Archive of Our Own

It starts out innocently enough. 

“We saw your name in the papers last winter, of course,” the man on the phone says, “after the news of the Chelsea cleanup finally made it all the way up here. But we were still hoping to get Fittes or Rotwell then, before they properly shut us down and then got shut down themselves! Anyway, it’s a rotten business and already cost nearly an entire team, but if there’s a way to avoid salting the land we’ve a responsibility to take it. And there’s a hope that a decent, reputable team might have a better chance than the poor laughingstock that tried the first time. Nearly wrote the whole thing off til we heard that the supervisor got investigated for malpractice.”

“Did he?” Lockwood says at that, because the phenomenon is incredibly rare that a supervisor actually gets held to account when the kids die. Kipps has openly remarked that he should have been held to worse way more often than he was. The man on the phone mm-hmm s. 

“Didn’t come to anything, of course, and the man’s still in business, but once we heard of it we figured it was worth giving someone actually competent a go. So, Fittes and Rotwell, and now the lot of you.”

“We’re flattered, certainly,” Lockwood says. “But you’re saying that this haunting is well outside of London, with nearly no existing records, and is already responsible for agent fatalities?”

“And very well compensated,” the man replies. “There’s a village nearby with a couple of inns, and we’ll see to your lodging and train fare. It’s obviously still a bit of a hike for any kind of briefing or consult, but we’ve had a packet prepared with all our available information and the details of the contract, which we can fax to your offices for consideration?”

“That sounds excellent, thank you,” Lockwood says, mentally singing Holly’s praises for insisting on getting the fax machine for the offices out of the remainder of their rebuilding stipend. It had already paid off a little here and there, but the option to have the preliminary research sent straight to their office? Priceless. Lockwood relays the fax number to the man on the phone and hangs up, going promptly downstairs to oversee its progress. 

Lucy is already down there, alternating between the steam jets and Floating Joe the second with her rapier exercises; she ignores him in a very practical manner, and Lockwood leans against the fax machine table to watch. There’s a glint of blue at the hollow of her throat, catching the light as it falls in and out of the collar of her t-shirt (which might actually be one of Lockwood’s t-shirts, being as it is grey and not blue) with her movements.

She’s been wearing the necklace every day since he gave it to her. She takes it off for cases, but comes home in the morning and puts it right back on. Lockwood is nearly brave enough now to admit out loud that he loves her, not just with kisses and necklaces and buttered toast. 

The fax machine finally spits out a sheaf of papers, and Lockwood carries them back upstairs to the thinking cloth. Then he leans out the kitchen door and calls, “George! New prospective case, if you’ve got a moment?”

“On Holly’s afternoon off?” George calls back, and a moment later appears from the living room. “What have we got?”

“Businessman wants a landholding cleared,” Lockwood says. “Nasty business by the sound of it, too dangerous for local agencies but too rural for the big leagues. Called us when they finally got wind of the Fittes debacle. It’s not for sure yet -” he sidles aside to let George into the kitchen - “but the money sounds good and they’ve forwarded us a nice briefing packet to inform our decision.” George drops down into a seat at the table and picks up the papers. 

“Generous of them,” he says. “Where did you say this was?”

“Further north,” Lockwood says. “If it works out, maybe it’ll be convenient for Luce to stop by and visit her family, she hasn’t been up since last winter.”

“And look how well that went,” George mutters. “And you do realize that there’s quite a lot of north, right? More likely this is nowhere near Lucy’s family and she’ll look at you funny for suggesting it -” he breaks off, freezing in the act of turning a page. The paper in his hand flops over onto his knuckles.

“George?” Lockwood says.

George swallows. “I rescind my initial statement. In hindsight I think this might be a little too close to home for Lucy.”

“George?” Lockwood repeats, feeling the weird stillness begin to creep into his chest. Perhaps it’s transferring over from George, because George unfreezes and drops the page he’s holding to pick up the one underneath it. Jerkily, he passes it to Lockwood.

It’s a photocopy of a newspaper clipping. Front page. Headline: TRAGIC LOSS OF LIFE AT MOORGATE MILL. Photosplash: two boys and four girls smiling awkwardly at the camera. Perhaps an awkward class photo, were it not for the uniforms and rapiers. 

