Or mimicking the sound of breathing. Remembering what it was like to be alive.

I leaned over, turning the lanterns low. I closed my eyes and counted slowly up to seven, listening to the light, shallow, frightened gasps. It sounded like a panting dog.

I stood up, opening my eyes. I’d given myself time to adjust to the dark. Even so, it took me a few seconds more to notice the outline of a person standing below me on the stairs.

The other-light that had spun about him earlier had shrunk down almost to nothing. Like a bonfire’s ash the morning after, he glowed with the faintest, grayest haze. I saw nothing of the face. But the thin shoulders were clear enough, and the poor bent frame, and the slight tilt of the head as he looked at me.

“Tom?” I said.

I knew without turning around that my circle had broken when I’d kicked it; that it was just a tangled mess of chains. No worries. I could get to it if need be. And right now I didn’t want to, because I knew that all the iron would stifle my senses, make it hard to hear.

“What do you want, Tom?” I said. “How can we help you?”

Was it my imagination, or had the glowing figure shifted? I thought it had.

“Where’s the Source?” I asked. “What ties you here?”

Sounds tickled my ear: they were horribly faint and frail, but I was close to hearing them, I knew I was. I stepped a half pace closer to the stairs.

The shape moved in answer to me, drifting up a step.

“How can we help you?”

No words came, just a sad, soft cry, mournful and pathetic. It was like some wild animal, mute and terrified, hanging back from human contact. But the thing about animals was, you could tame them. You just had to prove they could trust you. I moved closer, holding out my hand.

“Tell me what I can do.”

I definitely heard something then: it might have been words, but they slipped by too fast, making me bite my lip in frustration. A thought occurred to me: my rapier was of iron, just like the chains. Its aura would be working against me right now, muting the sounds, repelling the pathetic ghost, repelling its confidence. The answer came with sudden clarity. I cast the sword aside—and the moment I did so, I had my reward. The serving-boy’s pale face swam suddenly into view, as if illuminated by a greasy shaft of light. It was just as pitiful as I remembered: big black eyes, glittering with sadness; tears running down the cheeks.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I’ll tell…”

A thrill ran through me. He’d answered! I was doing it! Just like I had with the old man in the chair. My theory was right. You could make contact with them, if only you were prepared to open yourself up, to take that risk.

A voice called my name from far away. It was Holly Munro, a level or two below. The ghost wavered, its face growing dim, as if sucked back into shadow. I cursed. Even now, without meaning to, our assistant was managing to mess things up….

“Don’t go,” I said. I took a couple more steps forward.

The boy shrank back; then, slowly, light returned to the face. It smiled.

“I’ll tell…”

A slam of a distant door; the noise reverberated through the house. Again the ghost became faint. I grimaced with irritation. More voices—through the haze of my concentration I recognized George down in the hallway, and Lockwood answering him. Ignore it! The ghost was smiling at me. If I could just get it to speak again…

“My name is Lucy,” I said. “Tell me what you need.”

The smiling ghost floated nearer, flecks of blond hair quivering like a burning crown upon its brow. The body was indistinct, the arms trailing at its side.

“I need…”

“Where’s Lucy?” That was George. I heard Holly’s murmuring answer, then George’s voice coming echoing up the stairs. “Luce!”

“Ignore it…” I was smiling too, trying to keep the connection. The cold was painful now; it hurt my skin. And how watery and hesitant my smile was beside the boy’s grin. How expectant it was, how avid.

“I need…”

“Hey, Luce! We got it wrong! Robert Cooke isn’t the big one! He’s the little ghost!”

I looked at the shimmering figure, smiling at me four steps down.

“The kid stabbed the servant! Little Tom was just the guy’s nickname because he was such a big bloke! The kid was crazy! He stabbed Tom, who chased him through the house. They got upstairs, and Tom was weak from loss of blood. He grappled with the kid, who pushed him over the top. We so got it all the wrong way around!”

The ghost fluttered closer.

“I need…”

We so got it all the wrong way around.

Oh lovely. I took a slow step back.

The ghost opened its mouth.

“I need YOU!” it said.

It smiled. It lifted its arms. They ran with blood.

Then it flowed up the stairs toward me.

I fell back, shrieking, scrabbling at my belt.

