Ghostfinders 01 - Ghost of a Chance

out what the three of them got up to between cases, and they were all in real trouble. The Boss tended to take a very dim view of those necessarily private pleasures and distractions that made a field agent’s life bearable; so the agents went to great pains to make sure she never found out about them. They didn’t want to worry her. JC and Happy and Melody made their way across London in silence, really hoping it was merely a dangerous new mission.
    And now here they were, sitting in the outer office, waiting to be called in to what people in the know considered the scariest place on earth.
    Like most of Buckingham Palace, the Boss’s outer office was always kept that little bit warmer than it really needed to be; and the recirculated air in that small, windowless room was giving JC a headache and a seriously dry mouth. It was either that or the stark terror. JC had learned to deal with ghosts and revenants and demons; but the Boss was another matter. He looked around the office, hoping for something interesting to take his mind off the horrors to come, but there really wasn’t much to look at. Only a brutally efficient desk for the Boss’s secretary, typing happily away as though she didn’t have a care in the world, the heartless cow, and a half a dozen visitors’ chairs of such blatant discomfort that they had to have been designed that way to keep the visitors in a properly respectful frame of mind.
    There were the portraits on the walls. Dozens of them, covering all four walls, no room even for a clock or a calendar. Portraits of past field agents who had covered themselves with glory, if not renown. Only the Institute knew what its agents did to protect Humanity from the Outer Forces, and it didn’t even tell itself unless it needed to know. Officially, these portraits were always referred to as the Honoured Members. Field agents more usually referred to them as the Honoured Dead because no field agent ever expected to die of old age. Most didn’t even make it to their midlife crises.
    The oldest portraits on the walls were only that—paintings in various styles from various periods, often by artists with famous names and reputations. Which is why there are unexplained gaps in certain artists’ careers. The clothes in the portraits changed with the passing fashions, but the faces all had the same look. Hard-used, heroic, haunted. Unsmiling faces, with eyes that had seen things they could never forget. After the paintings came photographs, from the first daguerreotypes to sepia prints, to the sharp digital images of today. Men and women who had gone down into Hell and kicked arse, for no other reward than knowing it was a job that needed doing. No medals, no honours, and sometimes not even a body for the funeral. The job was its own reward.
    The faces in the portraits were different every time JC was summoned to the outer office. He didn’t know who was in charge of rotating them, or even if there was any significance in the choices. He half suspected the portraits chose their own positions.
    JC sat easily on his stiff-backed chair, his cream suit immaculate as always, and did his best to project an air of unconcerned nonchalance. With a touch of insolence. Never let your enemies think they’ve got you worried. And, having searched his conscience all across London, although the prospect of meeting the Boss in person frankly unnerved him, as it did everyone . . . he really wasn’t that worried. He hadn’t done anything too terrible, recently, and he was confident in his ability to talk his way out of any lesser charges.
    Happy, on the other hand, was not looking at all well. He sat bolt upright on his inflexible chair, looking guilty and put-upon in equal measure. His hands were clasped tightly together in his lap, to keep them from trembling too obviously, sweat beaded on his high forehead, and he’d developed a small but definite twitch in one eye. At least he hadn’t started whimpering yet. Typical of Happy; always convinced that the Universe was out to get him. Of course, in this job, sometimes it was. Or the Boss; which was just as bad.
    The seriously heavy-duty wards preventing him from using his telepathic abilities probably weren’t helping. Happy always described the experience as enduring the hangover without having first enjoyed the drunk.
    Melody was playing the latest version of Doom on her phone and giving it her entire concentration; apparently completely impervious to the