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.”

Well, it was a good-bye of sorts. We went our separate ways.

Hunting for a fellow agent in a haunted building is never much fun. It complicates matters. Not only were we still keeping psychic watch (we had to: the drifting Shades that thronged the halls kept pace with us, never drawing too close, but never dispersing, either; and we knew other presences prowled the echoing halls), we had to exert all our ordinary senses for sight or sound of Bobby Vernon, too. The two activities were not really compatible: when we concentrated on one, we neglected the other, which consistently increased our underlying anxiety and alarm.

I particularly disliked the open halls and the blank, dark spaces at the ends of aisles. I kept expecting to see the crawling figure, far off and coming after me.

The strain of being doubly alert soon told. Holly and I lapsed into sullen silence, communicating mainly by gestures. We hurried through Cosmetics and Visitor Defenses on the ground floor, then climbed the backstairs at the north end of the building right up to the top floor. Office Supplies was empty both of Visitors and Bobby Vernon, and so were the Aickmere meeting rooms. By unspoken agreement we then descended to the third floor, which was where he’d disappeared, and tight arrangements of sofas, chairs, and tables spread out in jumbled parodies of real homes. Sometimes we called out for him, softly, instinctively unhappy at disturbing the silence; mostly we just listened. We looked in closets, chests, and storerooms. Sometimes we saw the others at a distance, or heard them calling; but all sounds and all shapes were suspect now, and we kept away from them. Bobby Vernon was nowhere to be seen.

We arrived at the elevator lobby, and the main stairs. “No good,” Holly Munro said. “We’ll try the next floor down.”

The skull in my backpack had been quiet for some time, since before I’d seen the apparition and its train of spiders. Now I felt its presence stirring at my back.

“If you leave him now,” it said, “he’ll die.”

“But he’s not up here.” I ignored Holly Munro’s baffled look; to her it sounded like I was talking to the empty air. “We’ve tried everywhere.”

“Have you?”

I looked around the lobby. Stairs, walls…creamy marble and mahogany. Behind us the two brass elevator doors gleamed. The power was off. There was no point looking there; Vernon would have been unable to take the elevators, or even open the doors.

Even so…I stepped close to the doors, put my ear to them. It seemed I heard a moan, a muffled cry.

“Bobby?” I said. “Can you hear me?”

“He can’t be in there.” Holly Munro stepped close. “The electricity—”

“Quiet. I think he answered. I heard a voice.”

I stabbed at the buttons on the wall. They were dead and unresponsive, but I had an alternative in my bag.

“A crowbar?” Holly hung back. “Do you think that Mr. Aickmere—”

“Stuff Aickmere! He said this place had no ghosts! Shut up and help me shove.”

I slammed the bar in between the metal doors and strained to pry them apart. Grim-faced, not looking at me, Holly grasped the metal too. We exerted our strength. At first we made not the slightest impression; then something internal made a reluctant extended cracking sound. The doors slid open—a small distance, perhaps a quarter of their width. But it was enough.

Inside: blackness. And a feeble moaning, coming from below.

My penlight showed the hollow interior of the shaft: oil-stained bricks and loops of black cables, but not the elevator itself. When we craned our heads out over the drop, we saw the roof of the car about six feet below. And on it, curled in a forlorn ball, with his knees drawn up and his arms tightly wound about his spindly knees, was Bobby Vernon. He looked in bad shape.

“What the hell happened to him?” I said. “Think he’s ghost-touched?”

“No. But see the bruise on his face?”

Vernon’s eyes rolled upward, winking and twitching in the beam of the penlight. He coughed raggedly. “I hurt my head; think my leg’s busted.”

“Oh, great…” Something made my skin crawl. I looked back into the darkness of the Furniture Hall. The blackness there seemed to swirl. “How are we going to get him out?”

“One of us could slip in there,” Holly said. “It should probably be me.”

“Why? Why? You were looking at the width of my hips then, weren’t you?”

“Of course not. You hold the doors open. You’re much stronger and burlier than me.” Holly shimmied through the doors, turned to face me, bent to grip the edge, and with surprising agility jumped down into the dark.

I jammed the crowbar into the aperture, fixing the doors open, and flourished the penlight through the hole. She was crouching beside Vernon, touching his leg.

“What happened to you, Bobby?” she asked.

