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hand was under the wolf’s pelt, a single arm holding up its full deadweight.
He was strong
, Elliott realised, and for a moment he forgot what he’d been doing with the picture of the pike. He was in the process of placing it back on its mount again when he caught himself. Then, glancing at Ben, he stashed the portrait under an assortment of magazines.
    Ben writhed uncomfortably, but said nothing.
    Elliott went back to the diary.
    25th October. Eve tore down the makeshift barrier leading into the East Wing today. Dad put it straight back up again and really told her off this time, but I’m not sure Eve was even listening.
    Later, Mum found a whole new set of drawings. Eve’s been busy. The drawings were all stuffed under her bed and
every single one
is a copy of the owner’s portraits. When I mentioned it to Janey later she said matter-of-factly, ‘They warned me this might happen. There hasn’t been a child in the house for a long time.’
    I stared at her. ‘
They
warned you? What are you talking about?’
    She glanced at me warily, as if she wasn’t sure I was ready to hear what she had to say. Then sheled me towards the graveyard in the north corner of the estate.
    No one reading this diary is going to believe me, but this is exactly what happened next. Janey stood beside a broken headstone. She was looking at me with a weird smile on her face. Then she turned her head. From the way she did it I knew someone was close by, except … there was only empty space. Then, offering another sideways smile (but not to me), Janey nodded (again not to me), walked straight across and stroked my cheek.
    I jumped back. I’d have pulled away completely, but Janey kept smiling at me, and her hand was delicate and warm as well, which was weird, because her fingers were gritty from touching the cold gravestone. Anyway, when I held her wrist to make her stop, she did. But as soon as I let her go again her fingers returned to my face, or wanted to. I found out later that someone else was guiding her hand. That was the only way she – it was a girl – was able to feel me. She had to do it via Janey.
    ‘Stop running away. Let me finish,’ Janey said, when I backed off.
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted.
    She grinned and looked behind her. ‘Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they’re not interested,’ Janey said. ‘Theo, I’d like to introduce you to NellSmith. She’s sixteen going on three-hundred and twenty. An admirer from afar. She counts four freckles on your forehead. She says there are too many to count on the rest of your face, but that if you stay still for a minute she’ll try.’
    I backed off fast. Seconds later, what looked like a stiff breeze came out of nowhere, and this time something seemed to invisibly clutch at Janey’s legs. I hadn’t really believed or understood the Nell stuff, hadn’t taken in that it was a ghost Janey was so offhandedly talking about, but I didn’t have time to think about it before Janey murmured, ‘Here comes Leo. He’s only small. A winter death. Watch out for the snow .’
    I looked up, almost expecting white flakes, but Janey was joking about that part.
    She sat down on the grass. As she tucked her knees under her, I saw a little depression form in her dress as something dived onto her lap. ‘He’s five,’ she mouthed at me. ‘He’s still scared. All the time.’
    Another ghost came after Leo. Someone taller this time, obviously older. Janey leaned back, allowing whoever it was to take her weight. She said something friendly under her breath. ‘A farmer’s boy,’ she whispered to me. ‘He died with his boots on. Hunted.’
    He turned out to be a seventeen-year-old called Sam Cosgrove. Janey upped and went on a circular walk with him around the graveyard, and from the natural way she chatted to him I realised it was the sort of thing they did all the time. I was shocked, and really scared too, and Janey must have realised that, because she left