The girl in the bottom right corner is Lucy Carlyle. 

Listed in the photo caption is a now painfully familiar list of names, the only allowance Lucy has ever made in sharing her grief. A litany she’s rehearsed more than once: Paul. Julie. Steph. Alfie-Joe. Norrie. Carlyle, the only survivor of the tragedy, was unavailable for comment.

Lockwood looks at George. George, impossibly, looks like he’s about to cry.

The topmost basement stair creaks. “What is it?” Lucy says through the open door. “I thought I heard something about a case, what’ve we got?”

Lockwood turns to look at her. Sweaty, disheveled, a glint of blue and gold at her throat. Beautiful, because she always is. Confused, turning into concerned, but not upset yet - “I’m so sorry,” Lockwood says. “I had no idea. I’ll call them back right now and tell them no -” Lucy marches up to him and plucks the paper out of his hands. She looks at it and becomes incredibly still.

“I swear I had no idea,” Lockwood repeats, breathless. His heart feels like it’s become lodged in his throat, watching Lucy’s stillness and George’s abrupt anguish and the frozen faces of the kids in Lucy’s hand. 

“Someone wants to hire us,” Lucy says quietly, “To do Moorgate Mill.” Her voice is flat.

“ Re- do, apparently,” George says, and then winces.

Lockwood takes Lucy’s free hand. “Say the word,” he says, “and I will call them back and turn them down. Immediately.”

“No,” Lucy whispers.

“No?” George repeats.

“No,” Lucy says, with more conviction. “I want to do it. I want to take the case and take those monsters out, and then I want to spit at Jacobs’ feet after and tell Norrie that I finally avenged them. And if they don’t know already, I want that whole stupid fucking town to know  who really failed them.” The paper crumples into her fist. Lockwood’s hand protests a little as she squeezes it.

“You’re sure?” Lockwood says. “DEPRAC’s our new best friend, I’m sure there are ways to discredit him without putting ourselves at risk.”

“But that ghost would still be there,” Lucy says, “and we are the best. We can take it. We can avenge them.” She looks up at him, with that wonderful steely-gimlet look in her eye, and Lockwood gives in to himself and hugs her.

“That’s my girl,” he says.

She squeezes him back.

George looks down at the papers in front of him, and then he gets up and rounds the table to put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “You’re really brave,” he says. “You know that, right? No one would have blamed you if you came out of that and never wanted to go near a ghost again or couldn’t, even. But look at you - you’ve gone and put Marissa Fittes to shame. Literally. ” 

Lucy, face pressed into Lockwood’s chest, makes a noise that might be a laugh or maybe a watery hiccup, which is how Lockwood realizes that she’s started to cry. “Oh, Luce, darling,” he says, and she curls her fingers into the back of his shirt and sobs.

They take the job. 

It’s not often that they’ve all been needed for a case, not since Fittes house, but for Moorgate Mill they call in the full complement. Holly, the next morning when he tells her to make the arrangements, raises her eyebrows with a little suspicion. “You’re not planning on investigating another illicit research facility, are you?” She says, and Lockwood laughs a little, but he doesn’t really feel like laughing overall so it quickly dies out.

“No, no break-ins,” he says, “But it is a rather serious operation. We’ll explain everything later, at the home briefing.”

“ We?” Holly says, but Lockwood has already moved on to the next order of business.

The home briefing is a heavy affair, held around the thinking cloth after a light and picked-over supper by those who actually live at Portland Row. George came home from the archives early and frustrated, and has spent every possible moment since puttering around the kitchen; what little they had of supper was elaborate and delicious, and as the company takes their places around the table he serves a run of his best hot chocolate and fresh-baked shortbread biscuits. Even Kipps is served, and even Holly, sensing the weight of the situation, accepts. There’s even a tiny mug and a plate next to the skull, which sits at Lucy’s elbow. The ghost tied to it has not appeared since it saved Lockwood and Lucy’s lives, but the source is never far from Lucy’s side.

