“Taylor? Are you alright?” The door opened; Mum was back and she wasn’t alone. “You haven’t tried to move, have you?”

“No.” I leaned one hand against the oddly warm surface of a mirror. My heart thudded in my ears and I couldn’t look away from my reflection.

A man appeared behind me. His image lay beneath my hand, so it looked as if I was pressing him into the glass. This mirror made us into stick people and I couldn’t tell what he really looked like, so I turned around.

The man in front of me looked like an action hero!

He wore the same vest as his brother, but on him it looked really good. Like Danny Zuko from Grease. His hair was shiny and black.

“Taylor?” Mum pressed her hand to my shoulder. “This is Bill. He’s going to carry you down the steps.”

“But…?”

“Don’t be shy, honey. Remember what we talked about?”

My mouth went dry and I tried to lick my lips.

Suddenly the man’s arms were around my shoulder. Before I could help myself, I inhaled. He smelled of lemon shower gel. Underneath there was the sour smell of sweat, cigarettes and something unidentifiable and sweet that would forever remind me of the fairground.

He half lifted me off my feet. “Alright, love?” He gave me a lopsided grin. “Got to be careful in here, it’s dark.”

I stuck my Marked hand resolutely inside my jacket.

“Taylor?”

I ignored Mum and limped alongside the man who held me in his arms, smiling gratefully up at him as if I really was hurt.

The door opened and the light hit his face. Away from the flattering darkness I could see flaws. His skin was more sallow than olive and his black hair had obviously been dyed.

“Mister, I was wondering, are there any clowns at the fair? I love clowns.” The lie almost made me choke, but not as much as the fleeting look that crossed the man’s face: a glimmer of rage that chilled me to my toes. Suddenly his fingers on my shoulders felt like claws.

“We just lost our clown,” he said and his teeth were gritted, “but there’re some good acrobats over in the main tent.”

“Y-you don’t like clowns?”

“Some clowns are alright, but ours was interfering.” He pressed his lips together and I swallowed, making a decision. At the bottom of the steps I pulled my hand free of my jacket and offered it him to shake.

As the killer pressed his palm to mine I felt a tingle. He held my hand slightly too long and smiled when he released it. I stepped backwards and looked for the Mark. It had gone.

“Come on, Taylor, time to go.” Mum grabbed my shoulder and I just barely remembered to limp. As we left I turned around. The killer stood with his hands on his hips and a grin on his face. But my eyes were drawn to the shadows around the Hall of Mirrors. They were darker than anywhere else and were moving towards his feet.

“Mum…?”

“Don’t look, Taylor.” She grabbed my shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

Justin looked impressed. “So you did it?”

“Yeah. On the way home Mum told me about the curse, how it's carried through the female line, how there's a fifty-fifty chance I'll pass it to my own children.”

I looked at the white glove I wore whenever a Mark was on me. “I was ten and my life was over. Suddenly I was being told that I'd never stop seeing ghosts and I'd have to spend my life tracking down killers.” I trailed my fingers along the glass case surrounding the sarcophagus. “And that I won't be able to have kids, not without giving them the same thing.”

“Sucks for you.”

I nodded. “Worst birthday ever.”

“And your Dad can't see the ghosts?”

“He thinks I'm ill, that I have a skin condition and the rest is all in my head.”

“That must be hard.” Sympathy changed Justin’s face. “So you've been seeing the dead for what, five years?”

“Since we met.”

“Look, Taylor,” he rubbed his face and stepped away from me. “Maybe your Dad's right.”

“What?” I spluttered. “How can you not believe me? You’re one of them.”

“Obviously I believe you see ghosts.” His hand lifted as if to touch my shoulder then changed direction as if repelled, and slipped into the glass case. “That part could be the illness at work, changing something in your brain, letting you see stuff that other people can’t. But this thing about avenging murder victims. Maybe that’s the part that’s made up.”

“You–”

“No, listen. What if you don’t really need to avenge the dead? Maybe someone in your family came up with it as a way of justifying what happens to you.”

My chest felt tight, like I was wearing a corset. I ripped off my glove. “Is this all in my head?”

Justin examined my hand as though I was holding out an interesting beetle. “I thought you wore that because of eczema.”

“It happened when you touched me, just like the clown. Once we find your killer I’ll touch them and this Mark will move from my skin to theirs. Then the Darkness will take them away.”

Justin cleared his throat. “What is the Darkness?” His foot moved through the shadows that surrounded the sarcophagus.

I shook my head. “It’s… the Darkness. It’s meant to take murderers to Anubis for judgment.”

Our faces were both reflected in front of the dead Egyptian and in the glass we both looked like ghosts.

Justin stood almost a head taller than me. His hair and eyes toned with mine; a brown so dark it was almost black. But my eyes were slanted almonds and his were round-edged and deep set, preventing a true match. He had lost his tan over the years and was naturally pale. The skin of his throat curved above his tie soft as the petals of a flower. Not for the first time, it struck me that he looked like someone I should really like. It was a shame I didn’t.

Strands of my hair shifted around my shoulders as the air-conditioning blew over us so gently I barely felt it. Through our reflections I could see the face of the mummy and the phantom of the display behind us; tiny statuettes of Thoth.

Our eyes met. Then Justin looked down at himself and ran his hand over his jumper, flattening it over his chest. “I feel solid.”

I said nothing as he pinched his sleeve between his fingers as if he’d only just realised what he was wearing. He offered a strained half smile. “I’m dead and I’m stuck in this crappy uniform.”

I snorted. “As far as I know your consciousness resurrects you in the last way it remembers. You must’ve been wearing your uniform when you died. Look, after we find your killer you won’t have to hang around here. I don’t know exactly what’ll happen to you but I’d have thought you had better things to worry about than the dress code.”

“What happens if you don’t transfer that Mark?” He pointed to my hand and I closed my fist around it.

“In a couple of weeks the Darkness will come for the bearer of the Mark. If I don’t pass it on, it’ll come for me.”

“And me?”

“No, but you won’t be able to move on. You’ll be stuck here, unable to touch. No eating, sleeping, nothing.”

“It might not be so bad.” He shuffled his feet. “I could go to films, that sort of thing. You don’t know what this whole moving on thing is. You don’t know that it’s a good thing.”

“Ghosts all want to move on. Watching movies forever would get old, Hargreaves.”

His eyes flickered.

“So you’d better tell me who killed you.”

His long fingers twitched and he pressed his hands together. “There’s one problem with your crazy theory, Oh.”

My eyes narrowed and I wheeled to face him. “And what’s that?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I wasn’t murdered.”

I rubbed suddenly sweaty palms on my jeans. “You mean you don’t know who killed you?”

“No. I mean, I wasn’t murdered.” He bent close to me. “That's why I think your Dad might be right.”