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The appalling noise ripped a hole in the fabric of the night. I gave it a good twenty seconds, and when I stopped, my heart’s clapper kept pounding against my chest.
A short time passed. I rang the bell again, this time even harder and longer than the last.
Number 35 remained dark and silent before me. No one was home.
No one was home.
I took a deep breath, attempting to stave off the inevitable panic. I would just go to Arif’s then, take a kip by the back door and hope that Lockwood and Co. returned in the next few hours. Yes. Yes. They would be home soon, it would all be—I tried turning around from the door and fell gracelessly to my knees, nearly toppling down the stairs.
I would not be making it to Arif’s.
Terror overrode the panic. I couldn’t pass out here. I couldn’t swoon outside, unprotected, in plain view of the street corner. Oh God, God, why had I come to Portland Row of all places? After my flat, surely it was the next place the men who’d killed Harold Mailer would come looking if they knew anything about me at all. I was so stupid. This—this was so stupid—
This was my only option.
As blackness began encroaching on the edges of my vision, I started crawling around the stoop, searching for a spare key I knew I would not find. Lockwood had removed it from beneath the long-dead potted plant after Fairfax’s goon broke in last year.
“Best just have your key with you,” Lockwood had told George and me then with a roguish grin. “Or break a window if it’s an emergency.”
As I’d unceremoniously slipped my key through the letterbox the morning I’d last left Portland Row, I picked up a loose brick from the side of the stoop and attempted to pull myself up the railing. It was an emergency, I had decided. I would just have to pay Lockwood back for the window. I could feel blood still flowing from the cut on my arm, congealing grossly at my wrist.
Then, I slipped again. This landing was hard, unforgiving. The cut on my wrist rubbed against the bricks, my head thwacked horribly along the column, and the brick rolled out of my grip, falling awkwardly down the stairs until it landed by the iron line with a small clang.
My vision promptly went completely black.
***
***
***
It could have been minutes but was more than likely hours later when I was finally disturbed.
I heard, as though from underwater, or perhaps from the other side of a thick, stone wall, the rumbling of a car and the soft chatter of people. Of friends, based on the tired laughter.
Tired, I thought. I was tired. I was so, so tired. Nothing would make me move, nothing could make me open my eyes. The world was hard and heavy and I knew down to my bones that the second I woke up everything would hurt again, and I really didn’t want that.
I was tired.
“Lockwood,” A girl’s voice said, pitched with curiosity and fear in equal measure. “Lockwood, there’s someone on the stoop.”
I heard a screech of metal a quiet footsteps slowly approach. “Excuse me?” A boy’s voice called out, calm but firm. “The sign says please stand beyond—Oh, God.”
A clatter of metal to the ground, then the rushing patter of footsteps up the stairs near my head.
“Lockwood!” Another boy shouted. “Lockwood, what’s--,”
“It’s Lucy,” the first boy shouted back. His previous calm had been replaced by visceral dread. He was right beside me now. I could hear him fall to his knees, feel hands brushing back my hair, fingers fluttering at the pulse in my throat. “She has a pulse,” he shouted to his friends. “Lucy, Lucy, wake up.” Long fingers brushed my cheek. “You have to wake up!”
It felt like the worst sort of malaise. Like the boy beside me was a ghost himself, haunting the house that would not allow me entrance, and I was left alone, dumb and paralyzed outside the door, too exhausted to breathe.
Behind us the front door opened, and the light behind my eyelids burned orange. I heard a few gasps.
“Look at all the blood--,”
“Where is it coming from?”
“Holly, call an ambulance.” That, finally, pulled me from my stupor. My right hand found the closest thing it could and gripped tightly.
I opened my eyes slowly, warily, still weighted down by the horrors of the night, to find Anthony Lockwood kneeling beside me, staring wide-eyed at my hand round his wrist.
“No hospitals,” I whispered. Lockwood had to lean forward to hear me. “’m fine, it’s fine. I just—just needed somewhere safe to go. No hospitals, I’m fine.”
“This isn’t fine, Luce,” Lockwood informed me. His voice was shaking, and he looked astonishingly close to tears. “You’re still bleeding--,”
“It’s a cut on my arm, is all. That’s the worst of it, I swear. I’m not dying.” Lockwood’s probing hands found the slash through my jacket sleeve and the ragged cut from my elbow to wrist. I watched the glint in his eyes turn murderous.
“A knife made this, Lucy. Who--?” His eyes met mine and softened. I nodded silently. “Let’s get you inside.”
I groaned as I sat up against the column. Lockwood reached his hands down, one arm beneath my shoulders and the other reaching for my knees before I realized his intention.
