I sped down Addams Avenue at a half-jog, still expecting to be grabbed by one of Athanasia’s cohorts at any moment. By the time I reached Celia’s penthouse I felt I’d run a marathon. I knocked and then threw myself inside, panting.

‘Darling, is everything okay?’ Great-Aunt Celia called out from her chair. Freyja was asleep on the hassock next to her stocking-clad feet. I didn’t pause to say hi.

‘Um, excuse me for a moment,’ I replied, and disappeared quickly into my room. I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it. My satchel slid to the hardwood floor at my feet. I’d never felt such profound relief to be safely in my room. Even with all that had happened since I’d moved to Spektor, I’d never really considered returning to my stifling hometown of Gretchenville. And now I wondered – really wondered – if I was up for this strange new life. I was going to have to arm myself with more than garlic bread if I was going to stick around. A wooden stake wouldn’t do either, I’d learned. I’d once staked Athanasia (as I kept being reminded) and Celia had calmly explained that stakes were only utilised to hold vampires still while you performed the rest of the ritual – head removal, stuffing mouth with garlic, et cetera. Yuck. I was no vampire slayer. I couldn’t exactly wander the New York subway system with an axe at the ready.

Something large – perhaps a bird – flew past my bedroom window, and I shut the curtains. I made a beeline for my ensuite and washed my hands once, twice, three times, until I couldn’t smell the garlic anymore, and the sight of Athanasia’s melting face was, for the moment, out of my mind. I pushed my hair off my face and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were large and a little terrified. This was becoming a regular look for me.

I can’t keep doing this.

I leaned on the sink with my shoulders hunched. Some help talking to Deus had been. I’d just known it would only make matters worse. And what about Athanasia stealing those things from Skye’s office? Was she trying to get me fired? That figured. I’d been the reason she’d lost her job. But it was hardly fair to compare such things when my job was legitimate and hers had involved procuring virgin blood. And virgins.

‘Horrible,’ I muttered aloud.

I hate Sanguine. I hate them!

‘Why won’t they all leave me alone!’ I cried in a fit of frustration and leaned my forehead against the cool mirror. Something caught my eye in the reflection, pulling me out of my spasm of self-pity. The wall behind me was turning white. No, it wasn’t the wall . . . it was the air behind me. I felt a cool mist gather at my back.

‘Miss Pandora?’ Lieutenant Luke said, even before he’d fully materialised. His handsome face appeared, but he looked disturbingly faint in the mirror reflection. He was a poor, see-through version of himself. I turned around quickly in a panic, but, outside of the mirror, I was relieved to see he looked less amorphous. I hugged him and clung to his chest. He felt solid enough to embrace, and for a while I did exactly that. His chest felt firm under my cheek, his uniform crisp and spotless under my skin. He brought a hand up to gently stroke the back of my hair.

‘Miss Pandora, are you okay?’ he asked.

I slid my arms down around his waist, hands resting against the leather belt that cinched his frockcoat tight.

‘Miss Pandora, you aren’t going to leave, are you?’

I shut my eyes tightly, and warm tears gathered in my lashes. ‘Just hold me,’ I whispered.

We stood there for a while. I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t move. He didn’t speak.

There was a knock on the door of my room.

I sighed. Celia would be wondering if I was okay. It was unlike me to lock myself in my room. I disengaged from Luke’s comforting hold, and stepped out of the bathroom.

‘Celia?’

‘Yes, darling, it’s me,’ she said through the door.

For some reason I was overcome with a guilty urge to hide Lieutenant Luke, as if I were a teenager caught with a boy in my room. But Luke was no boy, and I was the only one who could see him. It was times like these when I felt fresh sadness at Luke’s otherness. He was real to me, yet I knew we lived in very different worlds. I could never do things with him that I could do with a normal, living guy. We could never walk down the street holding hands. We could never go to a movie. I could never introduce him to my friends. (Not that I really had many.) I could never introduce him to Celia. And there were . . . other things, too – other things any normal woman craved. With Luke, those dreams were impossible.

It would have been nice to have known him as a man.

