David crouched in darkness beneath the front steps of a grand town house and squinted through the little basement window. The glass was misted by condensation, but as it formed drips and ran, he could glimpse what was going on inside through the clear channels left behind. The kitchen beyond was bathed in warm light from lamps and a roaring stove. The heat of the room radiated through the glass, and above, gravy-rich steam rolled out through a ventilator and into the cold night.
“What can you see?” Dishita’s voice was so low it was barely audible.
“A woman, the cook I suppose she’d be, and another woman. But I can’t see Kat.”
“Let me look,” said Petra, and she pressed herself forward to the window, her head right beside David’s.
“Yes, that is Kat’s aunt. The other woman I don’t know, maybe …” She stopped talking as a third figure entered the kitchen, carrying a basket of laundry.
“It’s her!” said David. “Kat!” But he must have spoken too loudly because the two women looked over at the window.
“Bloody kids at the bins again,” said the cook. “Chuck a bottle at ’em, Alice.”
The woman called Alice stalked to the window. She rubbed the condensation away in one brutal swipe of her hand and pressed her nose up to the glass. David sensed sudden movement behind him. He glanced back and saw that the other dreamwalkers had gone, making themselves disappear into the brickwork. He hadn’t been fast enough. The woman at the window was looking straight at him, though in the gloom it wasn’t clear how much she could really see.
“Clear off out of it!” she shouted.
David kept very still, but he knew this wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t risk another blunder, not now, so when the idea came into his head to frighten the woman with his ghostliness, he knew it was a temptation he had to resist. He remembered the first rule of dreamwalking; he’d been seen, so now he had to make sure he wasn’t noticed.
“All right,” he said loudly. “I’m off.” And he scampered up the steps. He waited in the street above, crouching to keep out of sight and feeling foolish. After a moment the mean, pinched face vanished from the window, and David crept back down.
“Quick thinking, David,” breathed Dishita, reemerging. “If only you moved as fast.”
“I’m doing my best,” David whispered back. “But the girl we saw before — with the basket — she’s definitely the one I’ve seen at Eddie’s house. That was Kat.”
“She’s gone again,” said Petra, peering into the kitchen once more. “Let’s all go in and find her.”
Dishita waved her finger to silently indicate no. Petra’s eyes flashed defiance back at her, and she was about to speak, but Dishita spoke first.
“David must do this alone. It’s going to be a shock for Kat to see a stranger in the house, but at least David’s a Londoner. Even so, he’s going to have to work hard to persuade her, so everything must be as normal as possible. I don’t know how many Indians are in London in 1940, Petra, but there certainly aren’t many Germans.”
“It’s okay, I can do it,” David whispered, “but I would like someone with me, just in case. Can I take Misty?”
Petra’s reaction was so loud that David expected the angry face to return to the window.
“David, no! She’s just a useless machine!”
“Are you sure?” Even Dishita, who was the only dreamwalker David had seen treat the computer with any respect, seemed surprised. “Misty’s useful at times, but she was never designed for an active mission role. I don’t see how she can help you.”
“All the same, I think she’ll be useful now,” said David. “Misty, will you come with me, please? But keep yourself covered up and out of sight unless I call you, okay?”
“Okay, David,” said Misty from inside her hood, and there seemed to be another quality to her voice now: a hint of satisfaction. A light flashed briefly from inside the hood as if from a too-perfect smile. “I have always said I like to help.”
David could tell that Petra was beside herself with silent rage. He just hoped he’d made the right decision. He walked to the wide door under the steps — a tradesman’s entrance, presumably — and pressed himself hard against it. He knew the others were watching, and he thought back to the moment in Paddington station when Petra had shown him how to walk through walls, and how he’d later done it himself accidentally. He felt his dreamself bump against the solid barrier of physical matter. It resisted him. But then he focused his mind on the one, wondrous fact at the heart of dreamwalking: He wasn’t physically present at all.
In a single fluid motion, he slipped through the wall.
He found himself in a dark corridor on the inside of the house. In a moment Misty was standing there too, waiting for his lead, her hood still down. David guessed that with such a companion he would have to take all the initiative himself. He held up his hand for her to wait.
To the right was a half-opened door with the kitchen on the other side. Peeking through the gap at the hinges, David could see the cook and the woman called Alice, still talking about thieving tramps at the bins.
There was no sign of Kat anywhere, and David prayed she hadn’t gone upstairs. He really didn’t want to have to search the entire house for her. There were two more doors farther down the corridor, so he decided to check these first. He slipped past the kitchen and hurried along.
The first door was closed. David glanced nervously back to the kitchen before forcing his spectral head right through the wooden barrier, ignoring the unpleasant sensation this produced. The room was dark and appeared empty, but he heard a faint thump from beyond the wall to his left. Someone was in the next room. He jerked his head back into the corridor and slipped farther along. When he came to the next door, he held up his hand for Misty to stop, then peered inside.
The room was clearly a laundry. There were baskets of linen standing about and sheets drying on lines that crisscrossed between the walls. The atmosphere was thick, with a strong smell of rough soap. There were wide ventilators in the upper walls, though little fresh air seemed to pass through them. One small, fizzing lightbulb was all that lit the room. In the center of the far wall, her back to the door and her arms in hot soapy water up to the elbows, stood a girl, rubbing hard at something in a sink.