“I can walk,” I protested immediately. “Just—just help me up, please.”
Lockwood looked at me a moment. This time I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Alright, Luce,” he said finally, and gently he helped me to my feet.
I swayed instantly, nearly toppling down the stairs. Lockwood caught me quickly and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, steering me inside.
Once we crossed the threshold, I was bombarded by the familiar ambiance of 35 Portland Row. The crystal skull lamp on the table, the plant pot filled with umbrellas, the odd walking stick and the spare rapier for both types of visitors through the night. The air was filled with the smells of iron and salt, of leather and the musty aura most akin to museums and churches. The ageless halls, where history is memory and nothing ever changes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Lockwood as he ushered me into the sitting room. “I’m sorry.”
What was I apologizing for? For frightening them all out of their wits after a long and tiring case? For showing up unannounced and bleeding all over the front porch? For keeping them from a sleep they probably needed just as desperately as I did?
For leaving in the first place?
Lockwood seemed to understand though, because he squeezed my shoulder and tilted his head to rest against mine, just for a moment.
“In here,” Holly called out. She and George had made their own A&E of the sitting room, with towels spread across the sofa, a bucket of hot water on the floor and the entire first aid kit sprawled across the coffee table. She caught my eye and smiled softly as Lockwood helped me sit down. “We’ll have you fixed up in no time at all.”
And so it was. Holly sat before me on the coffee table and slowly, patiently healed all my hurts. George flitted in and out of the room from the kitchen, bringing with him tea, water, biscuits, sandwiches, and anything else he could think to make that I may want in the moment. And Lockwood sat beside me. He’d held my hand when Holly cleaned and stitched up the cut on my arm and had yet to let it go.
I told my story to them in bits and bursts, of the missing skull, the treacherous, poor and now very dead Harold Mailer and my terrifying exodus from Clerkenwell all the way to Marylebone.
“Lockwood,” I said, “do you think some of the other attendants at the furnaces are in on this?”
He shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re all at it. It’s a big deal, this scam, which is why those guys were so keen to shut you up, too, Luce. Obviously you can’t go home now. They know where you live.”
I stared at the table, still covered in bloody rags and gauze, and cleared my throat. “I know. I was hoping, maybe, tonight I could crash here…? Just till morning. Then tomorrow—”
“Oh, not just tonight. You can’t go home, period. Not till we’ve found those men and put an end to this. She can stay her for a while, can’t she, George?”
I looked up at George, sitting in the armchair across from me, a plate of sandwiches in his lap. “Absolutely,” he said. “’Course she can.”
My throat felt very tight. I sniffed, and wanted to wipe my nose, but Lockwood was still holding one hand, and Holly was busy wrapping bandages around the other. “Thank you,” I said hoarsely. Lockwood squeezed my hand again.
Lockwood and George soundly refused to let me help clean up the mess that was once the sitting room, even though I was by then feeling much better. Holly walked up the stairs with me, up and up and up to the little attic room that, aside from most of George’s clothes now occupying the wardrobe, remained much the same as I’d left it. Holly helped me get my jacket and boots off, and even ran a brush through my hair and braided it for me.
“If they weren’t going to let you stay here, obviously you would have come home with me,” Holly informed me as she tied off the end of my braid, sitting back primly with a smile. “But I think you’re always going to be welcome here, Lucy. I’m glad this is where you came, and I’m sorry we weren’t here from the beginning.”
“It all worked out,” I said softly. Holly pulled back the duvet from the bed for me then stepped back to the stairs.
“I suppose.” She was staring at the bandages on my arm. “I’ve never heard Lockwood so scared before. Not even at Aickmere’s--,” she stopped abruptly, then looked back at me and smiled. “Sleep well, Lucy. I’ll be in the library. Shout if you need anything. I am positive someone will hear you.”
***
The next day before lunch, Lockwood found me sitting in the back garden. He smelled vaguely of seaweed and rotten wood, so I knew he’d just been to see Flo Bones.
“Here,” he said abruptly, holding out his hand to me, something silver shining through his knuckles. I reached my hand to meet his and he dropped the object in my palm.
It was a key. My key. My old key to 35 Portland Row.
“Lockwood--,”
He shook his head. “You’re staying here for a bit, we already agreed. But just—just keep it after that, too. Please. I don’t--,” he swallowed thickly. “It doesn’t matter what’s going on between us, doesn’t matter if you work here or not.” He caught my gaze, his dark eyes boring into mine. “You’re always welcome here, Lucy. You’ll always be safe here. So, keep the key. Please.”
I closed my fingers around the familiar shape. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just promise me you’ll use it if you need to.”
“I promise.”
Lockwood smiled.
***