Luke materialised at the doorway to the ensuite and we exchanged glances. I arranged myself on the edge of my bed. ‘Please come in,’ I said. I grabbed one of the vintage Vogue magazines Celia had stacked on my bedside table for inspiration, and placed it in my lap as if I’d been reading.

The door opened. ‘Darling, I can see you are distressed,’ she said. ‘May I sit?’

I nodded. ‘Of course.’

My stylish great-aunt had a special glow about her, I noticed. Beneath her omnipresent veil, her pale skin was luminous. She had reapplied her scarlet lipstick and was wearing a pair of fine leather gloves that added an extra layer of glamour to her outfit. Once again, it looked like she was ready for an important night out with the likes of Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart at some divine house party or cool jazz bar.

‘You look lovely,’ I said. I was reluctant to tell her about my problems with Athanasia, in case she spoke to Deus again and things became even worse.

‘You have a visitor,’ she told me calmly.

I have a visitor?

‘Deus is here.’

I got a little chill. Luke frowned and looked at Celia, who naturally did not return his gaze.

‘I think you know why,’ she finished.

The garlic bread incident. Word travels fast.

‘It’s important that you sort this out now,’ she said gently.

I took a sharp intake of breath. I was still too shaken. I wasn’t ready for visitors. I certainly wasn’t ready for the likes of Deus, and his strange, hypnotic face.

Luke furrowed his brow. He moved close and set a protective hand on my shoulder. My great-aunt could not see him, nor could she hear him say, ‘Are you sure that’s necessary?’

‘Um, are you sure that’s necessary?’ I asked Celia, hyper-aware of the strangeness of the moment. She knew I had a ghostly friend, but she didn’t know he was right next to me. Should I tell her, out of courtesy? I wondered.

‘I’m afraid it is necessary,’ Celia responded. ‘It’s better to resolve this.’

I knew there was no point in trying to argue. ‘I’ll need a few minutes to get ready,’ I said.

‘Take a little while if you need to, dear. Oh, and tell your friend – he is here, isn’t he? – tell him it would be best if you went in alone.’

My face went hot so fast it must have turned purple.

Instinctively, I looked up at Luke. Celia followed my gaze but looked through him to the wardrobe. She’d told me that seeing spirits was not one of her gifts, yet somehow she knew he was there. Perhaps it had been our voices before she knocked. More likely, she’d read my mind.

Ten minutes later I emerged reasonably composed. I’d cleaned my teeth, run a brush through my long, naturally light brown hair, and taken a few deep breaths. Luke was still in my room, and when I walked out the door I glanced back and noticed that he had started pacing. It was kind of sweet, I thought.

‘You are quite fond of your friend, aren’t you?’ Celia said in a low voice as I joined her.

‘I am,’ I replied, with a heavy feeling of sadness. I knew Lieutenant Luke was real, or as real as spirits could be, and yet he wasn’t a real man.

‘And he has been helpful to you, hasn’t he?’ Celia gently prodded.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

‘He’s handsome. I know that much,’ she said, and I blushed again. ‘Tell me, how is he dressed? Is he in uniform?’

I nodded. ‘He died in the Civil War. He was a second lieutenant in the Lincoln Cavalry. I sometimes think he understands something of what is going on, something of the same things you’ve been telling me.’

‘That’s very good,’ she said and fell into a mode of quiet contemplation for a moment. I wished I could read her mind as she seemed able to read mine. She placed her gloved hands on each of my wrists. The slim-fitting leather was soft. ‘We will discuss this later. Deus will see you now.’

I followed her into the kitchen and she handed me the silver tray, already neatly prepared with all the fixings for tea. I was relieved to see there were three cups this time. She moved down the hall towards her private quarters, and I followed at her heels. She opened the door with her key. The small room was candlelit again, and chairs were set out. Deus was already there, and he rose to greet us. He was again dressed in a suit, and his hair was perfectly coiffured. To my complete and utter horror, however, he was not alone.

Athanasia.

No!

‘Go on,’ Great-Aunt Celia whispered, and encouraged me forward. Like an automaton I walked down the little stone steps carrying the tray. Celia shut the door behind me, and for a moment I thought I might have a severe attack of claustrophobia – something I’d been feeling a bit lately. The feeling probably had something to do with being locked in a confined space with two vampires; one who was ancient and held some mesmerising power over me, and the other who had very recently tried to rip my throat out. How could my great-aunt do this to me?

