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And there seemed to be no photographs or personal mementoes of them anywhere.
    At least, not in any of the rooms I visited.
    Because I thought I knew where the answers to Lockwood’s past might be.
    There was a certain door on the first-floor landing of the house. Unlike every other door in 35 Portland Row, this one was never opened. When I’d arrived, Lockwood had requested that it remain closed, and George and I had always obeyed him. The door had no lock that I could see, and as I passed it every day, its plain exterior (blank, except for a rough rectangle where some label or sticker had been removed) presented an almost insolent challenge. It dared me to guess what was behind it, defied me to peek inside. So far, I’d resisted the temptation – more out of prudence than simple nicety. The one or two occasions when I’d even
mentioned
the room to Lockwood had not gone down too well.
    And what about me, Lucy Carlyle, still the newest member of the company? How had I altered that first year?
    Outwardly, not so much. My hair remained in a multi-purpose, ectoplasm-avoiding bob; I wasn’t any sleeker or better-looking than before. Height-wise, I hadn’t grown any. I was still more eager than skilful when it came to fighting, and too impatient to be an excellent researcher like George.
    But things
had
changed for me. My time with Lockwood & Co. had given me an assurance I’d previously been lacking. When I walked down the street with my rapier swinging at my side, and the little kids gawping, and the adults giving me deferential nods, I not only knew I had a special status in society, I honestly believed I’d begun to
earn
it too.
    My Talents were fast developing. My skill at inner Listening, which had always been good, was growing ever sharper. I heard the whispers of Type Ones, the fragments of speech emitted by Type Twos: few apparitions were entirely silent to me now. My sense of psychic Touch had also deepened. Holding certain objects gave me strong echoes of the past. More and more, I found I had an intuitive feel for the intentions of each ghost; sometimes I could even predict their actions.
    All these were rare enough abilities, but they were overshadowed by something deeper – a mystery that hung over all of us at 35 Portland Row, but particularly over me. Seven months before, something had happened that set me apart from Lockwood and George, and all the other agents we competed with. Ever since, my Talent had been the focus of George’s experiments, and our major topic of conversation. Lockwood even believed it might be the foundation of our fortunes, and make us the most celebrated agency in London.
    First, though, we had to solve one particular problem.
    That problem was sitting on George’s desk, inside a thick glass jar, beneath a jet-black cloth.
    It was dangerous and evil, and had the potential to change my life for ever.
    It was a skull.

4

    George had left the rapier room now and gone into the main office. I followed him in, taking my tea with me, winding my way amongst the debris of our business: piles of old newspapers, bags of salt, neatly stacked chains and boxes of silver seals. Sunlight streamed through the window that looked out onto the little yard, igniting dust particles in the air. On Lockwood’s desk, between the mummified heart and the bottle of gobstoppers, sat our black leather casebook, containing records of every job we’d undertaken. Soon we’d have to write up the Wimbledon Wraiths in there.
    George was standing by his desk, staring at it in a glum sort of way. My desk top gets messy fairly often, but this morning George’s was something else. It was a scene of devastation. Burned matches, lavender candles and pools of melted wax littered the surface. A chaos of tangled wires and naked elements spilled forth from a disembowelled electrical heater. In one corner, a blowtorch lay on its side.
    At the other end of the desk something else sat hidden under a black satin