“Did it look at you?” he asked. “Were you attacked in any way?”
“It didn’t stop or look at me. It just went past—but I’ve never experienced such ghost-lock….And such chill, too—I still feel cold now….” I shivered; I sat down on a step. “The spiders, Lockwood—have you ever seen that before?”
“I’ve not. There’ve been cases, though, haven’t there, Kipps?”
“Red Lodge, famously,” Kipps said. “And at Chislehurst Caverns back in ’88. Others, maybe. One or two. Not many.”
“What the hell was it doing? The way it was crawling along the floor…God…”
“I think she should leave,” Holly Munro said abruptly. “She’s in no state to go on.”
“Like you could know that!” I cried. “Like you could sense anything! You were standing right next to me, and you didn’t pick up any of the chill or the creeping fear! You weren’t ghost-locked at all!”
“You make it sound as if that’s a bad thing,” Holly said.
“Oh, give me a break.”
“What was that?” It was Lockwood who’d spoken, but we’d all spun around. One of the clothes racks on the far side of the room had tumbled over with a crash. A shadow came lurching toward us: Kate Godwin, rapier out, blond hair disarranged. Her usual cool self-possession was gone.
She halted by us, white-faced, breathing hard. “Have you seen Bobby?”
We stared at her. “How can you have lost him?” Kipps said. “I only looked in on you five minutes ago.”
“Five minutes? More like hours. I’ve been searching all over…I can’t find him.”
“What time is it?” Holly said. “I can’t tell how long we’ve been here either.”
I looked at my watch and felt a new stab of fear. “The hands have stopped.”
Kipps cursed. “Mine have gone backward.”
“Everyone calm down,” Lockwood said. “Forget the time. The entities here are playing tricks on us. Kate, tell us what happened.”
Kate Godwin pushed her bangs back. Her blue eyes, bright, angry, and distressed, flickered between us; she couldn’t keep them still. “We got to the top floor, furniture department, all the sofas and things. We started looking around. I heard a voice again—it distracted me. It sounded like—well, it doesn’t matter what it sounded like. I followed it a short way. Then Bobby shouted that he’d seen something. He sounded…odd. I looked around—he was running off into the dark. I went after him…but he’d gone. Gone, Quill.” She looked as if she were about to cry.
“For heaven’s sake,” Kipps said. “I thought we told you to stay together.”
Her face twisted. “We were staying together! But then he—”
“It’s all right,” Lockwood said. “We’ll find him. What was this voice you heard?”
She hesitated, glanced over at Kipps. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Not good enough,” I snapped. “You’re part of a bigger team now. You need to tell us everything.”
Kate Godwin swore. “Don’t order me about, Carlyle. If you must know, I thought I heard Ned Shaw.”
Kipps gave a start. “Kate, Ned died miles from here. And we…we followed proper procedures, with iron and everything. He can’t have…he can’t have come back.”
“How clearly did you hear his voice?” Lockwood asked.
Kate Godwin shook her head disgustedly. “Quite obviously I can’t have. I must be going mad. It’s the kind of nonsense Carlyle pulls. But Bobby…”
“Yes, we need to find him fast. But before that we should—George!”
Out of the dark, two more hurrying figures: George’s low-slung form followed by the taller, even more shapeless outline of Flo Bones in her whopping coat. They looked like two melting marshmallows, both flushed and breathing hard.
“There’s weird things going on, Lockwood,” George began. “Flo’s just seen something in the basement—not one of these ordinary Shades, but something with the semblance of—Who was it, Flo?”
Unlike Kate Godwin, unlike Kipps, unlike—it has to be admitted—me (my heart was still beating fast; I still saw the vision of that horrid, dragging thing), Flo Bones seemed her usual calm and caustic self. “The name wouldn’t mean anything to you,” she said crisply. “But I can tell you the essential point.” She lifted her straw hat and scratched at a clump of hair. “It was someone dear to me and also dead. I felt a strong desire to follow the apparition…but Cubbins, here, threw a salt-bomb and pulled me back.”
“Great work, George….” Lockwood spoke slowly; he looked around at us all. “Taken alongside Kate’s experience, I’m beginning to wonder if we might be dealing with—”
“With a Fetch,” George said. “A ghost that makes a psychic bond with the onlooker, and takes on the guise of someone closely connected to them. Might be someone living, might be someone dead. Either way, it’s really disorienting. It feeds off something that’s uppermost in the mind, so if you’re fixated on something, or grieving, then you’re particularly vulnerable.”
“Doesn’t explain what I saw,” I said.
“Maybe not, but Kate heard Ned Shaw,” Holly said. “And we think that Vernon may have seen something that made him act oddly too. He’s gone off: we don’t know where.”
“And we need to find him,” Godwin snapped. She gave a sudden cry. “What are we doing hanging around, yabbering like this? I don’t care if it’s a Fetch or a tiny Glimmer! We’ve got to get on with it!” She made a sudden movement toward the stairs.
Holly put out an arm. “Wait. Not on your own.”
“Get your hands off me.”
A ringing sound interrupted us. Lockwood was rapping his rapier on the glass top of a display case. “Listen to you! You’re arguing over nothing. We’re forgetting the first rule of entering a haunted location: Remain calm. Whatever we’re dealing with, we’re risking its feeding on our emotions.” He fixed his rapier to his belt. “Sorry as I am to say it, we’re out of our depth here. The Source is well hidden, and far too powerful. We need to find Vernon and get out.”
“That means splitting up again,” Kipps said. “If we’re searching.”
“I know, and I don’t like it, but I don’t see how it can be helped.”
“Agreed. But Kate comes with us.”
“Fine. George and Flo, Lucy and Holly, you stick to your pairs. Whoever finds Bobby lets off a flare, and the rest of us will join you right away. Then we hit the exit. No one lets anyone else stray off alone, or get distracted by any sound or shape. That’s an order. Act at all times as if you’re joined at the hip. Questions?”
Holly and I looked at one another, but said nothing.
The groups dispersed. Lockwood hung back, waiting for me.
“You’re very pale, Lucy,” he said. “This thing you saw—”
I held up my hand. “I’m not going to back out. We need to find Vernon. It’s a race against time.”
“I knew you’d say that. I know how strong you are. Okay, then—but be careful.”
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “Only—do you really want me to go with Holly again?”
He grinned at me. “Of course. You complement each other.”
“We so don’t. We never say nice things about each other.”
He rolled his eyes. “Complement, not compliment! With an E, Lucy. Yes, obviously I know you never say nice things about her—that would be too easy. The other way around? You’d be surprised. But you make a good team anyhow, whether you like it or not.” He turned aside. “Now, shut up and get going.”