 “Right,” Lucy says when they’re all settled. “We’ve been hired to clear Moorgate Mill, up near the Cheviot Hills. Logging mill, been shut down for years. Couple of deaths on record from back in the day, but nothing dramatic, least not recorded. Was bought up about a year and a half ago and a local agency was sent to clear it then, ensure there was no lingering psychic concern. There was little to no preliminary research conducted on the mill or the surrounding area, and the team was inadequately prepared and poorly supervised. Only one agent, a junior operative, survived. Now they’ve sent us, because we’re the best, and because the only other option at this point is a full demolition and salting the ruins, and at this large of a scale no one wants that. London’s records of the area are sketchy at best and nonexistent at worst, according to George, so we’re going to make as much time as possible for him to get more local information, which will also allow us to scout out the site in daylight as much as we can. It was handled poorly before but it does pose a legitimate threat - one changer, at least, inside. Gd knows what else.”

“How do you know all of this?” Holly asks. 

“The client sent us a packet of collected information when reaching out about the case,” Lockwood says quickly. “And -”

“And I was there,” Lucy says. “My old agency was the first attempt, and I was the agent that survived. That’s all.”

Holly looks briefly abashed and then hides behind her mug of hot chocolate. Kipps processes Lucy’s statement briefly, and then levels Lockwood a scowl.

“Right,” Lockwood says. “There’s a lot to cover, so - any questions so far?”

As soon as the meeting is over, and arrangements are made to meet at the train far too early the next morning, Kipps drags Lockwood out into the hallway.

“Are you out of your mind, ” he hisses. “You realize that taking Lucy back there is like parking your arse next to a bomb and then lighting the fuse? Even I know how badly losing her team fucked her up, Tony, and we both know how much danger we’re all in if she loses her cool. Remember Aickmere’s? I’m sure Holly does.”

“Why yes, I have considered that taking Lucy back to one of the worst experiences of her life is a legitimately terrible idea,” Lockwood hisses back. “We are talking about the love of my short life, in case you’d forgotten? I offered her the call, and she took it.Then I took it because frankly if Lucy is going to waltz into a death trap, I’d rather be at her side than trailing at her heels when she inevitably hares off to do it anyway. She’s gotten herself into enough trouble that way already - remember Fittes house? Because I certainly do.”

“Yes, of course, fair point,” Kipps sighs. “Perhaps domesticity suits you, Tony, you’ve already thought this through quite well.” He smirks. “The love of your life, eh?”

Lockwood buries his face in his hands as it begins to burn. “I said that, didn’t I.”

“You did,” Quill says. “You should try saying it to her face next.” He claps Lockwood on the shoulder. “I’ll see myself out. See you in the morning.”

Lockwood waits to collect himself, and until the door has shut behind Kipps, to go back into the kitchen. The three still waiting for him all look up like they’ve been pretending not to listen, and Lucy stands up. 

“Alright?” She says.

“Just sorting something out. Man-to-man, and all that,” Lockwood sighs, skirting around the table to join her. He kisses her properly, just briefly for the sake of George and Holly, and then leans back to find her smiling at him. His Lucy. Brave and bright and bloody brilliant, and - 

“What?” She murmurs. “You’re looking at me funny.” 

“I love you,” Lockwood says. Just like that. It never should have been hard at all. She smiles a little more, one of her impossible two-hundred-smiles-in-one little smiles. 

“I love you too,” she replies. “What were you and Kipps actually talking about?”

“It wasn’t specifically about whether or not I loved you,” Lockwood insists. “Although it did come up, rather by accident. He said I should tell you.”

“Hm.” Lucy leans into his side, and Lockwood looks down at the table instead of at her, getting a peripheral view of Holly discreetly finishing her hot chocolate and George just watching with the most ridiculous smug smile on his face. “I suppose even Kipps must have good ideas sometimes,” Lucy muses, and Lockwood laughs.

