“Do you see?” Oscar asked. “It’s not a coincidence, is it?”

Sir Cedric took the dog-eared photo of Oscar’s father and laid it next to the picture of Mr. Mortis in the book. The knight had turned up at the inn an hour after Oscar, carrying files from GLE HQ that could help with the case—he’d even managed to snag Lady M’s personal file from a contact in Ghost Resources. Sally still hadn’t arrived from her house, where she must still have been gathering files.

“Laddie, there’s no denying it,” he murmured. “The same long nose, the same high forehead. Those wide dark eyes and a widow’s peak! They are practically identical. By gad, sir, Mr. Mortis is your grandfather!”

Oscar could hear the wonder in Sir Cedric’s voice.

Oscar could still feel the same wonder himself. His mind was buzzing with ideas—of course it explained a lot, but then again, there were so many more questions now that needed answers.

Like: What happened if the God of Death was your grandpa?

Suddenly, Sir Cedric dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “It is an honor, my lord.”

Now Oscar felt embarrassed. “No need for that.”

“I owe fealty to the offspring of my liege lord,” Sir Cedric said, still kneeling. “It is your due.”

“Don’t think many living people would agree with you about honor,” Oscar said. “My mum always told me it was a real scandal when my granny had a baby when she wasn’t married. She never admitted who the father was to anyone—not even my dad. I suppose that all makes sense now.”

“Living people do get judgmental about these things,” Sir Cedric agreed. “Small-minded. Such things matter so much less when you are dead.”

“I don’t know,” Oscar said. “The god of death isn’t an ideal boyfriend, is he?”

Sir Cedric chortled. The laugh echoed hollowly inside his helmet. “On the contrary, he is the greatest boyfriend you might wish for. And this explains a lot about you, young Oscar.”

It did. If Mr. Mortis represented death in the world, that certainly explained why Oscar killed flowers when he touched them.

The genetic lottery. Some people got blue eyes or a good memory from their parents. Oscar got the power of death.

It also explained why Mr. Mortis had made that extraordinary agreement with Oscar’s father and broken all the rules just to keep Oscar alive. Oscar didn’t know how he felt about that choice. His grandfather had allowed his son to die to save his grandson.

Oscar couldn’t really bear that thought. The chance he’d been given.

“I won’t waste it, Dad,” he muttered. “I promise.”

Sir Cedric was watching him carefully.

“My lord,” he began.

“Don’t call me that,” Oscar said.

“My lord,” insisted Sir Cedric, “shall we go see where young Cromarty has got to?”

It seemed terribly odd that Sir Cedric was deferring to him.

“Very well,” Oscar said.

It took half an hour to ride by ostrich to Sally’s small ghost house in Mile End. Oscar felt very conspicuous as they galloped through the streets, but no one took any notice. That was a good thing about ghost life—everything was so crazy that you could blend in pretty easily. Sir Cedric kept an eye out for GLE patrols, but they didn’t see any ghosts out looking for them.

Someone had come looking for Sally, though.

Her red door was hanging off its hinges, shattered. It looked as if it had been punched in by a giant fist.

“By Mortis’s beard!” Sir Cedric exclaimed, a wobble of shock in his voice.

They ran inside. Oscar was desperately afraid.

“Sally!” he shouted. “Sally!”

The usual cheerful mess of Sally’s house was a now a broken bomb site. There were signs of struggle everywhere. Drifts of paper were strewn about, and Sally’s modest possessions were smashed or tumbled out of drawers.

She hadn’t had very much. A few sticks of furniture. A few jars of sweets. A dead rubber plant.

“Sally!” Oscar shouted, running up the stairs. There was no answer.

When he came downstairs, Sir Cedric was kneeling on the floor, sifting through the papers.

“This is your case file, my lord,” he said. “I wonder what was taken.”

“Apart from Sally, you mean.” Something horrible occurred to Oscar. “What happens to a ghost’s body when it is extinguished? Does it disappear?”

“If Sally had been extinguished, there would be a residue, my lord,” said Sir Cedric carefully. “The process is quite messy. I do not believe that happened here.”

“Here,” Oscar said. The knight’s implication was clear. It might be happening right now, somewhere else. “Where has Jones taken her?”

Sir Cedric shook his head. “Do you think it was Jones?”

“Look,” Oscar said. He picked up a gray cardboard folder. It was his death file that they’d taken from the Archive. During the struggle, some ash had spilled across the floor from the grate and someone, stepping in it, had left a dirty, great footprint across the file.

“Whoever owned this shoe is the one who took her,” Oscar said. “Funny kind of shoe. It’s a bit pointy.”

“So it is,” Sir Cedric said. “Might I have a look, my lord?”

Oscar was about to hand over the file when he noticed something else. The dirt and soot from the bootprint had uncovered another bit of ghost writing. Writing that Oscar hadn’t noticed the first time. It was easy to see why: the writing was very small and precise, printed in a neat bureaucratic hand that was quite different from Mr. Mortis’s extravagant flow. It was on the bottom part of the folder, just below Mr. Mortis’s signature. He turned the page to the light and read.

Addendum to Contract

Solemnly witnessed by

Sir Merriweather Northcote

“Hang on,” Oscar said. “So Northcote was there at the accident? When it happened?”

