I knew something was wrong the instant I reached the ornate iron gates of Daylesford Hall. Not because I could see the crowd next to the front doors or the police officers traipsing in and out, but because the spirit perched on the moss-covered boulder at the top of the winding driveway told me so.

Lucy had been sitting in the same spot since a carelessly driven carriage clipped her in 1883, causing her to lose her balance and hit her head on that very rock.

"Rania! You'll never guess what's happened."

I checked around for watchful eyes, then smiled. Lucy was one of the few spirits I'd come across who didn't make me want to run screaming. Not that I ran out of fear—more from frustration.

"What?" I whispered, careful not to move my lips.

"Something big's happened. Six cars with flashing lights have driven past this morning, and a big yellow van, but that left a while ago."

"Flashing lights... Do you mean police cars?"

"The lights were blue, and the cars had words on them."

As a servant girl, Lucy had never learned to read, and with Daylesford Hall hidden away at the end of a winding lane in the sleepy English village of Enderby, she wouldn't have come across the police too often. So why were they here?

"How long ago did they arrive?"

"This morning, a little after first light."

At this time of year, late November with patches of snow still left on the ground, that meant around eight a.m. The cold snap started in October and hadn't let up since, and while I'd been fascinated by its icy beauty at first, the novelty soon wore off. Crisp white sheets turned to grey sludge, and the walk from the bus stop down the road took twice as long and left me with a bruised ass on one occasion. Back home in Syria, the flurries lasted a day or two at most, and the snow rarely settled.

"I'll take a look and see what's going on," I said.

"Please, tell me. I do wish I could see for myself."

If the situation was serious enough to warrant six police cars and, I presumed, an ambulance, it probably wasn't something either of us wanted to see, but Lucy loved to gossip and I was the only person she had to talk to now. I closed my eyes for a second, imagining her back in Victorian times, very much alive and chatting with the other household staff in the huge old kitchen at Daylesford Hall. I hadn't met any of them myself, but in the summer months when the evenings were warmer, Lucy had told me about her life in bite-sized chunks, a minute or two each day.

"I'll give you an update on my way out," I promised.

She smiled, and when I glanced back, I saw her settle onto the boulder again—an illusion, because she could have passed right through it if she'd chosen to. At least ghosts didn't feel the cold.

Not like me as I tucked my gloved hands into my pockets and trudged up the gentle hill to the hall. Once home to a wealthy family, it had been converted to the headquarters of my current employer, The Weston Corporation, a firm of engineering consultants headed up by Lloyd Weston and his two children—Anthony and Helene. Rumour had it the older man would be retiring soon, but every time I'd seen him, he still seemed sprightly.

As I rounded the kink in the drive, my worst fears came to life. Or rather, death. Two men wheeled a black body bag out of the front doors on a gurney, slowing to lift their cargo carefully down the steps. A groan escaped my lips, but I forced myself to keep walking towards the cluster of people gathered in front of the blue-and-white tape that fluttered in the breeze.

A woman turned in my direction, and I recognised Martha, the receptionist who spent more of her time reading gossip websites than answering the phone.

Her eyes widened as she saw me. "Rania, I'm so sorry. I thought I'd called everybody, but I forgot about you."

Of course she did. I was just the cleaner, invisible to everyone unless they had a spill that needed clearing up or an overflowing wastebasket. Well, almost everyone. A handful of the building's occupants noticed me, and today it looked as if that count might increase by one.

"What happened?" I asked.

She dropped her voice to a whisper. "Helene Weston died."

One of the others shuffled closer—a brunette who had no idea how to place a cup into the dishwasher. I cleared at least four from her desk every day. "Stabbed, apparently. Mr. Weston found her this morning."

The whole group, mostly women, leaned forward as the men loaded Helene's body into a black van and closed the door. Ghouls, the lot of them. Someone had even brought out a flask of coffee and a packet of biscuits, and the blonde at the end snapped a few photos when she thought nobody was looking. A father had lost his daughter today, and the waiting crowd was treating it as an opportunity to update their Facebook statuses with something really juicy. Only one person looked appropriately solemn—a guy at the end in a suit and tie. What was his name? Adrian? Something like that. He offered me a small smile that I struggled to return.

"Do they know who did it?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Martha said. "The forensics people have been going in and out all day."

The brunette shuddered. "Tell you what, I'm never working late on my own again, not when some madman's on the loose."

Martha nudged her and jerked her head in my direction, and the brunette grimaced as she patted me on the arm. "But don't worry, Rania. I'm sure you'll be just fine in the evenings. You're used to being alone, right?"

