The time was just cruising past seven o’clock when I switched on the Gaggia and made something to eat while Rani cleaned and honed her sword. Not because it needed it, just out of habit, I think. Five minutes later, I had a spread ready. ‘Hummus, flatbread, olives, feta cheese and some cherry tomatoes. Coffee’s ready soon.’

She undid her sword belt and hung it on a peg near the door. She inspected the dip. ‘This is your hummus?’

‘Of course.’ I’d discovered some time ago that dried chickpeas crap all over tinned ones when making hummus. They need a bit of planning for the soaking and cooking, but the results are worth it. Anyway, I am the King of Planning, right?

‘You’re not a bad cook, Anton,’ she said and popped a cherry tomato into her mouth.

‘Ghost hunter, cook and playboy millionaire, that’s me.’

‘And two out of three isn’t bad.’

Dad and Tanja were at the big desk at one end of the Secret Room. Dad looked up and waved a finger at me, but Tanja grabbed his ear and made him pay attention to what she was pointing at in a big old book. As well as the grey streaks in her hair and the weight loss, her skin had an unhealthy cast to it. The backs of her hands were dry and flaky, too, and she was rubbing at them again.

Bec and Rani had taken over the long table in the middle of the Secret Room and they were surrounded by piles of books and documents. They both had laptops open. Bec lifted her head and popped out an ear bud. Hamilton cast recording. Good choice. ‘Hey, Anton.’ She shook her head. ‘We’re having trouble making headway.’

‘So many splinter groups among Trespassers.’ Rani tapped her chin with a forefinger. ‘In looking for evidence of the Ragged Sisters we’ve come across mentions of Tattered Sisters, the Ragged Ones, the Raggedy Sisters, the Jagged Family, the White Sisterhood and one handwritten note that simply says “Sisters film”. Leon, is that your writing?’

Dad looked up and shrugged. ‘What can I say? Tina Fey is a comedy legend.’

I had no response to that. The man’s a constant surprise.

‘Hey, Leon,’ Tanja said. ‘Can you put your hands on a copy of The Index of Lost Families, pronto?’

Dad stood while Bec consulted her laptop. ‘Roll the bays until you get to the fourth.’

The electric motors hummed while the shelves moved aside until the fourth bay was exposed. ‘Top shelf, about a third of the way from the left,’ Bec added.

While Tanja muttered to herself, Dad found what he was looking for and bumbled back to the table leafing through the large blue leather-bound volume. ‘Pascal or Paschal,’ he read and looked over the top of the book at us. ‘There’s an “h” in the second one,’ he explained. ‘“All records of this family have been expunged after the Marseilles Atrocities.”’

He frowned at us, but before he could ask, Bec consulted her laptop and then leaped to the shelves. ‘Got it, Leon.’

More humming, more robotic shifting, but Bec was stymied by not being able to reach the top shelf. In an instant Rani was at her side, and she slipped out the slim volume Bec was after. She handed it to Dad.

He inspected the spine of the book. ‘This is yours, Tanja.’

‘Yeah?’ She held out a hand. ‘So it is. Forgot about that one.’ She read from it. ‘“The Marseilles Atrocities were a series of ritual murders attributed to the Ragged Sisters under the control of the Pascal family, after which an alliance of great houses banded together to exterminate this insane cult for all time.” Punchy, but overdramatic. An early work.’

‘I thought all records of the Pascal family were expunged?’ I said.

‘What can I say?’ Tanja responded. ‘I’ve got some unusual sources and I’m not afraid to write what others won’t.’

Dad hissed through his teeth. ‘So many wicked groups out there, but these Ragged Sisters sound worse than most.’

‘Even if we have no more trouble from the Ragged Sisters,’ Rani said, ‘I have an awful feeling that we simply won’t be able to cope with the numbers of ghosts that are appearing.’ She held up a notepad. ‘Four pages of sightings have been registered by our ghost spotters just since last night.’

An idea had been swirling around in my head like a streamer-strewn merry-go-ground which, you have to admit, would be pretty swirly, but before I could toss it onto the table Bec spoke up. ‘Time for some findings sharing. Gather round, everyone.’

‘PowerPoint?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but good PowerPoint, including the all-time argument stopper.’

‘You mean …?’

‘Yes. I have graphs.’

I’d heard stories of people who could successfully link Excel and PowerPoint, and I’d always laughed, thinking they were made up: ancient gods and heroes and people who could scratch your back, when asked, and hit exactly the spot you wanted first time. Legends, in other words.

Bec showed us that such things were possible. She fired up the projector and soon we were looking at a graph. It was pretty stark. Something was trending upwards like a reverse ski jump, enough to get a low, dismayed whistle from someone.

Me. That someone was me.

‘This is the number of ghost sightings in Melbourne over the last twelve months, according to the records.’ Bec’s laser hit the appropriate label. ‘I’ve tabulated all of the instances that have come in from the ghost-spotter network one way or another.’

‘So the figures are raw and unconfirmed,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t the number of dispatchings be a better measure of what’s going on?’

‘As if I didn’t consider that.’ Bec clicked and another graph slide replaced the first. In this one, the graph was heading upwards as if rocket-propelled.

‘Oh.’ I was lost for words. Amazing but true.

‘There’s no sign of things slowing down, either,’ Rani pointed out. ‘If anything, the trend is accelerating.’

Bec sighed. ‘I’m seeing all sort of reports of a huge spike in hospital admissions for non-specific conditions, too. Unceasing headaches, weird fatigue, loss of appetite, that sort of thing all clumping up together. Systemic unwellness is how one doctor put it.’

‘That sounds like chronic ghost attachment,’ Dad said. ‘But that’s a rare thing.’

‘Not anymore,’ Bec said. ‘Not right now.’

‘I’m not convinced until I see a graph,’ I said.

Bec spread her hands. ‘I don’t have hard statistics. This is anecdotal and I don’t graph anecdotes.’

‘Good thing, too.’

‘If this all keeps going, it means one thing,’ Bec said. ‘Armageddon, the apocalypse, dystopia and the end of civilisation as we know it, probably.’

‘Looks like we’re going to need a bigger ghost-hunting enterprise,’ I said.