Deus gave me a cordial, cool-skinned handshake, and grinned his eternal Kathakano grin. ‘Pandora, thank you so much for seeing me again. You remember Athanasia.’

I nodded numbly. Yes, I certainly remembered her.

‘Let me take that,’ he said, relieving me of the tray. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said, as if it wasn’t Celia who had thought of providing the tea. ‘Please take a seat, if you will.’

I noticed that the low, circular table between the seats was carved with a pentagram. I took a step and stopped.

Athanasia’s appearance was quite shocking. Even under the dim illumination of flattering candlelight I could see that one half of her face was terribly scarred and pitted where the garlic bread had made contact. She had her arms tightly crossed, and her legs too. Her jaw was set. Her black eyes were fierce and red-rimmed. I found myself staring at her ruined skin. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

‘Please take a seat, Pandora,’ Deus instructed for a second time.

There was an empty chair close to the door. I bent my knees and sat in it very slowly, instinctively avoiding sudden movements, as if Athanasia were a wild panther or a wolf that might lunge at any moment. I ended up perched on the edge of the cushion. After a moment I automatically patted my pocket for rice, but of course I hadn’t brought any with me. That was an oversight. But how could I have known that my nemesis would be in the room? How did she even get in here? I guessed this chamber wasn’t part of the original penthouse, hence the steps and the stone walls and floor. Was it a kind of antechamber leading between the penthouse and some other area? Had Athanasia come in through the coffin with Deus? Was my great-aunt safe with all these Sanguine crawling around this end of the mansion?

‘Now, as you can see, Pandora, Athanasia has sustained an injury to her face,’ Deus began with unnaturally polite charm.

I looked at her again while she fumed silently. Her scars resembled melted plastic. Or pizza. I wondered how long they might take to heal. Or did Sanguine not heal as quickly as vampires did in the movies? She’d survived my staking rather well, I thought. I was also quite sure it would take her a lot less time to heal from my garlic bread application than it would for me to heal from her lethal fangs.

‘Yes,’ I finally replied to Deus, though the word barely came out. ‘I can see that.’

‘She tells me you are responsible for this injury.’

I gaped. ‘Responsible? She tried to kill me tonight when I got off the subway! She came after me with her friends.’

‘Is this true?’ Deus asked Athanasia in a level voice.

‘We were talking,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Talking? Sure.’ I shook my head.

‘Why were you at the subway station?’ Deus asked her.

‘Coincidence. We got on the same train.’

Oh please.

‘I seriously doubt it was coincidence and she certainly wasn’t keen for a simple chat,’ I said. ‘She tried to kill me.’

It was like being in the school principal’s office. Only the principal was undead, and smiling strangely. He had also probably just risen from the casket in the floor. I hated to think what kind of detention he could give us.

Athanasia kept her arms crossed and her eyes averted. I knew Deus was very powerful, and if Athanasia was going to listen to anyone it would be him, but the idea that she was going to confess the truth to him seemed surreal. As if Athanasia had one honest bone in her undead body!

‘You meant to feed on her?’ he prodded her.

‘That wasn’t all,’ I said, interrupting. ‘Not like that would be okay either . . . Athanasia tried to kill me. Simple.’

‘Oh please. This is pathetic,’ Athanasia said.

I crossed my arms. ‘She’s been stealing from my place of work, too. The Chanel jewellery she’s wearing right now, and some fake tattoos I saw on her the other day. She stole them. She wants me to lose my job.’

At that Athanasia jumped up from her chair and pointed an accusing finger at me.

I swallowed a scream and almost jumped out of my own chair in fright. She was positively terrifying in close proximity. I wanted to leap up and flee the room.

‘She staked me,’ Athanasia yelled. ‘She killed my employer, and she staked me!’

It was true.

‘In self-defence,’ I managed to say. ‘How many times do I have to explain this? Self-defence.’

I could see she was getting fired up. Her fangs began to show – big, white fangs. But I wasn’t scared now. I wasn’t going to back down. I kept my arms crossed and held her hard gaze.

