Chapter Text
“And this part! What even is this??” Evelyn had scribbled out several pages of The Empty Grave. “ The only people who would be interested in reading this are maths teachers!”
There’s only so much criticism that a person can take before getting defensive. “It was part of Marissa’s plan to shut us down, obviously,” I said.
“Are you kidding me? What kid is going to want to read a plot line where the villain is earning their GCSEs? Do you know any children, Lucy?”
“Not really.”
“Well, I have four of them. And let me tell you, kids are not going to read this part. They’re just going to skip ahead. Also, as we’ve discussed before: language. And hot Kipps. If you want to include some kind of legal threat to the existence of Lockwood & Co., you need to pick something wildly more interesting than death by remedial math.”
I didn’t hear the second half of Evelyn’s rant because my brain was stuck on her first sentence. “You have four kids? On purpose?”
“The first three were planned. The last one was...the natural consequence of not taking precautionary measures.”
“That’s just... a lot.”
“Yes, it’s a lot. But it’s what makes me an expert on what kids do and don’t want to read. That and my years of professional experience. And they don’t want to read this!”
“You gave birth four times?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Good lord.”
“Indeed. But this” she jabbed at the page with her pen. “Has got to go. To your credit, I did enjoy the bit later on when Lockwood references the “Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot. Very, very clever tie into your third book. But again, even very smart ten-year-olds won’t get the reference and obviously haven’t read Eliot. Or Hemingway.”
I sighed. I did a lot of sighing in Evelyn’s office. As usual, she was right. She was always right.
-----
Anthony J. Lockwood was good at many things: swishing his rapier about, rushing headlong into danger, weaponizing his smile, and anticipating his own heroic death. Being human, he was bad at many things, too: talking about his feelings, accurately assessing risk, and resisting provoking people, both living and dead. And as it turned out, he was also very bad at maths. In our line of work, this generally would not have been a problem. His inability to work with numbers had very little impact on our lives, even though he was both our employer and landlord. If I had dependable meals, a warm bed, and the lights worked, I didn’t much care if I was regularly paid. So, it was an unpleasant surprise to everyone that the future of Lockwood & Co was going to depend on Lockwood passing a remedial math class.
“This is such utter bureaucratic bullshit!” Lockwood muttered holding an official-looking letter from DEPRAC. The rest of the day’s post had been carelessly thrown on the thinking cloth while he angrily flapped the letter in his hand.
“What is?”
“This!”
“Which is....”
“It’s obvious that Fittes is trying to take over all the agencies in London. Everyone knows what’s happening. But this! Utter bullshit!” He shook the paper at me as if I was personally responsible for whatever was written on it.
Grabbing it out of his hand I read the following:
Lockwood & Co.
35 Portland Row
Marleybone, London
RE: DEPRAC regulation #4593C
To whom it may concern:
This letter is to inform you that Lockwood & Co. currently employs agents not in compliance with DEPRAC regulation #4593C, which states:
All agents must earn their standard GCSE qualifications no later than their seventeenth birthday. Agents not in compliance with this regulation are allowed a six-month probationary period during which they must enroll in and attend a study course to earn their certification.
Agencies employing agents over seventeen in non-compliance with this regulation are subject to license suspension or revocation.
Agents in non-compliance: Anthony J. Lockwood, Lucy J. Carlyle
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
DEPRAC Department of Regulatory Affairs
"Since when has DEPRAC ever cared if agents were educated?” I asked.
George, who had remained silent through our exchange, looked up from the book he was reading. “The big agencies want to give the appearance that they’re not just exploiting children and contributing to an untrained and uneducated workforce. So of course they have regulations about agents needing GCSEs.” Closing the book, he opened the fridge. “However,” his voice was muffled as he rooted around for sandwich ingredients, “many of them are only enforced when Fittes and Rotwell find it useful. The optics of shutting us down after finding the source of the Chelsea outbreak are not great. But” he swung an armful of cheese, deli meat, and mustard onto the counter, “DEPRAC enforcing rules that are already on the books looks to the public a lot less suspect.”
“But it’s utter bullshit!” The first time Lockwood had said this, he had angrily muttered it. But now on its third repetition, it came out as a shout as he kicked the door frame.
“You know, Lockwood, this could be an opportunity.” George had assembled his sandwich and began happily shoving it in his mouth. Between bites of ham and mustard he continued, “you aren’t going to be an agent forever. You can’t," he motioned with his hand holding the sandwich in a vulgar way “forever. I mean, you can, literally, play with your rapier forever. But not against ghosts once you can’t see them.”