In the morning they collect their assembled kit bags and luggage from the front hall and Jake picks them up, his last run before the shift change from night cab to day cab. Kipps and Holly meet them at the station. The train leaves technically before curfew lifts, meaning that the few people on it are the few that can reasonably navigate London between dawn and dusk: agents, DEPRAC workers, ‘essential personnel.’ It’s not hard to find a carriage to themselves, and Lockwood finds himself with Lucy on one side of him and George on the other side, watching the countryside fly by as the sun crawls over the hills. Lucy has her head on his shoulder and her backpack in her lap, which Lockwood happens to know is housing the skull. His best mate is buried in papers again, and when Lockwood isn’t watching the view or Lucy he’s watching George work his silent magic. He seems to be preparing an itinerary for when they reach the Wythe Valley, compiling all the places where pertinent information may be stored in the best order for seeking it out. At the top of the list, writ large, is one word: JACOBS’?

It makes sense. Too much sense. Jacobs hit the mill once before; there must have been some preliminary research, even if woefully inadequate, because Lucy actually knew something about the mill. But they are all to a man - or a woman - reluctant to call on Agent-Supervisor Jacobs when they are needing help and not carrying victory. Lucy especially shouldn’t have to ask for his help, especially not now. Lockwood and George have already discussed it: if it comes to it, Lockwood will go, and go alone. Agency head to agency head, making no allusions to the makeup of his team. We’re here to finish what you started, and that’s all. 

Sometime after the sun is fully in the sky, Holly says, “Are you from near Wythe Valley, Lucy? If your agency had the case?”

“Mm.” Lucy nods against Lockwood’s shoulder. “Right off the line. Got a real train station an’ everything, ‘pparently me da was a porter there before he snuffed it. And real hotels, two of ‘em, not like the Skinners’ place.” A joint shudder from all, remembering the adventure that was staying at the Old Sun Inn. “And lots of green - George’ll love it.”

“You really refuse to let that go,” George mutters. Lucy lifts her head to stick her tongue out at him, which provokes a smile and an eyeroll. 

“Do you have family there?” Holly asks. “I’m sorry, it’s … never occurred to me to ask.”

“Depends on what you mean by family,” Lucy mutters, straightening up to slouch back down in her own seat. “Six older sisters, moved out by the time I left but didn’t go very far - a village up, a village down, mostly. Mum - left me to the sisters til they were gone and then only cared about how much money she could get out of me. Norrie - still ghost-locked, but her family sends me letters. I send tapes back sometimes and they play ‘em for her, like letters. Couple brothers-in-law, coupla nieces an’ nephews, like George.”

“More than George, by the sound of it,” George mutters. “ Six sisters. And I thought two was a lot.”

“It’s the cousins that George has to watch out for, though, isn’t it?” Lockwood interjects. “You’ve got quite a lot of those, don’t you, George?”

“That is true,” George says. “I do have a lot of cousins.”

“They’re not a lot like George, but they’re alright,” Lucy adds to Holly. “Nothing like my folks. And it doesn’t matter, really. My real family is all in this carriage with me, and blood’s got nothing to do with it.”

Lockwood gives in to impulse and leans over to kiss the side of her head, because it’s the nearest convenient spot. George puts his pen down long enough to reach across Lockwood’s lap and briefly take her hand. She lifts her head and smiles at him, and he smiles back. 

“Do you expect to have to … deal with your relatives while you’re here, then?” Holly asks tentatively. Lucy shrugs.

“Probably not. The Problem terrifies them and the city intimidates them, so when they hear that a bunch of big-shot London agents are in town they’ll probably lock their doors. I might find a minute to go see my sister Mary, though, she’s alright. Doesn’t have a lot going on, but alright.”

“Will you visit Norrie?” Lockwood asks.

“After.” Steel creeps into her voice. “When I can tell her the good news. And her mum, too.”

“Fair enough.”

The train crawls on. The journey takes forever, and the mercilessly early start doesn’t help. Lockwood eventually wakes to find himself with George asleep on one shoulder and Lucy curled into his other side; Holly graciously says nothing, but on the seat between her and Kipps one of their kit cameras has found its way out of their bags. He looks at her, and then at the camera, and she bats her eyes innocently and looks away. 

Lockwood laughs - quietly, to avoid disturbing Lucy and George - and tilts his head back again. 

Something like an eternity or an hour later, they stop and change trains. Forty minutes or so after that, lightly fed from a sandwich shop at the last station, they arrive in the middle of nowhere. It is, sure enough, very green. They all troop out onto the platform in their shiny city clothes, with their piles and piles of gear, and Lockwood grabs Lucy’s hand as people start giving them a wide berth.

