Someone—Lockwood—flicked his torch on, and I was momentarily blinded. When my eyes adjusted, I realized that I was standing at the edge of a double circle of chains. Lockwood's rapier jabbed at my ribs—I'd run straight into it. Had I not stopped when I had, I'd have been completely skewered. We stood there for several moments, frozen, staring at each other.

Slowly, Lockwood lowered his rapier and extinguished his torch.

"Are you alright?" he asked after a pause.

"Yes, fine. Sorry to keep you waiting." My eyes were closed as I said this. I was letting them readjust to the dark.

"Waiting?"

Seven seconds had already passed, but for some reason I didn't open my eyes. For some reason, I kept them tight shut.

"Yes. Waiting," I repeated. "George said…said you'd called. Isn't that right, George?"

There was a second of silence. It felt like an eternity.

"George?"

"George…isn't here. He's on the landing."

I opened my eyes. Lockwood was standing in front of me, frowning. Lockwood, and no one else.

My heart began to dance a jive with my lungs. I looked once more about the room. No one. "But…he was just here. Wasn't he?"

"No, Lucy. He wasn't. Sure you're…alright?"

Ten minutes later, I was sitting cross-legged within the iron circle, clutching the spare canteen of tea. Lockwood was sitting beside me. He was rubbing absently at his chin, deep in thought. At length, he said, "You spoke to George?"

I swallowed my mouthful of tea. "Yes."

"You're certain it was him."

"No, but...it certainly sounded like him. What kind of Visitor can do that?"

"A Fetch?"

"A Fetch usually manifests itself. You know that as well as I do."

"Yes…but perhaps it was trying to use an advantage it saw. Your Talent, Luce, is extraordinary, but it's also a vulnerability." He aimed a pointed glance at the skull, which sat beside us.

I frowned. "I see your point, but…it seems odd, doesn't it?"

His teeth gleamed in a wry smile. "Odd in which way?"

"Well, it spoke to me. Actually spoke to me, a real proper conversation, like the skull. It knew our names and everything. And second, it didn't…well, it didn't really accomplish anything, did it? It went to the trouble of convincing me that I was talking to George, and it even got me to step out of the chains—but it didn't do anything! It didn't try to touch me at all, just…led me down here. What do you think?"

"I think," he said, "that it's played a very neat trick in an effort to unsettle us. It targeted your Listening, and it mimicked George's voice."

"You think it was just trying to scare us?"

"What else could it have been trying to do?"

I frowned. "I don't know. I just…I feel as if there was something more to it."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Ugh! It's so hard to figure out anything in this place! Have you felt it too? Like you can't think clearly?"

"Yes, I feel it. Like a sort of haziness in my head. I don't like this, Luce. I think we need to regroup. Let's get George and set up in the parlor, I think—what is it?"

I had got to my feet. Something had just occurred to me. "George should've been on the stairs, right?"

"Yes. On the landing."

"But…I don't think he was."

"What?"

"He's not on the stairs, Lockwood. I went down the stairs, remember? He can't have been there…I definitely didn't pass him. And it was pitch dark and empty—he should've at least had a candle lit if he… And if he had been there, he'd have asked what I was doing, tried to stop me…But he didn't…" The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I had not, in fact, passed George. There had not been the slightest indication that he was there, standing guard, when I had gone down—nor that he had ever been.

A chuckle, a snort, a burst of spectral laughter—the silver-glass jar flared green from its place on the floor by Lockwood's chains—I'd dropped it when I'd run into him. For a moment, the skull regarded us with malicious amusement, before winking out of sight.

I looked at Lockwood. He looked at me. We drew our rapiers. So much for observation.

The landing was empty when we reached it.

That, in itself, would have been worrying enough. But there was more.

George's chains had been kicked—or else blown—open into a sprawling semi-circle. Worse, the battered rapier he insisted on using was lying forlornly on the ground. I had no idea how I hadn't tripped over it on my way down, for it was lying at an awkward angle close to where the landing ended, near the steps.

"It'll be alright," Lockwood murmured, half to himself, "He always carries a spare, always has that extra backpack…"

I was furious with myself. "How could I not have realized this before?"

"It wasn't your fault, Lucy," Lockwood said grimly. "That was why it lured you down-it wanted to distract you. Whatever it is, it's smart, and it's done a bang-up job of manipulating us."

I closed my eyes. I should have trusted my instincts then-that prickle of unease before I'd stepped out of the chains had been warranted. Had I listened to it, I might have deciphered all of this much sooner. I gripped my rapier tighter. "We've got to find George, and quickly."

"Yes."

The ground floor, too, was empty; the double circle of chains I'd rigged earlier sat there still, undisturbed. There was no sign that George had sought refuge in them, nor that he had been there at all-nothing had been knocked over, nor were there any tell-tale scatterings of iron or salt.

All was hatefully still.

The prickling in my head was worse than ever; it seemed to me now that I could almost hear a low psychic hum, whining thinly beneath the sound of our boots on the parquet floor, muffled and weaving in and out of my sphere of awareness. It was almost as if there was something blocking the noise out, preventing it from reaching my ears.

I didn't like it at all, but I had more pressing matters to worry about.

Lockwood and I had arrived at the stairs to the upper floor; we had circled through the ground floor with no luck. Nodding to each other, we began our ascent, rapiers raised.

