“I’m sorry,” said Happy, “but you and ghost girl can’t be a couple. You just can’t. You know that, JC.”

“You said it yourself,” said Melody. “The living must never get emotionally involved with the dead. It’s not fair to either of you. Love is for the living, for people with a stake in the future.”

“Love conquers all,” murmured Kim. “I heard it in a song, so it must be true.”

“Not this time,” said Melody. “You may not even have an immediate future. It’s looking more and more as though you’re the focal point of this haunting. The central event that supports everything else.”

“Which means,” Happy said slowly, “that the only way to be sure of stopping all this . . . may involve putting you to rest, Kim. Our other-dimensional Intruder is using you to maintain its hold on the material plane. Unless we remove you, and break his hold, he’ll grow stronger and stronger, spreading his horror show across the whole of London. Maybe even further . . .”

“We’ll exorcise that bridge when we come to it,” JC said cheerfully. “I have a plan, a scheme, and a whole bunch of really nasty dirty tricks to try out on our unseen enemy. But first things first. Kim, you’re the only one to have had direct contact with the Intruder. And your dead eyes can see the greater world far more clearly than ours. What can you tell us?”

“Not much,” said Kim. “I’m still getting used to being a ghost. The more I talk with you and your friends, the more awake I feel, the more me . . . But the more human I feel, the harder it is to interpret what I’m seeing and feeling. As though being human . . . limits me. I’ve never seen your Intruder, never heard its voice. But I seem to have this sense of . . . something wild. Something horribly powerful, beyond the laws and limitations of this small world.”

“Not really what I wanted to hear,” said Happy. Melody ignored him, intent on Kim.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she said bluntly. “From when you were alive?”