“Yes.”
“Fine. Then let’s begin. I’ll take the readings and you record them.” Ignoring the whispers of the skull, which kept suggesting different unlikely kitchen utensils that could be used for murder, I sketched out a map of the room. Holly and I went to the first point on the grid, a corner filled with neatly piled sweaters. Above us, a mannequin wearing a plaid shirt, woolen cardigan, and slacks pointed jauntily into the dark. “So the temperature here,” I said, “is…fifty degrees. I see nothing and…I hear nothing. So there’s no prime indicator, no malaise or chill or anything. That means you can put little zeros in the boxes there….Okay? Got that?”
“I told you, I know how to do it. And, by the way,” Holly said, “I can take readings too. I do have some Talent. I trained as a field agent when I was little.”
I was already pacing out the strides to the next point. “Yeah? So what happened? Did you find it too dangerous? Not to your liking, I mean?”
“I found it scary, yes. You’d be stupid not to.”
“Yeah, I guess. Temp here’s fifty too.”
She noted it down. “But that wasn’t why I stopped,” she said. “They put me in a desk job after the Cotton Street killings. Maybe you heard of that, even in that little place up north you came from?”
“It wasn’t a little place, as it happens,” I said. “It was a very substantial northern town, which—” I stared past her, suddenly alert. “Did you hear that?”
“What? No.”
“I thought…a voice….”
“What did it say? Where did it come from? You want me to note it down?”
“I want you to stop gabbing.” I stared up the aisle into the dark. I couldn’t hear anything now besides Holly hyperventilating. If there had been a distant voice, calling my name, it wasn’t there now.
Holly was watching me closely. “Lucy, you’re not going to go wandering off, following the voice, are you?”
I stared at her. “No, Holly. Obviously I’m not.”
“Fine. Because at the Wintergarden house you lost control and—”
“It’s not going to happen! It’s gone, anyway. Shall we just get on with the survey?”
“Yes,” she said primly, “all right.”
We got on with the survey.
“I heard all that,” the skull hissed in my ear. “I’ve got one word for you: egg whisk.”
I shook my head, spoke under my breath. “That’s stupid. I couldn’t kill her with that. Anyway, egg whisk is two words.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is so. And I don’t think she meant any harm, then. She was just—”
“If I was out of this jar,” the skull said, “I’d throttle her for you. I’d do it as a favor. Think how nice it would be just to follow your urges for once. You could do it right here. Use a coat hanger as a garrote.”
I ignored it; there were other things to think about. The temperature was dropping, and now thin wires of white-green ghost-fog showed too, winding around the bases of the clothes racks, lapping at the pedestals of the mannequins. Holly and I continued taking readings up and down the shadowy hall, past T-shirts and sock racks, shelves of slippers and old men’s vests. Our scribbled notes showed a gradual increase in secondary phenomena, particularly chill and miasma, but we also noticed something else:
Apparitions.
They began as faint gray forms, seen always at the far end of an aisle. In the half- light they were uncomfortably similar in size and shape to the costumed mannequins, and it was only when one suddenly drifted sideways that I realized, with a shock, that they were there at all. They did not seek to approach us; they made no sound. Neither Holly nor I could detect any aggressive intent; still, they unnerved us by their watchful presence and by their number, which seemed to grow steadily as we proceeded along the hall. When we got to stairwells, and looked down, we could see them clustering far below, looking up at us with blank black eyes in soft gray faces. When I gazed back through Men’s Wear, I could see them hovering in the shadows, silent and discreet.
Or not entirely silent.
“Lucy…”
That voice again. Far off, a patch of darkness welled toward me.
“Skull?” I risked a whisper to my backpack. Holly was a few paces ahead of me, and I didn’t think she’d notice. “Did you hear that? Spare me your usual nonsense. I haven’t got time.”
“The voice? Yes, I heard it.”
“What is it? How does it know who I am?”
“A presence is building. Something pulls itself toward you.”
“Toward me?” I went all cold. “Why not Holly? Or Kate Godwin—she hears stuff too.”
“Because you’re unique. You shine like a beacon, attracting the attention of all dark things.” It chuckled. “Why d’you think I’m chatting with you?”
“But there’s no reason—”
“Listen,” the skull said, “if you want to avoid all this, you’re in the wrong job. Go be a baker’s girl or something. Better hours, nice floury apron…”
“Why the hell would I want a floury apron?” I took a deep breath. “These things watching us—tell me what they are.”
“There are many spirits wandering in this place. Most seem lost; I sense no willpower in them. But there are other, stronger, powers here that do have will. One of them is hunting you.”
I swallowed, gazed out into the dark.
“Oh, and here’s more good news,” the skull added. “I’ve finally got an answer for you about that odd sensation you’re feeling. I know where you’ve felt it before: it’s like the bone glass. Remember? That’s what the feeling’s like.”
The bone glass….I knew at once that it was right. That queasy, prickling background sensation I’d experienced since arriving at Aickmere’s? It was familiar. I had known it before.
At Kensal Green Cemetery, six months earlier, Lockwood, George, and I had discovered a curious object, a mirror or “bone glass,” that had certain odd capabilities. Most startlingly, we guessed it gave its owner the ability to look across to the Other Side. Since anyone who looked into it invariably died—and since the glass was smashed at the end of the case—it was hard to be certain about this. But just being close to the thing had made me feel ill; and I now realized that my sensations here were very similar indeed.
“It’s not the bone glass, of course,” the skull went on. “It’s different—bigger and farther away. But it’s the same sort of feeling. A disruption in the fabric of things. Take it from me, Lucy. Strange stuff’s going on around here….”
With that the skull’s presence suddenly receded. Holly Munro was at my side. I hadn’t noticed her come close.
“Why are you talking to yourself, Lucy?”
“I wasn’t. Er, I was just thinking aloud.”
It was an excuse that wouldn’t have convinced a three-year old, and it was touch-and-go with Holly. She frowned and opened her mouth to speak—but at that moment a familiar voice called both our names. And there was Lockwood, coat swishing, lantern swinging from one long pale hand, advancing swiftly through the dark.
I hadn’t realized until I saw him how tense and strung out I was; also how desperately I missed him at my side. I felt both worse and better as he drew near.
“Lucy, Holly—are you all right?” He was smiling, but I could see anxiety in his eyes. “People are getting jumpy. I’m checking up on everyone.”