The first thing I found, I threw, almost directly at my feet, beneath the bloody, reaching hands. It was nothing but salt. The capsule shattered. The ghost blinked out and at once, like an interrupted strip of film that had been cut, spliced, and then re-formed, was there again, behind me, blocking my path to the rapier, net, and chains. I darted away, reaching for a flare, tripped over my bowl of salt solution, and fell back hard against the banister. Footsteps, flashlights, voices from below. My legs were wet. So were the ghost’s eyes, wet with tears; bloody footprints appeared behind it on the floor. I reached for the flare, but my fingers were numb with cold and panic; I couldn’t pull the canister free. In came the ghost, still smiling, grappling at the air. With a cry I threw myself away from it, over the banister; I swung out and over the awful drop, grasping the wood, twisting around to hang there as the shape drew near. It stretched out and over me, long arms spread wide; eyes cavernous, lips parted in a hateful, imbecilic smile. Someone was rushing up the stairs. Blood fell from the curling fingers; drops fell on my jacket, fizzing and steaming. The ghost leaned closer. A vast weight pressed down on me, willing me to topple backward into space—

Quite how Lockwood managed to leap so far, I never understood. He’d been miles off on the stairs, coming up them three at a time. Now he vaulted up and over the final curling rise of banister, cutting off the corner entirely. His momentum carried him forward like an arrow, over the hideous gulf. He was practically horizontal as he passed me, rapier slashing, coat stretched out like wings. The blade of the sword sliced through the space between me and the stooping figure. The ghost snapped back out of sight. Lockwood followed it; I heard his gasp of pain as he landed; then scuffles, thuds…and sudden silence.

I dangled alone over the drop. “Lockwood…” I called.

No good. My fingers were too numb, the wood too smooth. I began to slip….

Then my wrists were firmly caught, and there was Holly Munro bracing herself against the balustrade and calling out, and here was George flinging himself alongside her, grabbing at my arms and pulling; and together, not gently, like fishermen dragging in a catch, they scooped and gathered me in slow, ignominious stages up and over onto the landing.

Where I saw Lockwood lying facedown on the boards.

We sat together, three of us, in the kitchen at Portland Row. A blue haze hung around the room; dawn’s pre-light was here.

“He’ll be all right,” I said. “Won’t he?”

George was staring at the remains of his hot chocolate, as if he could read the future in its frothy dregs. “Yes, of course he will. Fine.”

“It’s just a bang to the head, right? Knocked him out for a bit, made him woozy….But he’s okay now.”

“Yes.”

“Well”—Holly Munro smiled—“that’s what we hope. If it’s a concussion, we’ll know in the next few days. Whether he’s cracked his skull or not, or if there’s bleeding on the brain.” She mixed her fruit salad and cherry yogurt with a spoon.

A day before I’d have bristled at her prim and proper manner, at the clear way she fixed her eyes on me. But I didn’t have the energy or the will to sustain that grievance now. Lockwood’s condition was my fault. And Holly Munro had pulled me up when I was about to fall.

“He’s awake, and he wants breakfast,” George said. “That’s a good sign.”

She nodded. “I’ve replaced his bandages, and I think the bleeding’s almost stopped. Sweet tea, food, and lots of bed rest, that’s all we can do.” She got up, put toast in.

“Fat chance of keeping him in bed,” George said. “I’ve already caught him sneaking down to the phone, wanting to call Wintergarden.”

Holly Munro smilingly flicked the kettle on. “You’re about to do that, aren’t you, George?”

“Absolutely. I’ll wait until nine, then give her the good news. Everything’s in hand. Right, Lucy?”

“Sure.” I pushed my uneaten cereal away.

Everything, as far as the Case of the Bloody Footprints was concerned, was in hand—in spite of (or because of) me. Lockwood, in his frantic leap to save me, had sliced his sword clean through the essence of the ghost. Flexing, warping, it had faded back across the attic landing. George, arriving moments after Lockwood, had seen it drift through the arch that led to the servants’ rooms, and fold itself down into the floorboards of the passage beyond. With me saved, he’d hurried over and stabbed his penknife into the exact place. The next half hour had been spent anxiously tending to Lockwood, unconscious following the impact of his fall. Only after he came around and we had his head wound stanched did George head for the passage alone, carrying a crowbar and a chain net. Hacking and cracking noises followed. When he returned, it was with a bundle tightly wrapped in silver: a battered tin box, filled with a Victorian woman’s shawl.

Right now, that silver bundle was dumped on the kitchen table, between the mugs, the cereal boxes, and the breadboard. There was plenty of breakfast on offer. George had eaten well. Even Holly was decorously vacuuming up a range of healthy options. I hadn’t had a thing.

“Lucy,” George said, “you’d better eat.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I will.”

