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Lockwood was standing in the hall with that pensive look on his face.
“I’m ready to go”, I said, approaching him. He winced a little.
“It took you a while”, he said.
“Oh, it’s just…” I touched the gem on my neck, “So beautiful”.
There was a soft smile on Lockwood’s face, as he looked into my eyes and then upon the necklace. He beckoned me to go.
We were slowly going down Portland Row, gushes of wind brushed our hair and sent Lockwood’s new coat flapping. Lockwood himself seemed peaceful, but remained silent. I didn’t need conversations to enjoy walking with him, and yet there was something on my mind. I cleared my throat.
“Lockwood, I’ve been thinking…” I made a pause, “thinking about Marissa”. He glanced at me curiously.
“I wondered,” I continued, “why did she choose that way of life, why did she end up like this – her wretched body in the cabinet, her spirit in a different body? And now I think I know what was her mistake. Marissa actually had two partners – a living bow and a ghost, Tom Rotwell and Ezekiel. Rotwell, with all his caged cats, all sort of crap, was a real boy who could stay stand by her side. But she chose to remain with the dead, not the living. In the end she didn’t really properly belong to either mortal world or the Other side”.
“You’re right, Luce”, Lockwood answered, “the thing is, I don’t get how a person can even think of such a choice? To trust your whole life to a piece of babbling ectoplasm – that’s weird”.
“Well”, I sighed, “I think I understand that bit”. Lockwood rose his eyebrows.
“You mean the moment you released the skull?”
“Rather… all the time I spent talking to him. He could be persuasive, he understood my inner anxieties and desires. Once he said, ‘If you close your eyes or switch out the lights, I might be Lockwood’”. I caught Lockwood’s eye: he looked puzzled. “I know that was weird. Anyway, somehow the skull has figured out I will never leave you, not for eternal life, not for anything, even a tatty old skull with bum jokes”. I grinned.
Lockwood quivered. He absentmindedly took my hand.
“So”, his voice was a bit awkward, “that’s why you didn’t move when I told you to run from Marissa’s charge?”
“Yes. And I smashed the jar because I knew it might be the end – for you and for me”.
Lockwood squeezed my hand a little. For some time we walked in silence.
The road brought us to a small city park. There were scarcely any people there, and most of those who still remained, walked towards the exit in the approaching dusk. We sat down on a lonely bench, holding hands. I sensed it was so right to sit here with Lockwood, to feel his warm hand. I forgot about the cold wind.
“Luce”, Lockwood’s voice made me jerk a little, “you were lucky you had a choice from the very start”. I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“You know my whole family ended up on the Other Side”. He gazed at me intently. “And I always thought I belong there as well. I just needed to do something, to make myself useful before I join them, make someone remember me. But death was always by my side. I started the agency with George and Robin, and in two months I saw one of my associates ghost-touched”.
I moved even closer to Lockwood and placed my spare hand on his shoulder. He looked at my arm spread across his chest and then back at me. There was a faint smile on his face; his big dark eyes had a distant spark of energy. I knew he wanted to say something important, but I had to wait. Lockwood continued after a pause.
“We didn’t see the ghost crawling up, we had no Listeners. It was George who insisted on hiring a female agent”. I knew what he meant – girls are more likely to be Listeners than boys. Lockwood went on, “And I was also glad George won’t walk around the house in his underwear or do yoga naked”. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. I burrowed my nose in his shoulder and looked up again. The spark in Lockwood’s eyes grew brighter.
“Well”, he said, “better said than done. The first girl spent a week in our agency and said we weren’t professional enough”. He snorted. “The second didn’t like the skull and the mess in the house, the third started flirting with me right away and was fired in five days”. I blushed and hastily removed my hand from Lockwood’s shoulder. He caught my hand with his spare one and squeezed reassuringly.
“They were nothing compared to you, Luce, all five of them. Just pretty girls, not special in any sense. If you want to know, the fourth girl was unbearable and the fifth turned out to be a control freak. I was desperate, I really thought about throwing my rapier in front of the ghost to be ghost-touched”.
I opened my mouth in wonder.
“You seemed so confident, so self-assured. From the first day in the agency I saw you as a leader I wanted to follow”.
Lockwood chuckled.
“I had to be. If I showed a tiny bit of my despair, it would ruin the company. No one would believe me. And then you burst into my house eating two biscuits at a time”. We laughed again. “From the very start you wanted to be my friend. You started asking about Jessica’s room – I thought it was out of curiosity, but actually you did it out of compassion. Your endless compassion for both the living and the dead, something I would never understand and forever admire”. He looked at me. Was it tenderness in his eyes? Anyway, his compliments always made me feel warm and this time was no exception. Lockwood cleared his throat.
“Yet it was only when you left the company that I noticed something new. Remember that day we were talking in a café? When I got back home, I locked myself in my bedroom. I felt pain, it was like shards piercing my body. But this pain was different from sorrow and longing for the dead – it made me feel alive”. Lockwood shifted in his position, so that his knees touched mine. “And that evening in Marylebone cemetery, when we were sitting together on a tombstone, something switched in my mind. At first it was the same emptiness and loss I had always felt there, I wanted to be with them, to join them. But then”, Lockwood squeezed my hands, “I felt your hand in mine. It was so warm and soft, so far from the cold tombstones. They became distant and unimportant, just slabs of stone and nothing else. I felt the warmth and I chose life”, he paused. “I chose you”.
I gazed at Lockwood unable to utter a word. The sun was already low, practically lying upon the horizon, but I couldn’t care less. Thoughts were swirling in my head – I remembered how skull had asked me, what was Lockwood’s link to life, and then had showed me my own face. That old bit of a bone had been right, then. Lockwood wanted to live for me.
Suddenly a wave of love, compassion and joy hit me – I wanted to hug Lockwood. But my hands were still in his, so finally I just made an awkward movement towards him. Of course, it should have been me to ruin the moment, I thought. Lockwood suddenly looked around, as if to check if anybody’s watching, bent to my face and gave me a quick kiss on my lips. In a second, he was back in his previous position. I could swear I was all red and had a stupid smile on my face. Not that I cared much: Lockwood was looking at me with that tender smile on his face, and it was all that mattered.
I don’t know how long would we sit there, be it not for the gush of cold wind and a crow’s caw. Lockwood loosed hold of one of my hands and got up from the bench.
“We need to hurry if we want to taste George’s dinner. And not to do that would be blasphemy”. I smiled and got up.
“Absolutely”.
When we appeared in the kitchen, hand in hand, all those present exchanged meaningful glances. And there was a familiar scoff no one else could hear.