We were halfway up the stairs when we heard it: a low, anguished cry.

George.

I raced up the stairs, Lockwood at my heels. At the top of the stairs, the prickling feeling and the low hum disappeared, and suddenly I could hear the sounds of conflict quite clearly: the sound of iron canisters exploding, the clang of a rapier as it embedded itself in something. It was coming from one of the bedrooms, farther down the hall. I flung myself toward the door, scrabbled at the doorknob-only to find that it was locked. I rattled the doorknob violently, shoved my shoulder against the door-but it was shut fast. "Lockwood! The door-"

Lockwood had reached my side. Pushing me out of the way, he threw himself at the door, snarling with effort. It shuddered but held. He stepped back, ripped a crowbar from his workbelt, and resumed his efforts. I drew my own crowbar and joined him.

Every second spent tearing apart that door, all the while listening to the clang of George's rapier and his occasional gasps of pain, felt impossibly long. But then, finally, we were through.

I rushed in, rapier raised high, iron canister clutched in hand, just in time to see George roll to the side at the far end of the room as a Phantasm-its faint form just distinguishable as a woman with long coils of dark hair and blue-tinged skin-lunged at him.

In a flash, Lockwood was there, getting between the ghost and George, his rapier like liquid silver, humming as it arced through the air-so fast that it was barely visible as he hemmed the Visitor in. Meanwhile, I ran to George's side and pulled him to his feet.

"Lucy?" he gasped. His face was whiter than I'd ever seen it.

"Yes, it's me. You're all right?"

He nodded.

"Lucy!" Lockwood had managed to hold the Phantasm off fairly well, but now it was feinting with its coils of hair, advancing on him as he backed slowly away, his rapier whirling furiously. I still had the iron canister clutched in my hand-I primed it, took careful aim, and threw.

It landed perfectly: right in the center of the manifestation. The explosion of filings sent up a plume of violet and silver-blue sparks as the iron caused the apparition to tear itself into wisps.

For a moment, it was silent, save for the sound of our labored breathing.

"C'mon," Lockwood murmured, after a moment or two, "let's get out of here." He nodded toward the center of the room, where ribbons of ectoplasm were already beginning to band together as the Phantasm reformed.

On shaky legs, we maneuvered out the door, down the stairs, and into the parlor room, where we collapsed into the safety of the double ring of chains.

"What on earth were you thinking?"

I blinked. This, admittedly, was not what I had been expecting George to say once he'd regained his breath.

He was staring at me, his normally inexpressive features contorted into a look of outrage. His pallor had fled, had given way to cheeks flushed with anger.

None of which made any sense to me whatsoever. "Er...what do you mean?"

"Oh, don't play the innocent! You were hellbent on 'investigating'-wouldn't listen to a word I said! Not that you ever do, but still, you would think, that with all the close calls we've had, that you'd take my advice a bit more seriously-"

"Er, George,"—here Lockwood broke in—"Lucy—"

"And don't you defend her! You keep letting your emotions get in the way—you hardly ever punish her when she's out of line; you've really got to learn to separate work from-"

"George!" Lockwood's voice had taken on a slightly strained quality. "Just listen-"

"After Bickerstaff, I would've thought you'd gained some respect, some understanding for my contribution! But today you saw fit to go haring off like some sort of daft sheep, hurling yourself into danger without any thought for the consequences because—"

"Daft sheep?"

"George—"

George adopted a ridiculous high-pitched voice: "Oh, yes, look at me, I'm Lucy Carlyle, and I'm just so Talented and I'm just so much better, and I can't stand anyone who hasn't got just as much Talent—"

I recoiled, stung. "I'm not like that!

"George—"

"Oh yes you are! You know the real reason Fittes didn't hire you, or Rotwell, or any of those big agencies? Not because they couldn't see your talent, no, quite the opposite! It's because you can't even tell a Visitor from a hallucination!"

"Me? I'm not the one who followed a ghost all the way up to a locked bedroom!"

"I followed you! Where are those stellar instincts you claim to have now, eh?"

"That wasn't me—"

"Don't even try to—"

"George—"

"Shut up, Lockwood!"

"No, you shut up!" yelled Lockwood, "George, you've got it all wrong!"

"Oh yeah?" George whirled on Lockwood. "So we're going to brush it off again, this reckless behavior of hers? What's your defense this time? That she's a 'great agent'? Please! There are twelve-year-olds who could do the same with half the drama!"

"Excuse me? What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means! You complain, then you do whatever you want anyway, getting us into a right mess, then you skip off scot free acting all high-handed—"

"Scot free? You shunned me for a week after the mess with Annie Ward—"

"George! It wasn't Lucy!"

"—I'm so sick of double standards—"

"Double standards! After what happened with Joplin, you should be glad that—"

"I knew it! I knew you wouldn't let it go—"

"IT WAS THE VISITOR!"

We froze, startled, staring at Lockwood.

George unfroze first. "Lockwood, you can't seriously be—"

"It wasn't Lucy, George." Lockwood's expression was marked with a rare openness, and the grave tone of his voice made clear that he was serious, that he was telling the truth.

George knew it too; his flush cheeks paled, spectacles flashing silver in the half-dark. "Oh. Oh god."

Quiet fell. We stared at each other, breathing hard.

Except, I realized, with a sort of distant horror, it wasn't quiet. Not anymore. Because something, somewhere, was singing.