‘Are you singing?’ Rani wasn’t looking at me. Her sword was steady and her whole attention was on the ghosts.

‘Sort of.’

‘Anything in particular?’

‘Classic Aussie kids’ TV stuff.’

‘Time and place, Anton. Time and place.’

Two ghosts. Easy. We’d practised this over and over. Rani would herd them, using the flat and hilt of her sword. I’d ease one on its journey while Rani kept the other occupied, and then I’d attend to the leftover. No mess, no fuss.

At least that’s how it was in the good old days a few months ago, before ghosts started getting so goddamn aggressive. I mean, ghosts are hard enough to handle when they’re not violent. If even the most pathetic of spooks was going to get all punchy-stabby, we were going to have to adapt.

Rani nudged me. Another pair of ghosts was marching down the stairs behind the first pair.

Eep.

Remember the fear ghosts generate? It’s all well and good when there’s only one, but start stacking a few ghosts together and the fear factor rises in a geometric way rather than an arithmetic way, if I can channel Bec for a second. It gets scarier quicker than you expect, in other words. Crateloads of ghosts means crateloads of fear, and even experienced ghost hunter Anton Marin, the scourge of spectres everywhere, was a little wobbly in the knees.

To fend off panic, my brain started categorising this procession of apparitions. Lurkers? Lingerers? Mopers? A man and a woman were descending next, also in high Victorian finery. Nice bonnet. Sighers?

They started making noise, a deep and soulful sound that juiced up the fear quotient a couple of hundred per cent. Then I had it: Moaners. These ghosts love laying down laments that are usually at the edge of hearing for ordinary people, just audible enough to be mighty unsettling. If they hang around long-term, people get fretful, anxious and headachey; life just isn’t fun anymore.

You don’t want Moaners as a permanent feature of any place people like to be.

These guys were halfway down when Rani became a blur of movement. She used her sword to batter the front two ghosts and prevent them from making any further progress. Which was good, but it resulted in a multi-ghost pile-up as more of them came down the stairs.

I mean, what was going on up there? Ghost speed-dating? Ghost dancing and cabaret? Ghosts a-go-go?

I ducked Rani’s swinging blade and plunged my hands into the chest of the first ghost, a lanky guy with a magnificent pair of mutton-chop whiskers and nice posture. As soon as I did, his vagueness disappeared. Glaring wildly, his eyes snapped onto me and he clawed at my face with one hand, but a quick wringing sent him on his way. I was buffeted by memories of a dry and dusty office where the sound of a ticking clock was the most important thing in the world.

I gritted my teeth and plunged into his buddy, twisted and hardly had time to be assaulted by the sound of music – a cello, starting and stopping again over a difficult piece – and then I was working my way up the stairs, easing the ghosts one by one, with Rani by my side attracting their attention with efficient swordplay.

None of them went quietly. They all tried something – punching, grappling, even biting – but Rani and I were ready for them.

We reached the first floor and I dealt with the last of the ghosts, a youngish woman who left me with the sensations of sunrise on a frosty morning and enormous gratitude towards Rani, who stopped her biting my nose off. ‘Done?’ I panted, but my jittering pendant had other ideas.

A couple of offices opened off the landing, but Rani pointed to the Ellery Theatre sign on the closed double doors. ‘In there.’

That high ceiling and those elaborate cornices again, in a lecture theatre that sloped down to a lectern, a big screen, and a massive bookcase against the wall. The chairs were well padded, comfortable, and full of ghosts.

Gulp.

Like the increasing ghostly aggression, gatherings of so many ghosts in one place at one time was a new thing; Rani and I were still getting used to it. Way back when my Aunt Tanja took me out to show me the ropes, before she disappeared, it was almost always solitary ghosts to dispatch, occasionally a pair. Lately, though, ghosts were manifesting in droves. Our difficult job was getting difficulter.

This ghostly crowd was quiet, simply sitting and gazing dreamily at the front of the lecture theatre. They appeared to be a variation on Mopers, simply hanging around. I leaned close to Rani. ‘Stuck in a memory loop?’

Ghosts get like this sometimes, repeating actions they performed often in life. To some theoreticians, this is more evidence that ghosts are some type of information routine, corrupted and thrown off by the trauma of death. To other theoreticians, it’s more evidence that ghosts are really, really creepy.

It takes all kinds, but all kinds – except for some whackos right out on the fringes of ghost-hunting society – agree that ghosts aren’t people, or the souls of people. Most believe that they’re separate entities based on us, spawned at the moment of death.

‘Science lectures.’ Rani stood on tiptoes to get a good look around. ‘Very popular back in the nineteenth century. The scientist presenters were celebrities, like rock stars.’

‘They’d be the geologists, right, the rock stars?’ and before she could respond by hitting me, I apologised. I had to, really.

If I didn’t know better I would have thought the ghosts were listening attentively to an invisible lecturer. If they weren’t so floaty and transparent, they could have passed for a bunch of steampunk cosplayers, minus the stuck-on cogs and gears.

