bolted open, flush against the wall. “I don’t know how, but they’re guilty. Guilty as sin.”
George nodded. “Did you see the ketchup? No one’s had breakfast here in a long time.”
“They must know it’s all over for them,” I said as we went on. “If something bad happened to their guests up here, we’re going to sense it. They know what Talents we have. What do they expect us to do when we find out?”
Lockwood’s reply was interrupted by a stealthy tread on the stair behind. Looking back, we caught a glimpse of Mr. Evans’s gleaming face, his hair disarranged, eyes wild and staring. He reached for the fire door, began swinging it shut…
In a flash Lockwood’s rapier was in his hand. He sprang back down, coat flying—
The fire door slammed, slicing off the light from downstairs. The rapier cracked against wood.
As we stood in the dark, we heard bolts being forced into place. Then we heard our captor laughing through the door.
“Mr. Evans,” Lockwood said, “open this now.”
The old man’s voice was muffled, but distinct. “You should’ve left when you had the chance! Look around all you like. Make yourselves at home! The ghost will have found you by midnight. I’ll sweep up what’s left in the morning.”
After that it was just the clump, clump, clump of carpet slippers fading downstairs.
“Brilliant,” said the voice from my backpack. “Outwitted by a senior citizen. Outstanding. What a team.”
I didn’t tell it to shut up this time. It kind of had a point.
Hold it. I suppose I should stop before things start getting messy, and tell you exactly who I am. My name is Lucy Carlyle. I make my living destroying the risen spirits of the restless dead. I can throw a salt-bomb fifty yards from a standing start, and hold off three Specters with a broken rapier (as I did one time in Berkeley Square). I’m good with crowbars, magnesium flares, and candles. I walk alone into haunted rooms. I see ghosts, when I choose to look for them, and hear their voices, too. I’m just under five feet six inches tall, have hair the color of a walnut coffin, and wear size seven ectoplasm-proof boots.
There. Now we’re properly introduced.
So I stood with Lockwood and George on the second-floor landing of the boardinghouse. All of a sudden it was very cold. All of a sudden I could hear things.
“Don’t suppose there’s any point trying to break down the door,” George said.
“No point at all….” Lockwood’s voice had that far-off, absent quality it gets when he’s using his Sight. Sight, Listening, and Touch: they’re the main kinds of psychic Talent. Lockwood has the sharpest eyes of us, and I’m the best at Listening and Touch. George is an all-arounder. He’s mediocre at all three.
I had my finger on the light switch on the wall beside me, but I didn’t flick it on. Darkness stokes the psychic senses. Fear keeps your Talent keen.
We listened. We looked.
“I don’t see anything yet,” Lockwood said finally. “Lucy?”
“I’m getting voices. Whispered voices.” It sounded like a crowd of people, all speaking over one another with the utmost urgency, yet so faint it was impossible to understand a thing.
“What does your friend in the jar say?”
“It’s not my friend.” I prodded the backpack. “Skull?”
“There’s ghosts up here. Lots of them. So…now do you accept that you should’ve stabbed the old codger when you had the chance? If you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t be in this mess, would you?”
“We’re not in a mess!” I snapped. “And, by the way, we can’t just stab a suspect! I keep telling you this! We didn’t even know they were guilty then!”
Lockwood cleared his throat meaningfully. Sometimes I forget that the others can’t hear the ghost’s half of the conversation.
“Sorry,” I said. “He’s just being annoying, as usual. Says there’s lots of ghosts.”
The luminous display on George’s thermometer flashed briefly in the dark. “Temp update,” he said. “It’s dropped eight degrees since the foot of the stairs.”
“Yes. That fire door acts as a barrier.” The pencil beam of Lockwood’s flashlight speared downward and picked out the ridged gray surface of the door. “Look, it’s got iron bands on it. That keeps our nice little old couple safe in their living quarters on the ground floor. But anyone who rents a room up here falls victim to something lurking in the dark….”
He turned the flashlight beam wide and circled it slowly around us. We were standing just below a shabby landing—neat enough, but cheaply furnished with purple curtains and an old cream carpet. Several numbered plywood doors gleamed dully in the shadows. A few dog-eared magazines lay in a pile on an ugly bureau, near where a further flight of stairs led to the top floor. It was supernaturally cold, and there was ghost-fog stirring. Faint wreaths of pale green mist were rising from the carpet and winding slowly around our ankles. The flashlight began to flicker, as if its (fresh) battery were failing and would soon wink out altogether. A feeling of unquantifiable dread deepened in us. I shivered. Something wicked was very close.