It was Kat.
Leaving Misty in the corridor, David stepped into the doorway but hung back a little so that the sheets and the shadows would obscure his features. There was nothing for it — he’d just have to speak.
“Please don’t be frightened. I’m a friend.”
Kat spun around with a splash of bubbles and water. She stared at David in shock, frantically pushing her hair back from her eyes with her dry upper arms.
“Who are you?” Kat seemed torn between fear and uncertainty, and David remembered that she was new to this house. She must be half expecting surprise encounters all the time. But he wondered whether it was wise to tell her his name too soon.
“I’m a good friend of Eddie’s. I’m very worried about him. I think he’s in trouble, and I want to help.”
Kat’s expression hardened — fear was overcoming the uncertainty in her eyes. She turned to face David directly, one hand searching for a long-handled something that he could see sticking out of the sink behind her. He had to act fast to keep control of the situation.
“It’s Kat, isn’t it? Can I call you Kat? Eddie told me about you. Is Kat short for something? Katherine?”
“Katrina.” This was said with a gulp and a slight tremor. “Who are you?”
“Before I tell you my name, let me tell you two things first. It’s important. You seemed scared of me, Kat, but I want you to understand that you don’t need to be. Okay … I mean, all right?”
She gave a jerky little nod.
“The first thing is that someone impersonated me in order to hurt Eddie. Someone incredibly dangerous,” David said. “I didn’t do anything to harm him. And second …”
This is it, he thought.
“… second … everything you think you know about ghosts might not be true.”
“David!” Kat’s mouth was almost too dry to speak. “Oh, my God.”
“Kat, please, don’t be scared.” David stepped in front of the hanging sheets, doing everything he could to radiate goodwill. “Yes, I am David. But more than that, I really am Eddie’s friend.”
“Get away from me!” Kat cried, and she flung the long-handled object. Before David could move he sensed it pass right through him and clatter against the wall in the corridor outside. It was clear that Kat would have screamed if fear hadn’t constricted her throat. David had to act fast — he was losing her.
“Kat, please, look at me. We’re about the same age, I think, like Eddie. He’s your friend too, isn’t he? I’m not what you think I am. I’m not a real phantom, I’m just a boy who needs your help. Please don’t be scared of me.”
Kat had gone very still, though the moment of abject terror seemed to be passing. But now David had a cold, hard stare of intense mistrust to deal with.
“Ghost! Monster!” Kat cried suddenly. “You are a devil. Eddie told me about you — you wanted to kill him, to make him a spirit like you. I’ll never tell you where he is, even if you bring all the demons of hell. Now get away from me!”
She was shouting loudly, and it would only be a matter of time before someone heard and came to check on her. And then what would David do?
“Kat, I swear to you that I’m not a devil or a monster. I’m not even a dead person from hell, if that’s what you mean. But there is a monster out there, someone who wants Eddie dead. He’s the devil, not me. I’m on the side of the angels, I promise. Look, Eddie has some very special friends.” And he beckoned out into the corridor.
Misty stepped into the room and lifted back the hood of her cloak, letting her lustrous hair spill out once more. Her face caught the mean little light from the electric bulb and threw it back around the room like the gleam of firelight on gold. The grubby walls and linen baskets seemed to shrink back in shadow as she gave Kat the full benefit of a bewitching smile.
Kat had clearly forgotten to breathe. When she could finally speak, nothing coherent came out, but David was just pleased that the hostility had gone from her face.
“Kat, will you help us to help Eddie?” He spoke cautiously, hoping to avoid breaking the spell he’d guessed Misty would cast over someone like Kat. “He’s in terrible danger. Maybe you are too. But you and Eddie have friends now, powerful friends.”
Kat couldn’t turn her eyes from Misty. David tried to imagine the effect the hologram was having. For Kat, with her scrubbing brush and washboard life, beauty and glamour were a distant, probably unobtainable dream. Misty must seem to her like a vision from another world, a world of miracles. As, in a sense, she was.
“Are … are you an angel?” Kat asked Misty, her hands clasped together.
“Er, sort of,” said David hurriedly, before Misty could answer. He didn’t want the moment ruined by the computer’s difficulty with little white lies. “Kat, we don’t have much time. Please, take us to Eddie. We need to get him away from London as soon as possible, away from danger.”
Kat stepped forward, her eyes still drinking in the beauty of the apparition before her. Then, finally, she looked at David again.
“Someone is after Eddie. But how do I know I can really trust you?”
“Kat,” said David, indicating Misty, “my beautiful friend here always tells the truth. Ask her why we are here. She’s incapable of lying.”
The girl looked at David, and then back at Misty, her face a mix of emotions.
“Eddie’s a good person.” Kat spoke calmly now, but there were tears in her eyes. “I haven’t met many of those in my life. But now my brother’s disappeared, and I don’t know … I … all I want is to do the right thing. Angel, have you come to help us?”
There was a pause, and David prayed that Misty wasn’t being taken too near an untruth. Would the computer even realize that Kat was addressing her?
“Yes,” said Misty at last. “I like to be helpful.”
At the sound of Misty’s pearl-drop voice, the last shades of mistrust left Kat’s face.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll take you to Eddie.”