“Ned. I saw Ned….”

“Ned Shaw?” I looked down at Holly. “That’s their dead friend.”

“I saw him…he was standing in the dark, smiling at me….” Vernon coughed his ragged cough again; his voice was weak. “I felt I had to go to him….I don’t know. He didn’t turn away, but he sort of receded, flowed away from me, past all the tables and chairs. I followed….He went into the elevator—it was all lit up, I swear. Doors open, lights on. He stood there waiting for me, smiling. I walked in….Then the lights just went out and the elevator wasn’t there. I fell. Hit my head. My leg hurts….”

“It’s all right,” Holly said. She squeezed his hand. “You’ll be fine.”

Annoyance flared in me. “Bobby, you’re an idiot. Holly—can you help him stand? I could pull him up, maybe, if I grab him.”

“I can try.” She did so; plenty of groans and whimpers ensued.

“Better hurry, Lucy….” The skull’s whisper was casualness itself. “Something’s coming.”

“I know. I feel it. Bobby—hold out your hands. I can reach you, pull you up.”

He was vertical now, draped on Holly, one leg raised, hobbling and squinting like a poor imitation of a pirate. “I can’t…I’m too weak.”

“You’re not too weak to lift your arms.” I was on my hands and knees now, reaching between the doors. “Come on…hurry it up.”

He lifted a frail hand; a ninety-four-year-old dowager summoning a servant to refill her cup of tea would have raised her arm more vigorously. I swiped at it and missed.

“We might need to get Lockwood,” Holly Munro said.

“There’s no time….” I looked back into the dark. “Do it, Vernon.”

My second swipe struck home. I grabbed his wrist. Launching myself backward, I hoisted him up, ignoring his cries of pain. A moment later Vernon’s face, bruised and groggy-looking, appeared in the aperture. I heaved—out came his spindly shoulders, his pigeon-chest…

“Oh, hell,” I said. “He’s stuck.”

Holly gave a squeak from below. “How can he be stuck? He’s thinner than me.”

“I don’t know….” My eyes swiveled. Away among the darkened furniture, amid those blank and meaningless arrangements of armchairs and settees, a voice came calling. “Lucy…”

“Help me!” I shouted. “Push his backside! Get him out of there.”

“I’m not pushing his backside!”

“There’s a Visitor coming, Holly. Why is he wedged?”

“I don’t know! Oh, I do! He’s got his work belt caught.”

“Well, can you free it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know….I’m trying to reach….”

I still had one hand clasped on Vernon’s wrist. With my other, I got my rapier out. Away in the hall I heard a rhythmic scraping….It sounded like something approaching on bony hands and knees.

“Holly…”

“I’ve never taken off someone else’s belt before! You have no idea how uncomfortable this makes me!”

I stared beyond the arch. Was that a rustling of a thousand tiny legs?

“Holly…”

“There! I’ve done it! Quick! Pull! Pull!”

I heaved once more. This time Bobby Vernon came free like a knobbly-kneed knife through butter. He popped out so fast, I fell over on my back.

A moment more, and I was scrabbling for Holly, helping her up too. Her clothes were oily, her sleeve torn.

Vernon was lolling on the floor. He was in a bad way, eyes tight shut, and moaning. I grasped him under the arms. “Holly—stairs. We need to go.”

Through the arch the shuffling sound and its soft, attendant scuffling were growing very loud. I knew that at any moment something hateful would emerge into the light.

She grasped Vernon’s ankles, and together we picked him up. He didn’t weigh too much, but it was difficult enough. It was a good thing it was him, and not George.

A few spiders skittered through the arch, out into the lobby. Then we were around the corner and starting down the stairs.

In Men’s Wear, on the floor below, we stopped, shoulders aching, desperately out of breath. We put Vernon on the floor in the center of an aisle, midway between clothes racks and a checkout counter. The air was brittle, cold; the fog high enough to wind around our calves. Vernon lay in it as in a milk bath. I took a small lantern from my pack; we lit it, looking at the oily pallor of his face. It was quiet. There were Shades clustering far off among the aisles, but they kept their distance as before. Both Holly and I stood rigid, staring, letting the panic wash over us; the adrenaline ebbed quickly, leaving us weary and irritable.

“He’s bleeding,” Holly said. “I have a first-aid kit. Shall I—?”