“Right,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

The afternoon is terrible. Every minute they spend in the village is terrible. There are no cabs, but Lucy pays a man with a truck to ferry them to one of the hotels; the hotel staff give them all distasteful looks and tell Lucy that she’d just missed her mum, and then proceed to be rather unhelpful in general. George deputizes them all and sends them all over creation looking for the places on his itinerary, and they all wind up reporting back frustrated - even George. Then Lockwood finally grits his teeth and inquires at Jacobs’, and the man himself looks balefully over his desk at him and says,

“So you’re the stripling that Carlyle ran off and shacked up with, then.”

Finally he makes it back to the hotel, having successfully kept his temper and won the prize of Jacobs’s meagre research. He finds the rest of the team in the dining room, having commandeered a table technically too large for the five of them, but between the five of them and the skull and George’s papers, it’s actually almost perfect. Lockwood drops his spoils of war at George’s elbow and drops himself into the seat between George and Lucy, which has been left empty.

“How’d it go?” Holly asks, as he helps himself to the tea service that’s been left for them. Lockwood can’t help but notice that the staff are giving their table a wide berth, and wonders if the tea service was brought before or after Lucy put a real skull on the table. Then he thinks about the answer to Holly’s question, and finds that he can’t be anything but honest.

“He assumed we were here because I was sleeping with Lucy,” he says, sitting back with his cup. “And I successfully did not punch him in the face. And then I showed him our contract and told him in no short order why we were here, and then he cooperated. He smelled like cheap whiskey - please tell me he’s not drinking on the job,” he interrupts himself to say to Lucy. She shrugs. 

“Christ,” Kipps mutters. “If Fittes were a better woman.” The statement is nonsensical, but Lucy seems to know what he’s talking about, because she huffs into her teacup.

“Sorry?” Holly says, so Lockwood doesn’t have to.

“Fittes said she’d pulled strings to get Jacobs investigated,” Lucy says. “When she offered me a job that one time. Had to find out the hard way that it hadn’t worked.” She takes another drink. Lockwood again curses Marissa Fittes for taking the easy way out on her path to avoid real justice. But as George once said about Pamela Joplin, it’s probably better this way: Lockwood can’t run an agency from prison. Instead he mutters a curse and briefly buries himself in his teacup.

George sighs and shuffles his papers, which is George-speak for he’s finished with the conversation at hand. “Right. Between us and Jacobs we might have something close to an acceptable amount of research, but it’s going to take time to sort through all of this. We should reconvene at breakfast for briefing, and then figure out how much time we have to scout out the site before dark. Lockwood, Luce, can we talk for a minute before I get cracking on this?”

Lockwood and Lucy reply “of course,” at the same moment, even as they look at each other. Kipps and Holly also glance at each other, and Holly says,

“We’ll leave you to it. See you in a bit, Lucy.” She gets up and excuses herself; Kipps drains his tea and leaves. George watches him until he vanishes out the dining room door, and then puts the papers down. 

“What’s up, George?” Lockwood says. 

George leans back and takes his glasses off, cleaning the lenses on the corner of his flannel shirt. “Look, we - we all know tomorrow is going to be awful. Like, really fucking miserable kind of awful. Whatever’s in there is a nasty piece of work and we’re going to be really wound up in the fact that this hurt Lucy, so we’re all going to be a bit susceptible. And that’s okay. We’ve dealt with worse and under worse circumstances of our own making, we’re all bloody disasters and we know it. We can prepare for it.” He puts his glasses back on and doesn’t look at either of them, and then he looks at Lucy. “And I think you need to talk about what happened. I think it needs to be out here, not still inside you, when we go in there tomorrow. For your sake, but also because that thing in there will sense whatever’s festering inside you and feed on it, we both know it will.”

Under the table, Lucy takes Lockwood’s hand. “Can we,” she whispers, breaks off, and begins again: “not here?”

“Of course,” George says, relief bleeding into his voice. “We can - our room? Holly’s in yours, obviously, or -”

“That’s fine,” Lucy says. George pushes himself to his feet. 

