Flossie wavered. She didn’t have much time. She needed to return to Highgate and speak to Hazel, but she also wanted to help Grace.

In the end, she decided to make a quick visit to Lambeth Hospital.

Grace’s twilight form was in the same corridor that Flossie had left her in. She was sitting on a chair close to the entrance to the surgical theaters. She seemed smaller than ever — her back hunched over, her gas-mask box pushed to one side. Michael was talking to her quietly. His eyes met Flossie’s as she approached, and he shook his head.

“The sisters had some time together, in a ward,” Michael said. He took a moment to smooth his mustache. “It seems both had internal bleeding of sorts. They went back to surgery at almost the same time. Ruth . . . she didn’t make it.”

Flossie’s hand flew to her mouth. Oh, no. Poor Grace. “Has anyone come to see them? I heard they have an aunt nearby,” Flossie said.

“Afraid not.”

Flossie’s shoulders sagged.

“I’ll grab a breath of fresh air outside,” Michael said, then paused, realizing what he’d said. “So to speak.”

“Thank you,” Flossie said to his departing back.

Grace’s form was almost doubled over in her chair. What was it about her? Flossie was used to dealing with all sorts of people in the twilight due to her job as Turnkey, but every so often she met one who was special. Someone who she really wanted everything to work out all right for. Like Amelia.

And Grace.

“I’m so very sorry, Grace,” she said, placing her hand on Grace’s rounded back. As she connected with her, she was shocked to feel that Grace’s presence was now much stronger in the twilight world. Flossie tensed. She couldn’t let Grace do this. She couldn’t let her make this choice. Not now. Not like this. She would regret it. Flossie knew she would.

It was in that moment that Flossie understood why she’d come. Why she cared so much.

It was because Grace had no one else to fight for her. Her mother was gone; her sister was gone now, too. Her father had been stolen away to war. Perhaps her aunt and cousin were also no more.

If Flossie didn’t take the time to fight for Grace, who would?

Flossie thought back to her old life and how lucky she had been to have people who would fight for her. She had come close to death several times when the rheumatic fever had first hit. It hadn’t been like later on, when her heart had simply given out and there had been no choice to make. With her initial illness, there had been several moments when she had had to make a decision. When she’d felt that if she wanted to, she could have closed her eyes, let go, and sunk deep, deep down into her bed for all eternity. Her mother had brought her back from that place time and time again. Talking to her. Sitting with her. She would never forget the sound of her mother’s voice calling her back, cajoling her, forcing her to remain in the land of the living. “Which dress should I wear today, Flossie?” “Cook wants to know if you’d like beef or chicken broth today.” “Which book should we read this afternoon? Come on, now. I won’t start until you point to one.”

“Grace,” Flossie said now, moving around so she stood directly in front of her. “Look at me.”

Slowly, as if the effort was almost too much, Grace raised her head.

“Grace, I know what it is to lose people you love — to have them torn away from you. My father, my sister, my niece . . . it happened to me, too. Right now, you’re being asked to make a decision, and it isn’t a decision to be made lightly. It might seem like following your mother and sister is the easier option, but it’s not —”

The wail of the air-raid siren cut through Flossie’s words, and Grace’s eyes darted up suddenly. Grace grabbed the notebook and pencil Flossie had left for her and wrote as fast as she could.

She wrote the words in angry, jagged letters, underlining the final word several times.

Flossie met Grace’s angry expression. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

Again, Grace scribbled furiously, her writing spiky and disturbed.

The drone of enemy planes outside seemed to become louder.

Flossie had no time for this. She had to go. If she didn’t find a way to stop Viktor Brun, there would only be more planes. More and more and then . . . invasion. There would be no choices for anyone — dead or alive — if Viktor Brun had his way.

Flossie struggled to think of a good answer to Grace’s question because there was no good answer. As she tried to think of something to say, she clenched her iron key tighter in her hand.

“You should choose to live because your life matters, Grace.” Flossie felt a flare of anger as a picture of Viktor Brun standing over the crystal skull came into her mind. He’d taken her father, and now he wanted to take her cemetery, her country, even Grace. Well, he had taken enough. Flossie wouldn’t let him take one more thing. Not one. She got down onto her knees next to Grace. “Every life matters. Even more so than usual right now. Don’t give yours away easily.”