“That is his signature,” Sir Cedric said. “So it would seem so.”

“But he said he had no idea about any of this! That means he was lying. He knew who I was all along, and he didn’t say anything!”

“Deuced odd,” said Sir Cedric. “Dammee!”

“It’s more than odd,” said Oscar. “It’s suspicious. What if he’s the one behind all this?”

“Northcote?” Sir Cedric asked. “Are you sure? The man’s a withered prune.”

“I’m positive,” Oscar said, surprised at how certain he felt. “He’s always complaining about how he doesn’t get any credit. How he does all the work. What if he’s done something to Mr. Mortis and wants to take his job? That Fiji story was awfully fishy. And Northcote could easily use his clout to get Hieronymus Jones all that gear. They must be in league!”

“A dangerous and deadly ally,” said Sir Cedric, but he was nodding along. “You see things truly, Oscar. But that still doesn’t explain why he would want to kill you.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’m not worth the bother, am I?”

“Ohoho! Yes, you are, my lord!” Now it was Sir Cedric’s turn to have a good idea. He slapped two metal fists together. “Perhaps he wants to kill you because you have Mortis’s blood flowing in your veins? Perhaps your very existence is the only thing keeping him from achieving total power? It is potent, you know, your inheritance. You’re the last thing he needs to tidy up. It’s the kind of detail that Northcote wouldn’t miss.”

That felt true to Oscar—and more than a little scary. Northcote had a really good reason for killing him—Oscar was the most powerful ghost in the world.

Sir Cedric was already striding out of the house.

“Wait!” Oscar said. “Where are you going?”

“To stop him, of course,” Sir Cedric said, climbing up on its back. “And to save Sally. Keep up, my lord.”

Once Oscar climbed in, Sir Cedric was away. He drove the ostrich hard, whizzing through London at breakneck speed. The crutch strapped to Oscar’s back made it awkward to sit on the bird, but there was no way Oscar was leaving it behind.

“Every second counts,” Sir Cedric growled. “Sally is in terrible danger.”

It took them only seventeen minutes to arrive at the Ministry. This must have been some kind of record, Oscar thought. Sir Cedric had ridden like a lunatic—half the time, the ostrich had been almost flying, threatening to tumble over. He’d taken such risks that Oscar had shut his eyes for the last five minutes of the trip.

It was only when the ostrich had come to a complete halt that he dared to open them again.

“All right,” Oscar said, staring up at the imposing Ministry building. “So now we go back there? Back up to Mr. Mortis’s office?”

“Precisely, my lord,” Sir Cedric said. “You have hit the nail on the proverbial tombstone. We will go there, and we will confront the villain Northcote.”

“How are we going to get inside? Won’t they have guards?”

“We have right on our side.” Sir Cedric stood tall and jutted out his chin. In his armor, he looked the very picture of a noble knight.

Then he bent down toward Oscar and tapped a finger on his helmet, just where his nose would have been. It clanked softly.

“Also, I know a cunning way in,” he whispered. “Helped build the new extension a thousand years ago. Know all sorts of secrets, my lord.”

“That’s handy,” Oscar said.

Sir Cedric’s cunning way in turned out to be Mr. Mortis’s private staircase. It wound up through the heart of the building, and it was utterly unguarded. They climbed stairs for a long time. Sir Cedric whistled “Rule, Britannia!” all the way.

At the top was a secret door hidden behind a portrait. Sir Oscar looked out through the picture’s eyes and scanned the room.

“Good,” he said. “There’s no one there.”

Oscar couldn’t help feeling that this was all a little easy, but he wasn’t complaining. They made a quick search of the office. Sadly, Northcote hadn’t left any incriminating documents behind. Oscar was a little disappointed—in his mind’s eye he’d imagined a little folder with MY EVIL PLAN stamped on it in red letters. It seemed like the kind of thing that Northcote would do.

“What now?” Oscar asked. “Do we wait for him to show up? What about Sally?”

Sir Cedric was searching through the garbage bin. “He will return, I’m sure of it.”

Oscar wandered about. This didn’t feel right. He was missing something.

His eye fell on the cupboard in the corner of the room. Suddenly, he remembered Northcote standing beside it and whispering. When he reached for the handle, he felt a familiar cold tingle and a shiver ran down his spine.

He had been missing something. There was phantasma here.

Oscar examined the handle. It looked wrong for the door—too big—and oddly familiar.

Oscar blinked at it for a moment. Where had he seen it before? He pictured Hieronymus Jones pulling a handle out of his pocket. He saw him use it to open a door in midair and escape. This was the same one, he was sure of it.

“It’s only a handle,” he said as he turned it.

The door creaked open on an impossible space. Ancient stone stairs led down into the darkness. A cold wind blew up from the depths. The air smelled of dank and decay and great age. There was a faint sound of humming machinery too.

He turned with a smile, ready to share his discovery.

“Loo—”

Sir Cedric hit Oscar in the face with the wastepaper basket. The blow sent Oscar reeling.

What’d he do that for? he thought, until he was hit with the truth.

Sir Cedric was a traitor.

Then his feet went out from under him. Rolling backward, he tumbled down the stairs into the darkness.