‘We have discussed this, Athanasia,’ Deus said calmly, and her accusing finger closed into her fist. She seemed to deflate under his influence, and eventually she sat down and folded her arms again. Her fangs slipped back beneath her lips.

There was a stretch of deeply tense silence before Athanasia spoke up again, this time with less vehement certainty. ‘Come on. She can’t be the Seventh,’ she said. ‘Look at her.’ But the words only seemed to deflate her further, or perhaps it was the steady gaze she received from Deus. Finally she slumped in the chair, chastened into silence.

What did my being the Seventh have to do with this?

‘Athanasia will not harm you,’ Deus said, as if the conversation were over.

‘Good,’ I replied. ‘I also need her to stop stealing things from my work.’

He turned to Athanasia, but she said nothing. Her full lips were pulled tight into a grimace.

‘And you won’t disfigure her again?’ he said.

‘I will defend myself if I’m attacked,’ I replied in a firm tone. ‘But she needs to take off that stolen jewellery she’s wearing right now and give it back.’ I held out my hand.

At this Athanasia sat up in her chair and raised her eyes to me. A cold, calculating smile pulled her plump lips tight. ‘This isn’t stolen. It’s a gift,’ she replied, touching her manicured hand to the enamel pieces around her throat.

A gift?

‘Whom are you feeding off?’ Deus asked her.

‘That’s none of her business.’

I remembered something. ‘You’re feeding on my boss, aren’t you? You’re feeding on Skye!’

The scarves Skye kept wearing around her neck every day. Her tardiness coming to work. Her pallor.

Athanasia was smiling at me. ‘It’s not like I attack her. She comes to me.’

My goodness, Skye was the mortal Luke had seen in the building that night. Athanasia must have hypnotised her and turned Skye into her personal meal service!

‘I can’t believe it.’ I pulled a face in disgust.

Deus’s strange, mesmerising smile didn’t falter. He didn’t seem surprised.

‘You knew about this?’ I blurted, and then held my tongue. Of course he knows.

‘Non-lethal feeding is encouraged,’ he said.

I blinked. Right. Better than the alternative. I get it.

I felt my strength rise up. ‘I don’t wish to encourage lethal feeding, far from it, but is there any way you could get her to leave my boss alone? And maybe even leave me alone, while we’re at it?’ I narrowed my eyes at Athanasia. ‘And she’d better not think that is the worst I’m capable of,’ I said, gesturing to her disfigured face. ‘I am the Seventh.’ I’d never said those words aloud, and honestly I didn’t quite know what they meant, but Celia had said it was an important title, and it seemed to have some impact on both of them. They were listening.

Athanasia’s dark eyes grew wide, and she quickly looked down.

‘Athanasia will stop feeding off your boss,’ Deus said.

‘Good.’

The deflated look on Athanasia’s face was priceless. She must have really thought she’d hit the jackpot when she’d sunk her teeth into Skye – a meal service and a direct line to free fashion samples. And Skye couldn’t remember any of it. Terrible. Athanasia might still be a Fledgling, but she appeared to be good at hypnotism.

I held my hand out. ‘The jewellery.’

Begrudging every moment, Athanasia undid the strands of Chanel jewellery around her neck and handed them to Deus, who placed them gently in my hand.

‘And you promise not to disfigure her again?’ he said.

Her face really did look rather bad. The misshapen and pitted skin glowed with a painful red hue in the candlelight. ‘Only if she promises not to try to kill me. And if she leaves me and my boss alone.’

‘Will you do this, Athanasia?’

She nodded.

‘Then it’s decided.’

‘And one more thing,’ I said, surprised by my growing confidence. I’d had another idea. Athanasia seemed to be at the heart of any trouble. ‘I want to know if she or her friends have anything to do with the missing knitwear designers.’

Athanasia looked up. Her eyebrows were raised.

‘What?’

‘Sandy Chow? Victor Mal?’ I pressed.

‘Who?’

I could see she knew nothing.

‘Never mind.’

‘Okay. Now go in peace,’ Deus said to both of us.

In peace? Could a Sanguine go in peace? Deus seemed to be able to. It was hard to believe they were the same species. Athanasia stood and bowed to Deus. I wasn’t sure if I should do the same – I hadn’t before. I stood up from the chair and watched their exchange with interest.

