Tumbling down the stairs didn’t hurt as much as Oscar was expecting. He slammed his head into the wall three times. Somersaulting, he crushed his spine repeatedly on awkwardly shaped steps. He even whomped himself twice in the nose with his own kneecap.

If he’d been alive, he’d probably be dead. Instead, he was just in agonizing pain. Oscar hadn’t realized ghosts could feel pain until now.

Crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, Oscar looked about him. Or tried to. He’d never seen stars before, but he was seeing them now, tiny bursts of pain that exploded behind his eyes like pinprick fireworks.

From what he could see, the cavernous room looked a bit like a crypt from a horror movie. It had cobwebs and moss-eaten statues and sinister, pointy arches. At the same time, it looked just like a mad scientist’s laboratory. At the end of his tumble, Oscar had narrowly avoided impaling himself on a propeller-powered one-person plane. Every surface he could see was crammed with bubbling retorts, Bunsen burners, blunderbusses, brass cones for extinguishing guns, bombs, and brains in jars. A giant mechanical robot suit loomed in the darkness.

Near the stairs, he spotted an incongruous everyday touch: a hat stand with a long coat and scarf and a very familiar, wide-brimmed hat.

Hieronymus Jones.

“Oscar! What are you doing, you fool?” Sally’s voice shouted.

Oscar blinked and looked toward the noise.

“Wake up! Run! While you’ve still time!” Suddenly, Oscar realized that the statue he’d thought he’d seen on the far side of the crypt was actually Sally tied to a pillar. Northcote was lurking in the shadows beside her, watching him.

“I was wondering when you would show up,” the villain said with a wry smile. “Didn’t expect you so soon, though.”

Still a bit dazed, Oscar didn’t reply or get to his feet. He was staring at the tall, unconscious man tied to the pillar next to Sally’s. The man was wearing a suit. He had neat black hair flecked with gray. There were many brass funnels pointing at him, and loads of complicated piping. The air around him hummed with energy, as if a storm was about to break.

“This…is your grandfather,” Northcote bellowed with glee, as if he was revealing a grand secret.

“Mr. Mortis,” Oscar said. “What are you doing to him?”

“My goodness!” Northcote exclaimed. “Not even a flicker of surprise. You’ve worked it out already, haven’t you? Not bad, Oscar!”

The piping that was connected to Mr. Mortis was slowly sucking phantasma from him. The air wobbled around him. It stank. A strange, briny chemical smell. Oscar could see that the pipes were connected to several large bell jars, which were all full of a dark, frothy substance that seemed to writhe as he watched it.

Behind the machine was a huge shelf filled with little glass jars neatly labeled with people’s names. The jars glinted and swirled darkly—the same awful frothing.

Phantasma, Oscar knew at once. All those jars! A lot of ghosts must have been extinguished here.

“Oh, and to answer your question, Oscar, we are killing your grandfather.” Northcote giggled, as if he was surprised at his daring for saying such a thing aloud. “Problem is, it’s taking rather longer than we thought. Huge amount of phantasma stored up in him, you know. He is a deity, after all.”

Sir Cedric clanked past Oscar. He had a brass trumpet in his hand.

“Traitor!” Sally snarled, trying to shake herself free. “Villain! Snake!”

Sir Cedric struck her in the face with a mailed fist. Sally moaned. Then Sir Cedric pointed the brass trumpet at her face.

“Do what we say, Oscar. Or Sally dies.” The plummy, cheerful knight had vanished. The voice that had taken its place was a cold, calculating sneer.

“Don’t listen to him,” Sally said. “Everything he says is a lie.”

“Who are you?” Oscar said.

“You haven’t guessed yet?” Northcote said. “Tsk, tsk, Oscar.”

Sir Cedric flipped up the visor on his helmet. At once, Oscar recognized the face from the Wanted posters. It was Hieronymus Jones himself.

He was smiling.

“How did you get the boy here without a fight, Jones?” Northcote asked.

“Oscar saved me a lot of trouble by working everything out,” Jones said with a shrug. “I just had to nudge him a few times. Made it all very discreet. It’ll be much easier to dispose of the lad down here, in private, than out in Londinium. Perhaps we can harvest him too?”

“Bravo,” murmured Northcote, rubbing his hands together. “We’re nearly set, then.”

“Why?” said Oscar, getting to his feet.

“What do you mean, ‘why’?” Northcote asked.