They were almost all men – boo! The Victorian era might sound all romantic and appealing, but it was incredibly blokey in a way that’d drive me insane.

I took a deep breath and wished I had a signature move for this moment, like that ‘tilting neck sideways until it cracks’ thing, which I’ve never understood. Sounds painful to me. ‘So many of them,’ I breathed.

‘It could be a good time for me to help,’ Rani said. ‘You know, help the Marin way.’

Double take, the Anton way. I’d taken half a step towards the nearest ghost when Rani dropped that bomb, and I tried to take back the step while whipping my head around to look at her. I didn’t tangle my feet and fall over, but it was a near thing. ‘You what?’

‘Easing ghosts, the Marin way. Dispatching them humanely, instead of slashing them to pieces.’

‘You want to give up everything you learned from the Company of the Righteous?’

‘Not everything – but this isn’t the time to argue about it.’

‘Who’s arguing? I was thinking of a wide and free-flowing discussion.’

Rani gave me a look that combined tolerance and pity, one I get a lot. She slipped past me and then pushed both her hands right into the back of the nearest ghost. She stiffened for a second, then closed her eyes and sagged a little before her forearms worked and the ghost flew apart.

Rani sank to the floor. I hurried to her side but she was already struggling to her feet. ‘Peppermint.’ Her gaze was distant. ‘Christmas … the smell of pine. Playing with toys, over and over and over.’

‘Deep breaths. You’ve been swamped by ghost memories.’

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead a little. ‘You’ve told me about this.’

‘Takes some getting used to. You want to sit down for a while?’

‘Sod that. We have work to do.’

There were plusses and minuses to what followed. The positive was that having Rani do some easing meant we could work our way through this ghost crowd in good time. The negative was that since she was doing her own easing, she wasn’t at my side to protect me when the ghosts tried to kill me.

Pretty quickly, I learned to keep my chin tucked, not to expose my throat. Working fast was tactically sound, as was sneaking up from behind. These guys were pretty insubstantial, like most Mopers, and their efforts to thump or throttle me were reasonably pathetic, except for a few who pulled out objects.

Mopers with objects. I’d have to get Dad and Bec on this, because it definitely pointed to a new category of ghosts. There’s always been an odd ghost here and there who clutches something from life, almost like a memory made solid. Weepers, for instance, sometimes cling to an object – baby booties, a lock of hair, the source of their unending woe.

But these Mopers with objects – Mopjects? – were trying to hit me with things that well-off Victorian gentlefolk would have had about them. One tried to clonk me over the head with a hipflask, another went to strangle me with his watch chain, a woman went from faraway to fierce in record time and tried to take my eyes out with a hatpin.

That earned her a yelp and a super-quick easing.

Most of the objects were pretty insubstantial, though, passing right through me with no harm done – except for the hatpin, which bounced off my forehead with a sting like a mosquito.

On top of all that I had to brace myself against the deluge of memories, all different in their own ways. Not all of them were memories of childhood. Other people – dear ones, even enemies – featured a lot; but not the people so much as feelings about them. Heaps of regret, affection, lust, but also anger and even dread. At the same time there was a barrage of sensory recollections like smells, sounds, feelings of warmth and sensation on skin. Ghosts may not be people, but this rolling wave of human experience emphasises that they’re close to us somehow.

After I dispatched the last ghost I stood there, trembling and holding my aching head.

Rani was exhausted and, weirdly for her, a little unsteady on her feet. ‘You okay?’ I asked.

‘I’ll manage.’

Keeping an eye on her, I used my pendant to lock the doors after we slipped out the back way, onto Victoria Street and away. ‘You okay to drive?’ I asked when we reached her car. ‘I mean, if you dispatch ghosts and drive you’re a bloody idiot.’

She blipped the door and opened it, but didn’t get in. ‘Are you offering to drive?’

‘We can catch a tram. Seriously, you’re looking a bit wobbly.’

‘You’re not looking entirely robust yourself.’ She jingled her keys for a while, then shut the door a little as a pizza deliverer on a bike whistled past. Any time is pizza time. ‘I didn’t realise what you’ve been going through,’ she said. ‘All those memories.’

‘Well, it’s one of those things. It mightn’t be easy, but it’s the best way.’

‘You know what all of those ghosts left me with?’ She didn’t wait for my answer. ‘Under all that aggression, when they were on the brink of going on, they were grateful.’

‘You get that. A lot of them don’t truly want to be here, you know.’

‘But where do they go, isn’t that still the big question?’

‘Above my pay grade.’

‘You wouldn’t be a ghost hunter if you didn’t think about it, though.’ Rani got into the car. ‘Come on, I’m taking you for a treat.’

‘Hey, the ghost-hunting night is still young!’ I got into the car and brandished my phone. ‘Bec’s lined up dozens of sightings for us to look into.’

‘I know,’ Rani said patiently, and she pulled out her phone. ‘But it’s after midnight now and they can wait. It’s now, officially, a very special day, after all.’

‘Oh.’

She kissed me on the cheek. ‘Happy birthday, Anton.’