“Thanks for that, George. Real helpful.”
“You can either get pissed off, or” another large bite of sandwich followed by a couple of crisps, “suck it up and do it.”
“Piss off, George.”
“Lucy agrees with me, don’t you?” George looked at me expectantly. “You two, while we have Holly and Kipps around to help, can sign up for the classes. Get it out of the way. Give you something else to think about while we work on the Marissa-Penelope conundrum. There’s no way,” another large bite and a swig of milk “you can fight this or talk your way out of it or do that thing with your face you’re convinced everyone loves and avoid the consequences this time.”
Finally frustrated with the constant interruption to his speech by his loud munching I burst out, “George! Will you please just eat and then talk? One thing at a time! Sandwich, then words!”
“What thing with my face?” asked Lockwood.
George rolled his eyes. “Just do it, please? I don’t want to be unemployed and homeless because you all” more crisps, the crumbs of which collected on the front of his shirt “don’t consider that rules apply to everyone and,” another handful of crisps and a swig of milk, “think that ignorance is a feature, not a bug.”
“Sod off, George!” Lockwood yelled as he headed downstairs to blow off some steam practicing rapier drills.
After he left, George turned to me. “I’m right, you know. We have enough problems as it is without inviting DEPRAC to look more closely at how this agency is run. I’m sure if they wanted to, they could find some regulation about health and safety and shut us down immediately based entirely on the state of my bedroom.”
“Of course you’re right,” I sighed. “It’s just, school, you know, was never something my family took seriously. Half my family dropped out before sixteen.”
“Yes, and look where that got them.”
“Don’t be a dick, George.”
“Don’t you think about what you’re going to do, you know, after?” George was the third person in the past few months that had asked me this question. Was the universe trying to tell me something? Or was everyone else thinking about their future while I was thinking about...What, exactly? “It’s not going to be that hard. You’ll take some classes, do some homework, take the tests. No problem. I can’t help you study – I’m terrible at explaining things to people. But if you ask Holly to buy you a planner and some new pencils, she’ll think Christmas has come early!”
[And that’s how, dear reader, the following scene came about late one afternoon in the kitchen of Portland Row. Lockwood and I both enrolled in the maths class. We both attended the maths class, which follows in the next chapter. But we didn’t both enjoy the maths class. I did, because as it turns out, I’m quite good at maths. But as I mentioned before, Lockwood is NOT.]
“You can’t do that,” George said in frustration as he ripped the pencil out of Lockwood’s hand, “because. NUMBERS. DON’T. WORK. THAT. WAY!”
“WHY THE HELL NOT?” Lockwood shouted in return. Leaning over, I saw that beginning with the fraction 32/72, Lockwood merely crossed out the matching 2s for a final answer of 3/7. Oh dear.
“George, I don’t think that’s very helpful.” Holly said, trying to calm the situation. “Why don’t I help Lockwood and you just focus on making dinner?”
“Damnit, Holly! I don’t need you and George playing mum and dad to me! I’m doing just fine!”
“CLEARLY NOT!” George shouted as he turned back to the stove.
“George!” Holly reprimanded.
Kipps, ambling into the kitchen, joined in the fray, “What’s up Tony?”
“SHUT IT, KIPPS!”
“Fuck’s sake, Tony. What’s going on in here?”
“I’m going downstairs to practice. You all,” Lockwood threw us all a glance of barely contained rage, can go f---” but the rest of his words were drowned out by the slamming of the basement door. A moment of silence followed as we heard Lockwood take the stairs two at a time and start viciously slashing at Esmerelda and Joe.
“George,” Holly began, “I think Lockwood is feeling a bit...sensitive...about the situation. Could you please try to keep your temper?”
“Fine,” he grumbled, “but if I lose my job and have to move back in with my parents because Lockwood can’t freaking learn his times tables, I will turn him into a ghost myself.”
“George, that’s exactly the kind of attitude we do not need right now! This is difficult enough for everyone without you making him feel worse!” Holly very rarely lost her temper with any of us, even when sorely provoked by dirty dishes, dirty clothes, and our general lackadaisical attitude toward administrative tasks and housekeeping. But now she was glaring fiercely at him and stomping her foot.
“Fine,” he grumbled again.
Kipps had been watching the scene as if it were the final match of Wimbledon. Smirking, he turned to me, “Tony having trouble with his facts and figures again, is he?”