‘Go to ground for a while, Athanasia,’ he told her, and her face dropped. Well, half of it was already dropping, I supposed.

She nodded and backed away from him with surprising reverence. She retreated right up to the casket, opened it and left us.

I have to say, the sight of her scurrying away gave me no small degree of immature pleasure.

Suck on that, I thought.

In truth, I was a little surprised at myself. I’d never thought I was someone who would enjoy that kind of mean satisfaction. It was a bit shameful, really.

‘She won’t be bothering you again,’ Deus said after a moment.

‘For a while, perhaps,’ I replied.

He nodded sagely. ‘Could I have you for a moment longer, Pandora?’

Have me? ‘Um, sure.’

‘There is another matter I wish to discuss with you.’ He indicated that I should sit again and I took my seat, puzzled. I was beginning to feel much more confident in his presence, just as Celia had promised, but I didn’t exactly want to hang around to see what he could do.

‘Your great-aunt tells me you have a friend here. She tells me he is unable to leave the walls of the mansion.’

Lieutenant Luke.

I sat up a touch straighter. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s true,’ I said. ‘Do you know anything about him? His name is Second Lieutenant Luke Thomas.’

‘I believe I may know something of interest.’ Deus leaned forward, and I found myself looking into his eyes and watching those long eyelashes blink. I had much better control over my reaction to him, but I was still far from immune to his surprising aura of power and energy. ‘I’m sure you realise this particular building is well known in Spektor. The architect and original owner, Dr Barrett, was quite an unusual man and performed experiments.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I’d heard a lot of morbid reports. Barrett was a founding member of the Global Society for Psychical Research, a group formed in the late 1800s to investigate reports of telepathy, psychic ability, ghost sightings and so on.

‘Pandora, some of the experiments were about necromancy,’ Deus said.

I lifted my eyebrows. ‘Raising the dead?’ I said.

From what I understood, necromancy was the practice of raising the dead for the purposes of fortune-telling or divination. Corpse prophecy. Without physical bodies, spirits were thought to be no longer limited by the earthly plane, and therefore in possession of great secrets – the future, hidden truths about the past, the real cause of their deaths or the deaths of others. My relationship with Luke seemed to gel with that idea. He seemed to know so much, but was forbidden from telling me many of the secrets of the dead. Necromancy, along with witchcraft and other occult practices, was severely frowned upon by the church. The Victorian establishment would certainly have disapproved of Barrett’s experiments.

Deus continued. ‘Barrett was in the habit of acquiring cadavers for these attempts.’ Still that grin did not leave Deus’s face, despite the morbid topic.

I grimaced. ‘He used actual bodies?’ Obviously getting a medium around and summoning energy from an old wedding ring wasn’t enough for Barrett. ‘But he couldn’t have possibly had Luke’s . . . um, remains. He died in the Civil War,’ I protested. ‘He was a second lieutenant. A war hero.’ Well, I didn’t know if he was technically a war hero, but that’s certainly how I thought of him.

Deus shrugged. ‘I’m not sure where the lieutenant was buried, or whether his remains were put to rest properly, but there was a flourishing underground trade in bodies during Victorian times.’

How grisly. I thought of the store next to Pandora magazine, and the skull Morticia wanted. How much of a person was left in their bones? What happened when someone was not ‘put to rest properly’?

‘Soldiers were thought to be strong spirits,’ he said. ‘Strong enough to travel to the underworld and back.’

When I emerged from the candlelit antechamber with the silver tray, my great-aunt was waiting. She re-locked the door behind me and led me into the kitchen. My head was reeling with everything I’d learned. I wondered if I would be able to sleep a wink.

I placed the tray on the counter. I’d barely touched the tea, but I felt jumpy. ‘Can Athanasia get in here now?’ I asked. ‘Into the penthouse? Because she was invited into that room?’

‘No,’ Celia assured me. ‘She can’t come in. The Sanguine are not invited here.’

‘Is that why you lock the door? So they can’t get in?’

She smiled. ‘They can’t cross that threshold. It is forbidden.’

