“Go back to that moment,” I told her. “Feel that happiness again. The sun is rising, bathing the hills in light. Can you see it?”

“Yes! Yes! It’s so bright!”

“Then walk toward it. Go to the light. You can do it. Just a few steps and you’ll be there!”

The ghost was smiling now. She took three paces toward the window and then faded away completely.

My task was over. She’d gone to the light, and that gave me great satisfaction. Often a spook fought the dark and found only fear and violence. It was satisfying to be able to help a lost soul like Miriam. This job had been far easier than most, but today that wasn’t the end of the problem.

The girl had mentioned something heavy sitting on her chest. I would have dismissed it . . . but for one thing. This was the third County girl who’d died in similar circumstances in the same number of months. And each ghost had given the same account of feeling a heavy weight on her chest. But Miriam was the first to have woken up and seen a creature feeding from her.

I was dealing with something very unusual. There was work to be done.

I returned to the house at Chipenden. I’d inherited it from my master, and it was mine to live in as long as I worked as a spook. That suited me fine. As far as I was concerned, this was a job for life.

The following day I got up soon after dawn, picked up my staff, and went out into the garden. There was a tree stump there that my master and I had routinely used for practicing our fighting skills.

Soon I was driving the blade of my staff into the wood again and again until I was breathing hard and dripping with sweat. I was out of condition, a long way off my former peak of fitness.

The staff, with its retractable silver-alloy blade crafted to fight witches, was a spook’s main weapon, and I needed to regain my former skill in using it as soon as possible.

I tried the move in which I flicked my staff from one hand to the other before driving it into the stump. I was clumsy, so I kept at it until I felt I’d improved.

Since my master had died, almost ten months ago now, I’d done my best to deal with the dark, but I hadn’t kept up my fighting skills. Gradually I’d done less and less. I hadn’t had the heart, because it reminded me too much of the days when John Gregory and I had trained together. But now I realized that this must become a daily routine again. I needed to be ready for any eventuality. The death of the third girl had brought home to me the fact that I needed to keep both my wits and my skills sharp and to continue to gather knowledge—there was still much I didn’t know.