For a long moment, I couldn’t say anything. Uncles James nodded understandingly.

“It’s good to see you again, Eddie. I understood why you did what you did, even when I was alive. Ah, the things we do for the family . . . I don’t hold grudges. You see things a lot more clearly once you’re dead. You did for the family what I should have done long before.”

“Why are you here?” I said. “Are you a prisoner in this place, like me?”

“No. I was called here, like the others. But unlike most of them, I’m on your side.”

“Do you think I should tell Walker what he wants to know?” I said. “Tell him all my secrets, and those of the family?”

“Of course not,” said Uncle James. “Walker always was too ready to bow down to authority, or to anyone with a public-school accent. Tell him to go to hell, Eddie.”

I had to grin. Death had not mellowed Uncle James. “Do you know whom Walker’s working for? Who it is who wants my secrets?”

Uncle James frowned. “It’s hard to be sure of anything here. Hardly anyone or anything is necessarily what they appear to be.”

“Even you?” I said.

He shrugged easily. “Hard to tell. I think I’m me, but then I would, wouldn’t I?”

I put out my hand to him, but when he went to shake it, our fingers drifted through one another.

“Am I a ghost?” I said. “Give it to me straight; I can take it.”

“Not even close,” snapped another familiar voice. “You shouldn’t be here, boy.”

And suddenly standing next to my uncle James was Jacob Drood, the family ghost. He wore a battered Hawaiian shirt over grubby shorts, looking older than death itself. His face was a mass of wrinkles, his big, bony skull graced with a few flyaway hairs. But his eyes were as sharp and fierce as ever. He nodded brusquely to Uncle James, and then fixed me with his glare. “I’m the only ghost here, Eddie; but I can’t help you. There are rules even the dead have to obey. Perhaps especially the dead.”