"Perhaps keep your phone handy, eh?" Martha said.

Of course, because my phone would be excellent protection against a knife-wielding maniac. "Sure."

A car drew up next to us, and the receptionist smacked her head. "Oh, crap. I forgot to phone Geri too." She slipped on a patch of ice as she hurried to the vehicle, and the group gasped before she regained her footing. "Geri, you're never gonna believe what's happened."

I was dismissed as the group went to talk to the yoga teacher who taught a class in the basement relaxation room every Monday at five thirty, part of Weston Corp's commitment to work/life balance. Fruit bowls on every floor, yoga on Mondays, Indian head massage on Tuesdays, reflexology on Wednesdays, and reiki on Thursdays. All that healthiness offset Fridays, when everybody headed to the nearest pub straight after work.

I glanced up at the facade of Daylesford Hall. Even in the gloom of winter, the building was grandly imposing, three storeys high plus a basement, with more rooms than I cared to count. Old photos in the lobby showed the walls had once been red brick, but in the last decade, someone had decided they'd be better off painted cream. A curved wrought-iron balcony formed a focal point above the main entrance, pretty as a Romeo-and-Juliet picture with a vine growing up one side. I'd always found the place peaceful. Serene. But it was far from tranquil today. Lights blazed in every window, and I saw people walking back and forth upstairs. The scene of the crime? I'd soon find out.

***

Back at home, my flatmate, Shannon, swore under her breath as she tried and failed to get the cork out of a bottle of red wine.

"I don't believe this. It's gone crumbly. The one night I really, really need a drink."

I didn't touch alcohol, but Shannon used it to treat all of life's ailments. Wine for general stress, Guinness for a cold, and vodka whenever she broke up with a boyfriend, which happened roughly every other month. Each time a new man came along, she swore she wanted a casual relationship, then fell hard and cried her eyes out when they left. Right now, she was trying internet dating.

"Why do you need a drink?" I asked.

"After what you've just told me? Come on—how can you even ask that question? If the killer had come today instead of yesterday, it could've been you lying there tomorrow morning."

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the sofa. Dark-blue leather, squashy, and best of all, we'd got it free when the guy in the flat under ours bought a new three-piece suite. He'd been only too happy to help carry it into our lounge instead of driving it to the tip. Normally, I loved curling up against the cushions, but it didn't seem so comfortable tonight.

When I didn't answer, Shannon pushed more. "Surely you must have thought of that?"

"Of course I have. I'm just trying to block it out."

"Maybe you should get a new job. I mean, you've worked there for what, eight months?"

"You know why."

"Oh, yeah. Right. The 'ghosts.'"

She made little quote marks with her fingers around the words, and although I used to find that hurtful, I'd soon realised it was just Shannon's way of dealing with my...curse. I'd confided in her a little over three years ago when we were both twenty-one and sharing a room in a run-down bed and breakfast on the outskirts of London. She'd fled to England from an abusive boyfriend back home in Ireland, while I'd escaped from hell itself.

Back then, we'd needed a more permanent place to live after our previous apartment building got condemned, and have you seen house prices in the south of England? There wasn't much a cleaner and a girl who worked the early shift in a bread factory could afford.

And when I'd rejected what on the surface looked like a very nice flat, Shannon had understandably been a bit upset.

"What's the problem with it?" she'd asked.

"It feels wrong."

"You said that about the last three places. I'll agree the place above the betting shop was kind of icky, but this one?" She waved a hand around the living room. "It's perfect."

"I just can't live here."

"Don't you want to share with us? Is it Aisling?"

"No. I love Aisling."

"Then what?"

Eyes followed me around the room, and they belonged to the teenage boy sitting on the sofa with blood dripping from the stab wounds in his chest. Small eyes, set too close either side of a long, thin nose. Hard eyes. Predatory eyes. He didn't speak, but he didn't need to. Everything about his expression and his posture told me he hadn't been a pleasant person when he was alive.

I took a deep breath. Sharing my secret was hard, but Shannon was my best friend and she deserved to know the truth. "A man died in this room, and it creeps me out."

"How do you know that?"

"Because he's still here, watching us."

Shannon scoffed and rolled her eyes. "No, seriously—did you read it in the paper?"

"He's on the sofa."

She glanced over, but to her, it would have looked like a slightly shabby maroon leather three-seater without so much as a dent under his bottom. Spirits couldn't touch our world.

"Rania, stop messing around."

"I'm not. I wish I was, but I'm not."