It was one of those supernatural rules. Sometimes they got me quite confused. Celia had mentioned this one before, of course. According to her, needing to be invited into a home was one of the few rumours about the Sanguine that actually was true. That, and the whole fang thing, I’d noticed. Yes, that rumour seemed strongly founded.

‘It’s time I gave you the key. You’ve been here long enough to understand the dangers.’ To my surprise, she had a key ready and pressed it into my hand.

I blinked. Did that mean I could now enter the antechamber and explore the hidden staircase?

‘Thank you. I appreciate it,’ I said. It seemed as if I’d passed some kind of test. I slipped the key into my pocket.

‘It may fit a few doors in the house.’

I raised an eyebrow. A skeleton key? Was she suggesting I could finally explore?

Great-Aunt Celia took her fine leather gloves off, brought the cups to the sink and prepared to do the washing up. ‘No, no. Let me do that,’ I said, taking over. It felt good to do something distracting and useful with my hands. My body was charged with nervous energy and my head was busy trying to process everything. I poured the tea out and ran water into the sink.

‘Deus mentioned the necromancy experiments to you?’ my great-aunt said.

I nodded mutely and reached for the detergent. The idea was a bit hard for me to take. For starters, my feelings about Luke were a little confused already, even without imagining his disinterred corpse lying around in the mansion, or lying around anywhere for that matter. I couldn’t think of him that way. He wasn’t just any old dead guy to me.

Great-Aunt Celia said nothing, she just watched thoughtfully while I cleaned the cups and put them back on the cupboard shelf. When I was finished she led me to her reading chair in the lounge room. I sat on the leather hassock with Freyja purring around my ankles. Celia balanced herself elegantly on the wide arm of her chair, posing like a designer who instinctively understood the most flattering position for the garment she wore. She looked like a fashion illustration from 1949. Some habits never disappeared, I supposed.

‘I know you’ve had a big night,’ she began, ‘but I do want to discuss something important with you. It’s better that we discuss this now.’

I nodded. My brain felt pretty full already.

‘Now listen to me carefully. When you first arrived here, I told you not to explore the other floors of the building under any circumstances.’

‘I remember. It was because of the Sanguine,’ I said. I had gone against her wishes and explored one of the other floors on one occasion, and I’d nearly been necked for it.

‘The dangers of the Sanguine. That was part of it, yes,’ she replied.

That was only part of it?

‘Pandora, there are some passageways you may not be aware of.’

I thought of the casket on the antechamber’s floor, and the staircase beyond it. ‘I wanted to ask you where the hidden passageway in the coffin led,’ I said. ‘Does it meet up with the mezzanine, or . . .?’

‘That passageway is one of many. Dr Barrett had some mysterious motives when he built this place. It’s possible that he wanted to keep some of his experiments secret from the rest of the world, and from his wife, in particular. She was of a sensitive disposition, by all accounts, and his work was sometimes dark. He dabbled in things Victorian society did not appreciate. Forbidden things. Necromancy was only part of it.’

I swallowed. Celia had told me before that Barrett came from a wealthy and prominent family, but even that had not been enough to protect him when his experiments clashed with the standards and ideals of his colleagues. He had been banished from the Society for Psychical Research. If he was in the habit of acquiring stolen corpses, I could understand why.

‘He used bodies,’ I said with displeasure. ‘That’s what Deus told me.’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘So he retreated to this house to conduct his experiments in secret. Now, there are some hidden doors and passageways in this house, Pandora. You have been here long enough to earn the right to explore the house and, frankly, I know you will anyway.’

I felt the heat on my cheeks.

‘Eventually you will find some of these hidden areas. But there are some things you should know before you do. If you are to explore this building, you must do so carefully. There are dangers.’

I imagined stumbling into rooms infested with hordes of vampires. ‘If I explore, I should do it during the day.’

She shook her head. ‘Not necessarily.’

I was surprised. ‘The Sanguine aren’t the danger then? What is?’

‘Dangers even I can’t know.’

I was taken aback. It seemed to me there was very little my great-aunt did not know. What dangers would she not know about here, in the building she owned? That thought was mildly terrifying.

‘You would do best to bring your guide,’ she said.

‘There’s a guide? Like a map?’

