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there.’
    I bent down, rummaged in my bag. In the pockets we carry a wide range of products designed to neutralize any given Source. All are made of those key metals Visitors can’t abide: silver and iron. Shapes and decorations vary. There are boxes, tubes, nails and nets, pendants, bands and chains. Rotwell’s and Fittes have theirs specially stamped with their company logos, while Lockwood uses ones that are simple and unadorned. But the crucial thing is to select the right size for your Visitor, the minimum grade necessary to block its passage through.
    I chose a chain-net, delicate but potent, made of tightly fused links of silver. It was still carefully folded; when shakenloose it could be draped over objects of considerable size, but for now I could clasp it in my palm. I stood up and checked on progress at the wall.
    Lockwood had succeeded in forcing out one of the boards a little way. Behind it was a slender wedge of darkness. He heaved and strained, leaning back, grimacing with effort. His boots dug perilously close to our ridge of iron filings.
    ‘It’s coming,’ he said.
    ‘Good.’ I turned back to face the room.
    Where the dead girl stood beside me, just beyond the iron line.
    So clear was she, she might have been alive and breathing, gazing out upon a sunlit day. The cold, dim light shone full upon her face. I saw her as she must have been – once, long ago, before it happened. She was prettier than me, round-cheeked, small-nosed, with a full-lipped mouth and large, imploring eyes. She looked to be the kind of girl I’d always instinctively disliked – soft and silly, passive when it mattered and, when it didn’t, reliant on her charms to get her way. We stood there, head-to-head, her long hair blonde, my dark hair pale with plaster dust; she bare-legged in her little summer dress, me red-nosed and shivering in my skirt, leggings and padded parka. Without the iron line and what it represented, we might have reached out and touched each other’s faces. Who knows, perhaps that’s what she wanted. Perhaps that severance drove her rage. Her face was blankand without emotion, but the force of her fury broke against me like a wave.
    I raised the folded chain-net in a kind of ironic salute. In answer, bitter air whipped out of the darkness, scouring my face, slapping my hair against my cheeks. It struck hard against the iron barrier, making the filings shift.
    ‘Could do with finishing this,’ I said.
    Lockwood gave a gasp of effort. There was a crack as wood grains tore.
    All across the study came a sudden rustling: magazines flipping open, books moving, dusty papers lifting off their piles like flocks of rising birds. My coat was pressed against me. Wind howled around the margins of the room. The ghost-girl’s hair and dress were motionless. She stood staring through me, like I was the one made of memory and air.
    Beside my boots the filings began to drift and scatter.
    ‘Hurry it up,’ I said.
    ‘Got it! Give me the seal.’
    I turned as quickly as I dared – the key thing now was not to cross the iron line – and offered him the folded net. Just as I did so, Lockwood gave a final heave upon the crowbar and the board gave way. It cracked across its width, near the bottom of our hole, and ruptured forward, carrying with it two others that were nailed to it by connecting spurs of wood. The crowbar slipped from its recess, and suddenly came free. Lockwood lost his balance; he fell sideways andwould have tumbled right out of our circle, had I not lunged across to steady him.
    We clung together for a moment, teetering above the filings. ‘Thanks, Luce,’ Lockwood said. ‘That was almost bad.’ He grinned. I nodded in relief.
    At which point the broken boards fell out towards us, revealing the contents of the wall.
    We’d known. Of course we’d known, but it was still a shock. And shocks that make you both jerk backwards are never the best when you’re already off-balance; when the two of you