I didn’t want to unleash more potentially angry spirits if they weren’t going to help, but Rosie nodded and said, “His anger is what’s been keeping them here.”

We each reached for a hand and tugged. Two more lost people stepped through the mirror. It seemed to be easier for them now that Rosie had paved a way by doing it once. Perhaps it was simpler too because they didn’t have solid bodies 321like hers. Even if they’d been alive when they’d first vanished, they were now long-since dead, their bodies were thin and insubstantial, and their hands felt like they were barely there. First the keeper and then the woman I’d seen in the fog both emerged from the mirror. I guessed it was the first time they hadn’t been lost in fog or mirror worlds since their disappearance, and they wasted no time. Together, they flew through the windows of the lantern room and descended on Conall just as Will climbed up on to the rails.

Conall struggled and fought in their grip, but they were two adults against one child, and together they dragged him back through the glass, into the lantern room, and thrust him against the dozens of eager hands still reaching out from the mirror.

“No!” he hissed, fury contorting his ravaged features. “You can’t take me from the lighthouse! It’s mine! It’s—!”

But that was as far as he got before the hands closed over his mouth and face and limbs. His whole body vanished into the mirror, and the keeper and the woman went after him. And then the glass was empty. No ghosts, no hands, just ordinary 322glass reflecting the room back at us. And in that reflection I saw Will perched on the railing. He was facing us and had clearly seen what had happened. There was relief and delight on his face, and he was already lifting his leg to climb back to safety.

But then a bolt of lightning forked through the sky and struck the tower, smashing up part of the balcony. The impact made the entire lighthouse shudder alarmingly, smashing the broken window and shaking the door free of its hinges. The rails there were very old and couldn’t take the impact. The section Will clung to came free with a hideous squealing of metal.

It all happened in a flash.

One moment Will was there.

The next … he wasn’t.

323

Chapter Twenty-five

“WILL!” My shout was so loud that it felt like something in my throat actually tore.

He was gone. As if satisfied that it had done its worst, the storm suddenly calmed down too. The wind dropped and the rain slowed to a steady patter rather than driving needles.

“Oh God.” I turned to Rosie. “Stay here, OK?”