‘Not a map. Your friend, the soldier. I believe he is your guide.’

I couldn’t have been more surprised. Luke? A guide? Well, of course. He would know the house inside out, wouldn’t he?

‘Don’t assume he knows everything that is here,’ she warned me, and I was sure she’d read my mind. ‘And don’t assume he has the power to tell you all that he does know. There are things even he needs to discover in this place. Perhaps you will help him to find what he searches for.’

I opened my mouth to ask what things, but she placed a firm hand on my knee and continued. She had more to tell me tonight.

‘I have something for you,’ she said, and took something small from the silk pocket of her dress. She held the object in her palm, and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again she was uncharacteristically serious. She opened her milky white hand to reveal a piece of jewellery – a ring. The gemstone was jet black, held with ornate, pale gold claws. It was delicate looking, and clearly very old.

‘This ring is very special. I believe it belongs to you,’ my great-aunt said.

‘Belongs to me?’ In my former life I might have protested that I hadn’t seen the ring before, and therefore it could not be mine, but I’d grown used to Celia’s manner of speaking. She believed that certain things were predestined. This ring, she believed, was meant to be mine. Whether or not she’d tell me why was another matter. ‘It’s gorgeous. What is it made of? Is that polished jet?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No. I love my Whitby jet, but no. Look at that shine. Really look within the crystal.’

I did as she said. Deep within the black there seemed to be some small blazing pinpoint of energy.

‘It is the eyes of the dead Pharaohs, the eyes of the Moai on Easter Island, as dark as the soul but with a star of life inside.’ She shifted the ring in her pale palm, and the black blazed and shone. ‘A symbol of rebirth and protection, historically used in talismans and amulets to conjure up spirit energy to safely interact with Earth-bound souls.’

‘Black obsidian,’ I said, marvelling at it.

She nodded. ‘Very good. This ring belonged to your great-great-grandmother, Madame Aurora. It has been waiting for you, Pandora. It will protect you and assist you.’ She handed it to me.

‘This belonged to Madame Aurora?’ Celia had shown me clippings from her infamous days with Barnum and Bailey. She was a gifted psychic in her day, and she was a Lucasta, as I was. Apparently she could even make objects move at her will, which must have really stunned anyone who witnessed it. I imagined tarot cards floating past astonished faces, and clients parting with their cash. I was part of a curious family tree of women with unusual abilities. For reasons I didn’t fully understand, my mother had never told me about Madame Aurora. She’d tried to shield me from her family history.

‘I’m honoured. It’s beautiful . . .’ I held it gently by the band and examined it with awe. The pale gold setting was forged a long time ago, that much was clear. The tiny carvings looked almost like melted wax. The setting had a wonderfully aged patina, but the crystal itself was bright. I couldn’t take my eyes off the inky depth of the blackness, or the light it reflected at its core. It seemed imbued with a mysterious energy. ‘I don’t know what to say. It is truly beautiful.’

Celia nodded. ‘Go on.’

I slipped the ring gently on to my ring finger. It fitted perfectly.

‘There. See how it fits you like it was always there on your hand? Wear it day and night, Pandora.’

I nodded, still staring at it. Was it my imagination, or was the crystal slightly warm?

‘Now Pandora, listen to me carefully.’ Celia was as serious as I’d ever seen her. Her eyes were intensely direct. ‘Never travel below Barrett’s basement laboratory, not under any circumstances.’

‘There is a basement?’

‘It is said that there is.’

‘That’s where the fire was, right? The fire that killed Edmund Barrett?’

She nodded.

‘But you haven’t seen the laboratory yourself?’

‘This house has not opened all its secrets to me. But I do know this, Pandora – never ever travel lower than the laboratory. If you discover a passage that leads underground, do not take it. Do you hear me? Not even with your guide.’

‘Yes, of course. But how will I know if I’ve found the laboratory?’

‘You will know.’

‘But if you haven’t seen it yourself, how can you be sure I will know if I find it?’ I asked.

‘You will know.’

We were both silent for a time.

‘Luke is my guide?’ I finally said.

She nodded.

‘The Seventh always has a spirit guide. And a personal talisman.’

I looked to the ring.

My talisman?