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the ghostly scars I could see covering her face. I looked into her eyes as she glanced up at me and knew part of her story. Her family had abused her and she’d set out to join the police to ensure that no one else was abused in quite the same manner.
    “You’re booked into room seven,” she said, finally. Her voice was tired and worn. She sounded as if she were reciting from rote. “The files will be brought to you. Do not attempt to take any of them from the station. You will be searched upon departure.”
    I opened my mouth to complain, but Master Revels gave me a sharp look and I shut it again. Another policeman appeared and led us into the rear of the station, past a long line of holding cells – populated by ghosts, as far as I could tell – and into a small office. I took the seat he pointed to and watched as he left, clearly heading off to pick up the files. Master Revels touched his lips and I stayed quiet, waiting impatiently for the moment when I could speak again. Finally, after the files had been delivered and placed on the table, Master Revels cast another spell into the air and smiled at me.
    “What did you think of the ghosts?”
    I shuddered. “How many ghosts are there in this place?”
    “I have no idea,” Master Revels said. “Some ghosts are little more than psychic imprints on the surrounding area, created when a person is stressed or terrified or dying. Others are the remains of a mortal soul, trapped on the earthly plain. No one knows why.”
    He shifted into lecture mode as he opened the files. “Some believe that the ghosts have business left on Earth and refuse to leave until it is done,” he said. “I saw a wife’s ghost remaining with her husband until he died a few years later and then they both vanished. Others think that the ghosts are terrified of what they will meet in the world beyond and choose to cling to our world rather than face the unknown country. Pick whichever theory you like.”
    I shrugged. “All right,” I said. “Why are we here?”
    Master Revels passed me one of the files. I opened it and read through it quickly, struggling to decipher the jargon and legalese that seemed to take up more pages than were strictly necessary. It seemed that Jenny Dover, the twelve-year-old child of Mark and Rose Dover, had vanished two weeks ago after a field trip to the National Art Museum. She had had a happy life, according to her friends and family, and there had been no reason for her to run off and hide. There had been no abuse, no fights with her family or friends, no bullies at school...it looked as if Jenny had had pretty much the perfect life. That suggested that someone had abducted her, perhaps with very dark intentions, but the police had been unable to turn up any leads. I assumed that they’d already searched the houses of every known paedophile in the vicinity. A photo fell out of the file and I picked it up, scowling. Jenny was blonde, with an enchanting smile; a girl right on the edge of blossoming into womanhood. She looked innocent and harmless.
    “Summarise it for me,” Master Revels ordered. I did as he asked, condensing the entire file into two lines. “You may be unsurprised to discover that all of these files hold a similar story.”
    I picked up the next file and skimmed through it. Aisha Patel had vanished a week before Jenny, also after a trip to the museum. She was eleven, with the same sense of childlike innocence on the verge of bursting into flower. There were fourteen other girls, with ages ranging from ten to fifteen, who had vanished...after taking a trip to the museum. They had little else in common. Five of them attended schools with one of the other vanished children, seven of them came from Christian families, three came from Muslim families, one came from a Jewish family...the only things they had in common was that they were all female and had all gone to the museum before they vanished. I had some difficulty imagining a paedophile