“No, not at all,” I said. Why should I mind? It was just like her to assume I had some problem with it. I gestured at her outfit. “Is this wise, though? What experience in fieldwork have you had?”
“I went out on plenty of assignments at Rotwell’s,” she said. “In fact, when I started out, I got my First and Second Grade certificates, and afterward did rapier training so that—”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you should know that this visitation isn’t a Type One or anything. It’s much more formidable than that.”
Holly Munro pushed a stray hair or two behind her ear. “Well, I’ve seen some things. I was there in the Holland Park Cellar case, when our party got blockaded underground by those seven spectral dogs. It was quite a tight spot. And after that—”
“I heard about Holland Park, Holly, and I can tell you the thing that makes the bloody footprints is ten times worse. I’m only saying. I don’t want to frighten you. I just wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
Her bland smile flickered. “I can only do my best.”
“I just hope it’ll be enough,” I said.
Lockwood came out of the living room, stepped between us, and swung his overcoat down off the rack. “Everyone happy?” he said. “Great. I’ve left a note for George. Jake should be here with the taxi any minute, so let’s get the equipment outside. Are those bags yours, Holly? Please—don’t bother yourself. Let me.”
Fifty-four Hanover Square was no more and no less welcoming than the day before. Dull shafts beamed down from the skylight high above, illuminating odd corners of the staircase, facets of wood, worn steps, random portions of the wall. I listened, as I always do when I enter such a house, but it was hard to hear with all Holly and Lockwood’s twittering: he softly explaining the locations of our previous vigil, she asking endless questions and laughing at his remarks. I tried to block it out, and simultaneously stifle the annoyance that twisted deeper in my chest. Annoyance had to be avoided, along with other negative feelings. Bad things happened to agents who didn’t keep their emotions under control.
I consoled myself with the thought that we’d soon be too busy trying to stay alive to worry about any of that. Plus, George would turn up, and the dynamics would change.
But George didn’t show.
We got on with it anyway, hunting for possible Sources, first in the basement, then in the attic. The basement I disliked intensely: two people, to my certain knowledge, had fallen to their deaths there. The kitchen itself, separated by a kind of arch from the bottom of the stairwell, was modern and inoffensive enough, but the tiled area made my skin prickle and our thermometers drop. We probed the tiles with penknives and tested the risers of the stairs, but found no hidden cavity where a relic of the original tragedy might be found. I tested the walls for hollow spaces; Lockwood got down on his hands and knees and crawled inside the little closets that had been built beneath the staircase itself, exploring them minutely with his flashlight. We found nothing. Holly Munro discovered a nearby storeroom containing a lot of old black furniture, but on inspection we thought it early twentieth century rather than Victorian.
“It’s possible that the tiles themselves are the Source,” I said, “if that’s where the final act of the tragedy played out. We could lay a chain net here and see if the haunting still takes place.”
Lockwood rubbed dust off his trousers. “Good idea. But first, we’ll search the attic.”
In some ways the top of the stairs mirrored the bottom: the actual area of interest was very small indeed. The servants’ rooms lay beyond a paneled corridor and didn’t have much to do with the tiny attic landing, which was little more than a set of polished floorboards, perhaps twelve feet square, bounded on one side by the final neat elm balustrade. Wan blue sky showed through the skylight. As I’d done the day before, I looked over the banister and saw the stairs’ great flattened spiral corkscrewing smoothly down through the gray interior of the house, around and around, deeper and deeper, all the way to where shadows enfolded it in the basement four floors below.
It was a terrible drop. Poor Little Tom, to have fallen there.
If anything, the attic was even less fruitful than the basement had been. We found a cold spot, and a loose floorboard, which got Lockwood excited, but when we pried it up we found nothing but dust. A few spiders scuttled out, which might have meant something. There were no dried bloodstains, no dropped knives, no sinister fragments of clothing; and the rest of the landing was bare.
“Just a thought,” Holly Munro said, “but might the staircase itself be the Source? If the boy bled all over it, if the terror he felt as he ran up it was still fused into the wood…”
“…the whole thing could be the channel to the Other Side,” Lockwood said. He whistled. “It’s possible. Not sure how that’s going to go down with our client, if we tell her she needs to rip her precious staircase out.”
“I’ve never heard of a Source that big,” I said.
Lockwood was staring up at the sky beyond the glass; it was like a slab of uncooked bacon now—gray and pink, laced with pale striations. “There have been cases. George would know….I wish he’d hurry up. You said he only had a couple of journals to look through.” He checked his watch, came to a snap decision. “All right, we need to get cracking. We’ll lay out chain nets in the basement, like you suggested, and on the landing here. If that stops the haunting, all well and good; if not, we’ll think again. I want us to observe as we did yesterday, and not engage. I’ll take the basement this time, see if I spot anything different. Lucy, you can watch up here. Otherwise candles, defenses, everything as before.”
“What can I do?” Holly Munro asked.
I smiled at her, leaned against the banister. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’m really parched. Could you get the kettle on, do you think, Holly? And, if you can stretch to it, I’ll have a couple of biscuits, too. Thanks so much.”
Our assistant, after only the most minuscule hesitation, nodded. “Certainly, Lucy.” Smiling her compliant smile, she pattered down the stairs.
“She’s good,” I said. “I’m glad you brought her.”
Lockwood was watching me. “You need to be a bit more generous. She doesn’t have to be here tonight.”
“I’m just worried for her sake,” I said. “You felt the energy of the apparitions last night. She’s a novice at this. Look—she doesn’t even know how to attach a rapier to her belt. She nearly tripped over it then.” I allowed myself the smallest grin, saw Lockwood’s gaze on me, and looked away.
“Well, you needn’t worry too much,” he said slowly, “because I’ll keep an eye on her. She can stand beside me in my circle. That’ll keep her safe. You’ll be all right, I know. So get your chains set up now. I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes.” And with that he was off, spiraling away down the stairs, his long coat drifting—and me watching him go, hot-eyed.
Nothing in the next few hours contributed much toward improving my mood. The house went dark, and our lines of snuff-lights bloomed into soft, pale life, marking the route for our ghosts. We ate, rested, checked our supplies. George didn’t turn up. This was perplexing; we worried that events in the containment zone had somehow spilled over to delay him. Certainly, I missed his company, as Lockwood remained distinctly chilly toward me over sandwiches and biscuits. Holly’s presence unsettled me. She was at once submissive and assertive, her inexperience overlapping with her smooth self-confidence. Both these aspects, in different ways, contrived to snare Lockwood’s attention. It left me out on a limb, feeling awkward and exposed.