Grace didn’t move, holding the notebook and pencil still in her hands. When she eventually went to write something, her face crumpled as soon as the pencil hit the paper.

“Oh, Grace.” Flossie squeezed Grace’s shoulder. She didn’t want to promise her anything, but surely they would send her father to her soon. Surely he would be granted compassionate leave. Perhaps that might change her mind.

It felt like an eternity before Grace’s pencil connected with the paper again.

Flossie exited the hospital. Michael was sitting on the stairs, observing the night sky, his scarlet coat spilling out around him.

“Hello,” Flossie said, her voice flat.

“Hello there.” Michael took off his tricorn hat and patted the place beside him.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” Flossie said, her mind already on Viktor Brun.

“Oh, you can sit for a moment. We have all the time in the world, remember?”

If only that were true. Flossie did what she was asked and sat down.

“Grace has a good head on her shoulders,” Michael said. “I think she’ll make the right decision in the end.”

“I hope so.”

“There’s nothing else you could have done or said, love,” Michael told her. “For Grace, I mean. It’s up to her now.”

Flossie shrugged. She didn’t know how to help Grace. “You know, my father was a rear admiral,” she said, taking in Michael’s kindly face and twinkly eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s any of him in me at all.”

“What? Of course there is! Is he buried in your cemetery, too?” Michael asked.

“I wish he had been, but no. He was lost at sea.”

In life, whenever Flossie had met anyone who had served with her father, they would always tell her of his skill as a leader. How they trusted him. How they would have followed him anywhere. Every single time she had met someone who had known him, they had told her what a courageous man he had been. Oh, she wished he were here so he could tell her what to do. He would have worked out what to say to Grace. He would have persuaded her to stay in the land of the living.

With a start, Flossie realized that she’d wasted too much time here. She had to get back to Highgate. The full moon was coming, and she had to be ready for it.

Just as she was about to get up, she felt a presence behind her — the Turnkey of Brompton. She couldn’t handle explaining everything again. Especially to another Turnkey.

“Hello! And good-bye!” she called out to him as she darted down the steps and away. “I really must go.”

“Hazel? Hazel!” Flossie had fled through the cemetery gates and to her Turnkey’s cottage.

“Mistress Turnkey.” Hazel materialized in an instant. “Is everything all right?”

“No, Hazel, it most certainly is not,” Flossie replied, sitting on the small upholstered footstool, gripping her iron ring and key tight. She spent the next few minutes filling Hazel in on everything that had occurred. “Violet believes the only way we can stop Viktor Brun from delivering even more harmful information is by destroying the crystal skull in the living world. But I don’t see how that’s possible. Even though she thinks it will be in a good position when it’s taken to the rock formation, we’d have to be able to move the skull in the living world in order to destroy it, and we don’t have the ability to do that.”

An ominous silence filled the room.

“Hazel?” Flossie spoke slowly.

Hazel stood stock-still.

“If it’s possible to move objects in the living world, you have to tell me now. Don’t you understand? Highgate is at risk. Our country is at risk!”

Hazel’s eyes slid to meet hers. “Mistress Turnkey, there are things you are not meant to know about the Magnificent Seven. That no Turnkey is meant to know. There is information that I am not at liberty to divulge.”

“Hazel”— Flossie’s voice had a warning to it — “how can you not tell me if you know something? You’re supposed to advise me. Remember?”

“I do apologize, Mistress Turnkey. But to part with this knowledge could put Highgate at just as much risk as you are suggesting it is already facing.”

Flossie couldn’t believe her ears. Hazel knew the way out of this mess and was deliberately withholding information that might well save the cemetery and all those within it from devastation. Not to mention their city. Their country, even!

Flossie crossed her arms. “So that’s it, then. You won’t tell me.”

There was another long pause before Hazel spoke again. “I will say no more other than that there is one person in the twilight who is privy to this information.”

“And who would that be?”

Hazel’s golden eyes bore into those of her mistress. “The Turnkey of Kensal Green.”