“You don’t need to look so gleeful. In fact,” I slapped him hard on the arm, “it’s downright unhelpful.”
“Ouch, Lulu!” he said as he rubbed his arm. “I count any day when I get to witness Tony fail at something as a day well spent.”
“Still not helpful!”
“You know this is going to be fine, right? He’s going to figure it out, do the homework or whatever, and pass the test. Eventually. And in the meantime, I’m taking a great deal of pleasure watching him suffer.”
"And what if he doesn’t?!”
“He will. I know he will. Look at all the morons that earn their GCSEs. And Tony may be an idiot, but he’s not actually stupid.” He paused, smiling at me, “How’s your homework going?”
“Oh, just fine. Got it done last night.”
“Of course you did. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.” Oh, Quill. I had worried, after breaking up with him, that his continued presence at Lockwood & Co would be awkward. But Quill, with his buoyant personality, obvious schadenfreude at any distress on Lockwood’s part, and general goodwill, brought a much-needed levity to the company. He showed no outward regret that we were no longer together. Which, if I’m being honest, was a bit hurtful. What good is a boyfriend if he’s not a little shattered when you break up with him?
[Quill here: Lucy, I was a bit shattered, give yourself some credit. I could see the end before the beginning, so I was prepared. But I had hoped that somehow things would turn out in my favor.]
[ Lockwood here : Suck it, Kipps!]
[ Quill here : Thanks for that, mate. Now I’m going to tell Lucy what happened after I so nicely complimented her. You’ll probably want to reconsider telling me to suck it.
Lucy looked a bit put out after my comment. That’s what I got for trying my hardest to make it not awkward that we were still working together. At the request of her boss. Who was also in love with her. Which everyone except Lucy could plainly see. I should get an f’ing medal for my amiability. Maybe, if this whole ‘running-Lockwood’s-agency-for-him-so-he-can-mess-around-in-law-school' business doesn’t work out, I’ll have a future in the diplomatic core.
But I digress. Taking a deep breath, mentally girding my loins, I turned toward the basement stairs. I thought that Lockwood would appreciate having a person to run rapier drills with, rather than just hacking at the swinging dummies. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” George said, turning to face me from where he was stirring dinner at the stove.
Now it’s worth pointing out here that while Lockwood gets all the attention in the books for being...himself, of whatever, George was the glue that held everyone together. Lucy sometimes gets credited for being the sun of Lockwood’s solar system, but that’s ridiculous. George was the force of gravity in the Lockwood & Co universe and prevented people and things from flying off into space. He was solid and dependable and held Portland Row together in a way that neither Lockwood nor Lucy could.
George will look you in the face and tell you something true that you don’t want to hear. This is probably due to both a lack of concern for what other people think of him and a disregard for social norms. This makes him incredibly annoying, yes, but also a very valuable person to have around. So, if George takes the trouble to say something to you seriously, you should listen.
“Why not?” I asked, my hand on the door handle.
“Because there’s a high likelihood that Lockwood will try to castrate you with his rapier. I do not mean metaphorically. I mean, in actuality, he will try to slice off your balls.”
“Ha! I’d like to see him try!” I laughed, but both of us knew that Lockwood’s skill combined with his apparent rage at reducing fractions would make him a dangerous sparring partner.
“Seriously Kipps. Lockwood is a master of ignoring his own feelings and personal safety to benefit this agency. And right now, he sees you as an asset so he’s conveniently not facing the fact that his own frustration and jealousy are going to eat him alive. And if we’re not all very careful, he’s going to implode and take us all down with him.”
“What the hell does Tony have to be jealous of? And why do we have to be careful with him? Why is it always the rest of us” I made a frustrated gesture with my hand “tiptoeing around Anthony bloody Lockwood?”
“Why, oh God,” George sighed and looked toward the ceiling, “must I always be surrounded by idiots?” Looking back at me he said, “Look, I have a lot more experience handling Lockwood than you do. So just take a bit of advice and give him some space. Let him blow off some steam.”
“Alright,” I conceded.
“And then if you really feel the need to torture him, you can explain how by just being what some might call a ‘normal person’” he used some unnecessary air quotes there, “and being ‘emotionally available’” George gagged a little as he said this, “you got to snog Lucy, and he didn’t .”
I’m not going to lie: George telling me that Lockwood was jealous of me made my day. Alright, this does not paint me in a good light. Obviously not. But, holy shit did it feel good!]