“Why are you doing all this?”

“For the good of the Ministry,” Northcote said. “The fact is, I do all the real work: the administration, the mountains of paperwork! If you had any idea of the hours I put in while Mr. Mortis loafed about and took all the credit. It was a very inefficient system.”

“Sounds like it’s for the good of Northcote,” said Oscar. He was trying to sidle round, grab something, anything that could be used as a weapon. There were several jars of Mr. Mortis’s phantasma on a table near the plane. Oscar remembered Sally in the Department of Contraptions saying you could use the stuff as a bomb. That made sense. The jars were giving off a ripe, chemical stink that was practically alive.

“That too, my boy. That too. I deserve to be in charge after all my hard work. And Mortis was never going to retire. He had to be helped.”

“You’re both as bad as each other!” Sally shouted. “When this gets out, you’re finished!”

“Finished?” Northcote said. “We’re just getting started.”

“We,” Sally said. “Listen to yourself. You’re teaming up with Hieronymus Jones.”

Oscar wondered if Sally had realized what he was trying to do. She was certainly trying to distract them. He took another couple of steps toward the loaded, stinking jars.

“It made perfect sense,” Northcote said. “I needed to kill Mr. Mortis, and it turned out that Hieronymus here had been working on a plan to do just that for twenty years. That’s why he disguised himself as Sir Cedric. Deep cover. Such admirable dedication to villainy.”

Oscar sidled another few steps.

“You’re idiots,” said Sally. “Extinguish Mr. Mortis and you kill Death. That means no living person will ever die! There’ll be chaos. The world will end!”

“That’s right!” Hieronymus grinned. Oscar could see the madness in his eyes. “No more new ghosts—and the living world will fall apart! Win-win!”

“And fewer ghosts means less work for me! We’ll come out smelling of roses!” Northcote’s eyes were glazed and wild, and he kept fiddling manically with one of the watches hanging from his jacket. Oscar remembered what Sally had told him once, how ghosts can become fixated from doing the same thing, over and over, for hundreds of years. They could lose perspective. But Northcote had done more than just that. He’d gone completely insane.

The two ghosts cackled. Oscar was happy for their good humor to go on. He’d nearly reached the glass jars. One more step and he was there.

“Hold it right there, Oscar.” Jones’s voice lashed out like a whip. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’re doing. Move again and Sally gets it.”

Oscar froze.

“Don’t listen to him,” Sally said. “Do— Aaaaaargh!”

Sally started screaming. Jones had pressed the button and the trumpet was starting to hoover her up.

“How interesting,” Northcote said, watching her die. “These weak ghosts vanish so terribly fast.”

“Stop!” Oscar shouted.

Sally was growing faint already. Oscar couldn’t bear it. “Stop!” he screamed again. “Kill me instead! That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”

“No!” Sally sobbed, but her voice was very faint.

Jones pulled the trumpet away from Sally and advanced on Oscar.

“I’ll make this easy for you,” he said. “Just close your eyes. It’ll be nice and quick.”

“Promise me you’ll let her go,” Oscar said. “Untie her!”

“You have our word,” Northcote said. He started working Sally free from the ropes that bound her. “As a gesture of good faith, I will release her too. There’s something poetic about this. Your father did the same for you. Such a noble sacrifice. Quite heartening, when you think about it.”

Sally slumped to the ground, mumbling something. She was hardly there at all, so faded that barely a shadow remained.

Oscar didn’t close his eyes when Jones raised the trumpet. He watched. Even though it hurt. It hurt worse than anything he had ever experienced before.

The awful shrinking, shredding feeling tore bits of him away. With a kind of dumb horror, he watched worms of phantasma wind out of his body. His phantasma was a lighter color than Mr. Mortis’s—a kind of pearly gray, with bursts of iridescent light curling inside it—quite beautiful, really. It twisted out of his body and whooshed up into the trumpet. The awful jar that Jones was carrying around his waist filled quickly.

Oscar could smell himself dying. A raspy gasoline stink. His vision grew dark.

He began to fade. He fell to his knees, and then his legs gave way and he slumped to the floor. He tried to hold on. He had to save himself for as long as he could.

He was getting thin now. Thin and stretched and the sucking, ravenous hunger never stopped gnawing him away.

He might have been screaming, but it was hard to tell. His ears were long gone.

Jones, very far away, gave a tsk of disgust. He’d filled the jar and needed to change it for a new one. The sucking stopped.