Baby Aisling started crying, and Shannon's mouth set in a thin line as she backed out of the door. "Fine. You look for a place for us to live."

I'd upset her, I knew I had, and she didn't even believe me. But while Shannon worked, it was just me and Aisling, and I couldn't bear to spend my mornings with a man like that, even if he wasn't physically able to hurt me. Shannon would come around. She always did. Neither of us had anyone to lean on but each other, and our desperation had turned into a lasting friendship.

We hadn't spoken about my abilities again until one grey Sunday evening, six months later. Sure, she heard me crying out from my nightmares, but those were easy enough to write off as reminders of a time I'd rather forget. After all, the horrors of daily life in Syria had been plastered across every news channel for years.

But that evening, the malevolent sky swirled above us as we walked home from the supermarket with little Aisling in a pushchair, and as the first spots of rain fell, a Ford Focus mounted the pavement and missed us by inches. Aisling let out a wail, but I couldn't take my eyes off the girl jogging in front of us, oblivious to the drama as she listened to her iPod.

The crunch as the car hit her would stay with me forever, but I'd still run forward to check her vital signs as Shannon puked.

Dead. The girl was dead, killed instantly, and as I looked up from her broken body, the pale form of the spirit guide vanished and left the girl staring down at me.

"Please, you have to help," she whispered.

How many times had I heard that request? "I'm sorry—"

"My cat's all alone. There's nobody else to look after him. He's called Taffy, and he'll be expecting his dinner soon."

A cat? She'd just died, and her first thought was for a cat?

Most people wanted a different kind of assistance from me, a kind I couldn't give, not anymore. But feeding a cat was doable.

I sighed. "What's your address?"

Shannon thought I'd gone crazy when I insisted we sit outside the girl's house and wait for Taffy.

"We just watched a girl die, and you're worried about a cat?" She wrinkled her nose and rubbed at the vomit stain on her trousers.

Shannon hadn't taken the sight of the body well. Me? Unfortunately, I'd seen so much death I feared I'd lost some of my humanity.

"I promised."

"You promised a dead girl." She laid a hand on my forehead. "Have you taken something?"

"I told you before—"

"I know, I know, you think you can talk to ghosts. And I never judged you, even when you rejected a perfectly good flat because of it. But do you not reckon it's time you spoke to somebody about this? A professional, I mean. I can help you find—"

Taffy chose that moment to walk around the corner and rub up against my legs, purring. The bell on his collar jingled as he leapt into my lap, and I checked the tag. Yes, this was the one.

Shannon lost a little of her colour, which wasn't easy since she was paler than most of the spirits I encountered.

"How did you know about the cat? Seriously?"

"I told you."

"You told me you talked to a corpse, Rania. That's crazy."

I shrugged. "I didn't ask to be able to see them."

"You're my best friend, and that'll never change, but I always thought the ghost thing was a bit...you know." She whirled two fingers by her head in the universal sign for crazy.

"It is. But that doesn't mean it isn't true."

Shannon being Shannon, she dealt with the situation in the best way she knew how: by pretending it didn't exist. A minute of silence passed, then two, before she finally spoke again.

"So, are we keeping the cat?"

Even now, two years later, Shannon avoided the subject of my strange ability. I didn't have to be psychic to understand it freaked her out, but at least that meant she didn't joke about it. Taffy wandered in and curled up next to me, and I reached out to scritch his head. Thankfully, our current landlord turned a blind eye to him, mainly because he kept the mouse population down.

"Right, I don't want to work somewhere else because of the ghosts," I said in answer to her question. "Remember how many jobs I went through before I found a place that only had three?"

"But what if Helene's killer comes back? You could end up joining them."

"It doesn't work like that."

As one of the chosen, the Electi, I had to pass my curse on to another. If I died before I produced a child to act as my heir, then according to what little I knew about the process, my soul would get allocated to a random newbie, and the remaining three Electi would have to find the poor sod and educate them on the job we were supposed to do. And that meant I couldn't remain tethered in the spirit world.

Shannon poked at the cork until it fell inside the bottle. "Yeah, I forgot. You have a higher purpose." She stood up. "I need to get a sieve for this wine."

I laughed softly to myself as she disappeared out to the kitchen. A higher purpose. According to my mother, and her mother before her, our gift would one day save the earth and mankind, only she'd been slightly hazy on the details. Just the kind of pressure I needed on my twenty-four-year-old shoulders, and now I had the prospect of Helene waiting for me at Daylesford Hall to deal with as well.