“Oh, you might as well, yeah. You’re the expert.”

She did swift, efficient things with bandages. I stood with my jaw clamped, guarding them both, watching the way the shadows moved inward, pressing in against the lantern.

Holly was deft, careful, and knew what she was doing. It gave me a sour feeling to watch her. Lockwood had said we complemented each other. Yet another way in which he was just so wrong.

Vernon coughed again, said something unintelligible.

Holly stood up, put her bandages away. “Do you see that thing?”

“No.”

“Do you hear it?”

“No! I’ll tell you if I do.” I shook my head. “God. Can’t you use your own senses for a change? What are you even doing here?”

“Lockwood asked me to come, didn’t he? It’s not my fault my Talent’s not as sharp as yours.”

“Well, you could always have said no to Lockwood.”

“Like you do?” She gave her trilling laugh.

“What?” I stared at her. “What does that mean?”

“Like you ever do that.” She waved her hand as if it would magically dissolve the words she’d just said. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. We should get going.”

It was the little gesture that did it, the wave of the hand. All at once, the rage I’d been chewing on for so long was too big for my mouth; it was all I could do to spit it out. “Don’t talk to me about Lockwood in that airy-fairy way,” I said. “You know nothing about him. You know nothing about me. How about from now on you keep your patronizing comments to yourself?” The verbal onrush felt so good, I was giddy with it.

Her eyes were hot and wet then. I didn’t care. It was good to see. “Oh, that’s rich,” she said. “That’s rich. You’ve been patronizing me ever since I arrived!”

I blinked at her, genuinely taken aback. “Sorry? Me patronizing you?”

“There you are. You’re doing it again!”

“What? That’s not patronizing you. That’s just me doing a verbal backflip because you’ve said something so astronomically wrong and dumb. There’s a difference, you know, Miss Munro.”

She gave a hoot of rage. “See? You can’t open your mouth without doing it! Patronize, patronize, patronize. What’s wrong with you? You’ve been hostile to me from the word go!”

“Me? I’ve been a model of self-restraint!”

“Oh, sure. All your snorting and tutting! All your eye-rolling whenever I tried to contribute.”

“Guys, guys…” It was Bobby Vernon, clutching at us from below. “I’m only half-awake and probably a bit delirious, and was just in the middle of a dream about a goldfish, but even I know this isn’t a good idea.”

“On the contrary.” This was the skull. “You’ve waited long enough for this, Lucy. Don’t forget the coat hanger garrote. It’s an option.”

I listened to neither of them. I was too busy laughing in her face. “See, Holly?” I said. “This is a classic example of what you do! You stay all sweet and perfect, and twist things around magically so I’m the one to blame! You’re the one who patronizes me! I can’t blow my nose without you telling me I’m doing it wrong.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare do that!” she said. “What, and risk getting my head bitten off?”

“I can’t stand the way you criticize everything,” I cried, “without actually saying so! You’re like a prim, uptight little schoolteacher, looking down on everything I do!”

She stamped her foot. “Well, you—you’re like a…a stupid little dog, always yapping and growling. You made it plain from the first you didn’t want me there. Every time I said something, you’d start sneering and rolling your eyes, and spitting out the sarcasm. So many days I could hardly bear to come in. I almost quit a couple of times.”

There it was again! This is what she was so good at doing. Twisting it, giving you the guilt. But it didn’t work this time. My discomfort fueled my fury. “Rubbish! I always tried to be friendly and welcoming, even when you started going into my room and doing those weird things with my clothes!”

“It’s called folding!” Holly shouted. “You should try it sometime! You lived in a hellhole before I came! It was disgusting!”

“I was happy with that hellhole! I was happy with the way it was!”

Someone tugged my arm. “This isn’t good,” Bobby Vernon croaked. “Can’t you give each other girly smiles until we get out of this place?”

I shoved his hand away. “Shut up, you.”

“Yes,” Holly Munro snapped. “It’s your fault we’re still here.”

“Hey, see? You agree about that,” Vernon said. “Come on. It’s not so hard….”

“You think I’m just a dumb assistant! You can’t cope with the fact I saved your life!”

“Oh, you’re wrong there, buddy. I can cope with that. What I can’t cope with is your endless sniping, your chipping away at me continuously while staring at me with that super—super silly—with that bloody thing you do with your eyebrows!”