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distance a light flared and he heard a voice cry out,
    “ ’Ware old ghouls, ’ware!” Then blackness came over him and he knew no more.
    * * *
    D anny woke up in a warm room, lying on a neatly made bed. There was a smell of hot chocolate, and when he raised his head he saw his companions sitting round a fire with blankets over their shoulders, sipping from steaming mugs.
    The room was plain and tidy, everything in its place: shirts folded perfectly on a shelf, a single polished silver trophy on the mantel, some military decorations in a frame on the wall. He looked up to see Valant watching him, concern on his face.
    “If you’re wondering where you are, you’re in my quarters,” Valant said. “You’re damn lucky to be alive, wandering down in the Butts on your own.”
    “Sorry,” Les said with a weak grin. “That was my idea, actually. Thought it was a bit of a shortcut.”
    “Thought you would avoid my beady eye in the hallway, more like,” Valant said. “However, no harm was done.”
    “Who—or what—were they?” Vandra asked.
    “They were ancient spies and traitors. The Dead of Wilsons. The Unquiet, they are called. You met them when you took your oath.”
    “They were horrible,” Dixie said, “full of holes and all.”
    “I suppose some of them were horrible,” Valant said. “The fact is that in medieval times spies were hanged, then drawn and quartered. They had their entrails andsometimes their hearts cut out and held up in front of them.”
    “You’d be a bit shook up after that,” Dixie said.
    “They wandered the earth, haunted by their own cries of agony, unable to rest,” Valant said.
    “But … they found their way to Wilsons,” Danny said slowly, “the only place in the Two Worlds where their treachery does not render them outcast, where they can have peace from their own screams.”
    “Very impressive,” Dixie said.
    “I could hear it,” Danny said, “in their voices.”
    “They gathered around Danny,” Vandra said. “We thought they were going to kill him.”
    “Really,” Valant said. “I thought you had just stumbled across them by accident—they are inclined to roam the Butts a bit. They seem to like it there. Has that dungeon feel, I suppose.”
    “What are the Butts?” Danny asked.
    “The secret passages that connect all the different parts of Wilsons—
if
you know what you’re doing, which obviously you four do not. I wonder why the Unquiet took a fancy to Danny here.”
    “I don’t know,” Danny said. “All I remember is that they were cold, very cold.”
    Danny remembered the chill, sinewy hand that had reached under his jacket. He reached into his jacket to feel the place where it had touched him, and to his shock, his fingers closed around a small parcel wrapped in what felt like oilcloth.
    “Is everything all right, Mr. Caulfield?” Valant was looking at him curiously.
    “Yes, yes, fine,” Danny said hastily. “I just thought for a moment they’d taken off with my heart.”
    As his friends laughed, Danny hastily tucked the package into a more secure place. Was it underhanded not to tell his friends that the ghost spy had put something into his coat, or was he merely being cautious? He told himself that he was being cautious, but a part of him felt sneaky. It was one of the things he hated about the spy side of himself, the way he always had to mistrust his own motives.
    “Are you going to tell Devoy about this?” Les asked Valant nervously. “It’ll be a Third Regulation offense at least.”
    “What were you doing in the Butts?” Valant demanded. “Tell the truth!”
    “We thought we could help find the killer of the Unknown Spy’s wife,” Vandra said. Valant looked at her sternly.
    “If I smelled a lie you would be in Master Devoy’s study before your feet could touch the ground,” he said after a pause, “but I believe you, and I think that Master Devoy has enough to worry about without adding a bunch of amateur