Holly was arranging plates and butter on a tray. “You mustn’t be too downhearted, Lucy. If you hadn’t exposed yourself to ghost-lock, the Visitor wouldn’t have revealed the whereabouts of its Source. So really, our success is all due to you….” She smiled over at me. “Looking at it one way.”

A small hot cord knotted tightly in my stomach; it had been there since I’d stuttered out my first round of apologies and thanks several hours before. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re very kind.”

George was gazing at me. “What exactly did you experience, Luce?” he said. “What made you put the rapier down?”

What indeed. Looking back on it, I found it hard to accept how easily I’d been manipulated by the ghost with the bloody hands. But I wasn’t about to say anything in front of Holly. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to talk to George.

“Were you in a trance?” Holly asked. “I knew two trainee agents once who were mesmerized by a Solitary on Lambeth Walk. They were only just rescued in time, like you. They said it was like being in a dream.”

“I’m not a trainee,” I said. “On the contrary, I was thinking very clearly.”

“You thought you were,” George said crisply. “Obviously, you weren’t. There’s a theory that some ghosts feed off psychic atmosphere. They pick up on emotions and play on it. Were you feeling particularly abandoned or needy up there?”

“No, of course not,” I scowled. “Not at all.” I didn’t look at him.

“Just that it sounds as if a sense of neediness and abandonment was what drove Robert Cooke mad,” George went on. “I got the full story in the end, in a penny dreadful pamphlet called Mysteries of London. I found it quite quickly in the other Archives building, but I was trapped there when DEPRAC cordoned off the street. That’s why I was so late. There was a riot going on, and then someone saw a Limbless, or said they did, and it was hours before I could leave the building. But the penny dreadful account of the Horror of Hanover Square couldn’t have been clearer. This Cooke—he was sixteen, by the way—had been more or less abandoned by his father, who was always abroad, but had a very close bond with his mother. She spoiled him rotten. Then she died, and he was looked after by an old nurse, who spoiled him even worse. Then she died, too, and was replaced by a manservant—this so-called Little Tom. He was a big man, a bit slow, and apparently more or less mute. The kid resented him, and began to maltreat him—working himself up into fits of rage when Little Tom forgot stuff, or didn’t hop to quickly enough. Anyway, one night the kid goes berserk—the servant had lost his favorite boots or something. He goes down to the kitchen, begins laying into Tom, snatches up a knife, and stabs him. There’s blood everywhere, and Tom’s badly hurt, but he’s strong and he’s angry. He chases Robert Cooke up through the house to the attic landing, where they tussle again. Tom falls over the banister. Cooke’s arrested, sitting there in a lather of gore.” George stretched back in his chair, sniffing discreetly at an armpit as he did so. “That’s how it happened, anyway. Boy, do I need a bath.”

“That shawl you found,” Holly Munro said. “His mother’s?”

“I should think so. Something that was precious to him. Who knows what weird mix of neediness and resentment turned him mad?”

I shrugged. “Clearly one very confused individual.”

“Yeah,” George said. “There’s a lot of it about.” He looked at me.

“Well, now,” Holly Munro said heartily, “Lockwood will be getting impatient. I’ll take him his breakfast.”

“I’ll go if you want,” George said. “You must be tired, Holly.”

I stood abruptly. “No,” I said. “I’ll do it.” Without waiting, I gathered up the tray.

Of all the rooms in a house, the bedroom is supposed to give the clearest insight into the personality of whoever inhabits it. That theory probably worked with my room (scattered clothes and sketch pads), and certainly worked with George’s, providing you could wade deep enough in among the library books, manuscripts, crumpled clothes, and weapons to see. Lockwood’s was trickier. There was a row of old Fittes Almanacs set out on a dresser; there was an armoire, with his suits and shirts all neatly put away. On the wall a few paintings of far-off lands—rivers winding through rain forest; volcanoes rising above tree-lined hills—suggested the travels of his parents. I guessed it had once been their room. But there were no photographs of them, or of his sister, Jessica, and the striped wallpaper and gold-green curtains were, in their genteelly blank way, as uninformative about Lockwood as if it had been a whitewashed box. He might have slept there, but I always felt he didn’t really inhabit the room in any tangible sense.

The curtains were drawn; a bedside light was on. Lockwood lay in bed, resting back against two striped pillows, thin hands folded on the counterpane. A neatly wound white bandage, tilted like a wonky turban, obscured the crown of his head; in one place a dark stain showed where his cut had bled; a spray of dark hair tufted out from under it on the other side. He was pale and thin—nothing new there—and his eyes were bright. He watched me as I set the tray down.