It was glorious.

It was like an angel had suddenly appeared and taken away all of Oscar’s pain. He lay there, watching Jones methodically unscrew the Hungry Bottle and turn to find a new one.

This was the moment he’d been waiting for. With the very last scrap of himself that remained, Oscar drew his crutch from where he’d kept it strapped to his back, trembling with the effort. It felt good in his hand.

It felt right.

This is mine. This is me.

Northcote shouted something, but Oscar couldn’t hear anymore because he didn’t have any ears. He could hardly see either—but he could smell. The stench of Mr. Mortis’s jars was like a beacon.

Oscar lashed out as hard as he could. The crutch connected solidly. The glass smashed. Dark ghost energy spurted into the air. Most of it fell straight onto the engine, which roared to life with a deafening scream.

The blast of air splintered the remaining phantasma into a fine mist. It sprayed on Oscar, and his strength rushed back. Suddenly, he felt better than he’d ever felt before. The rush was overwhelming—a wave of good energy that drove everything bad or weak away.

Oscar felt like he was shining.

He knew exactly what was going on. Jones and Northcote were running toward him. The propeller was screaming like a jet plane about to take off. Jones was raising the trumpet and Northcote wanted to grab him, but Oscar didn’t care about them. He knew exactly what was going to happen next.

He turned toward them, smiling. He was careful to keep his head low.

Three, two, one…, he counted down in his head.

Just as he knew it would, the propeller went into overdrive, spinning so fast it sheered away from the engine.

Jones dived out of the way with catlike grace. Northcote was much less lucky. The propeller caught him in his ample, tweed-jacketed belly and drove him backward.

He smashed into the array of pipes and trumpets that were ranged around Mr. Mortis.

The end was very quick. Just as Northcote himself had said—when a weak ghost is confronted by one of those terrible devices, they vanish pretty quickly. Well, Northcote was weak, and there were at least five Hungry Bottles ravening for his soul.

He disappeared in seconds. He hardly had time to scream.

The remains of the engine exploded, smoke and debris filled the air, glass shattered. Something was burning, but Oscar ignored it. He sprinted over to Sally.

He could barely find her in the smoke—and when he did, he almost missed her, she was that faint.

“Sally!” he shouted.

She didn’t reply.

Oscar grabbed one of Mr. Mortis’s bell jars full of phantasma and threw it over her. It swirled across her body and disappeared.

“Sally!”

Something magic was happening. Oscar watched her grow more solid. She was filling in, growing thicker and bolder. She was actually there.

There was another huge explosion, but Oscar ignored it.

He grabbed her hand.

“Sally!” he shouted. “Can you hear me? Can you see me?”

Sally opened her eyes. She sat up so fast that she almost head-butted Oscar.

“Course I can, you dolt,” she said. “Where’s Jones?”

“I don’t know,” Oscar said. There was no sign of the villain, and Oscar couldn’t remember what had happened to him. “Should we look for him?”

“No—we need to save Mortis!”

Sally bent over the long form of Mr. Mortis. He was still lying motionless on the floor. She pointed to the bell jar that remained unsmashed.

“You pour that on him,” she said. “Lucky you didn’t smash it all. Be sharp now. He hasn’t got long left.”

Oscar didn’t dawdle. Mr. Mortis’s phantasma jumped out of the jar as he tipped it over, as if it was eager to get back home. It splashed down on his body like lumpy rain. There was a little flash of golden light as the drops hit, before they were instantly absorbed into his dark suit.

Mr. Mortis gave a long, slow sigh and opened his eyes.

He blinked with surprise. “I’m not dead?” His voice was weak—but there was something familiar about it too. Oscar was sure he’d heard it before.

“No,” he said. “You’re not.”

“And who are you?” Mr. Mortis said. He frowned. “What are you?”

“I’m…” Oscar looked for Sally—she’d be better at explaining what had happened, but the detective was gone. She had run over to the shelf of bottles and was searching through them as if her life depended on it.

“What are you doing?” said Oscar, who was still more than a little bewildered by everything.

Sally ignored him and kept on hunting through the shelves.

“Yes!” Suddenly, Sally was screaming in triumph. With great care, she removed two of the bottles from the shelf. “I can save Mum and Dad, Oscar! You did it! We did it!”

“Can someone please explain what is happening?” said Mr. Mortis again. “I thought I was going to Fiji.”