“I’m going to talk to the staff real quick about the mess,” he says. “I’ll meet you there, alright?” Lockwood gets to his feet and helps Lucy up, even though she doesn’t need it, and though George said to go on without him they wait until he’s finished having a brief and slightly animated discussion with the nearest waitress and on his way back to them. “Needed to make sure they knew I was coming back,” he says. “Be a waste to move everything twice.”

They go back up to the room Lockwood and George are sharing. They’d nearly drawn straws for the single that Kipps has now, but realized in the end that neither of them wanted to share with him and would get on fine with each other, so they let Kipps have it. George unlocks the door; Lockwood keeps holding Lucy’s hand. Without discussion, they pile into one of the ridiculous twin beds (Lockwood’s, incidentally), and Lucy hesitates for several long moments before she begins to talk. 

Then she talks for a long while. Sometimes at a normal tone, sometimes barely loud enough to hear. Sometimes the words flow like a tap she can’t turn off; sometimes they come one at a time, or two at a time, in tiny fits and starts as she seeks each word out. The mill, in the end, is only a part. It’s a story about ghosts, and death, but it’s also a story about injustice, and about a girl who felt like her only choice in the end was to disappear without a hope in the world. Days later, she’d turn up on his doorstep at Portland Row, and George would show her in, and she’d eat biscuits like she hadn’t had a meal in days.

Now they’re here in a heap, secret national heroes and slightly less secret national heroes and also a bunch of emotional teenagers who are about to go and kill the manifestation of one of the worst days of their lives. Lockwood kisses the side of Lucy’s head. “I love you,” he says. “I’m glad you came to us. George is, too, though he might not say it like that.”

“This is all very touchy-feely,” George agrees wryly, from where he’s propped his chin on Lucy’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around her waist. Lockwood’s arm, around her from the other direction, is pressed up between his stomach and her back. “But mincing words is for wimps. You’re my best friends. I love you both. I’m glad we’re all here.” He kisses the other side of Lucy’s head. Lucy laughs a watery little laugh.

“Here in this shitty hotel in the middle of nowhere, about to fight a changer who’s going to feed on my trauma?” She says.

“Even so,” Lockwood says. “Right, George?”

“Quite,” George says. “No one else I’d do this for. Honest to God. If it were Kipps? We’d tell the client to fuck right off and make him go to therapy instead.”

“We ought to do that anyway,” Lockwood says. “Make Kipps go to therapy. It would be good for him.”

“Literally none of us have a leg to stand on,” Lucy says, but she’s half-smiling finally. “Holly would make us all go and it would be bloody miserable.”

“We could make a day of it,” George says. “Once a week. Come back and lie on the floor together and make Holly witness the consequences of her influence.” Lockwood snorts. Lucy’s smile gets a little bigger.

In the morning, during the briefing, Lucy leans over George’s shoulder and traces her finger along the plans of the mill. “We went in here,” she says. “Followed this hallway - I heard something, sounded like a child crying. When I came back from reporting to Jacobs, they’d gone into this room here, and that’s where it got them. The doors are big. Iron. If we needed to, I think we could close them between us and it and be safe.”

George makes a note of it.

In the early afternoon they pack excessive amounts of sandwiches, and thermoses upon thermoses of tea, and carry all their gear up into the valley. The information they have to work with is disappointing to George and yet would likely be more than substantial for anyone else, more than enough to give them a starting advantage in securing the site in daylight. Even so it’s a long walk, and a long job, and it’s nearly sunset by the time they all gather back at the front entrance and look through the doorway. Nowhere near the threshold, so they can hesitate all they like. 

Lucy walks all the way up to the door and stands still for a few long moments, and then she comes back to them. Holly has determined it time to fortify themselves, and so has broken out the first round of sandwiches and tea. Lockwood hands Lucy some as she sidles up between him and George. “Listening?” He asks.

“Mm,” she says. “Thank you. Not much to hear. And I keep waiting for Skully to say something stupid, and then remembering he’s not there. Feels foreboding, but … I don’t think there’s a reason it wouldn’t. Even without the ghosts.”

“Entirely fair,” George says.

“You sure you’re good for this, Lucy?” Kipps asks.

Lucy, partway through unwrapping her sandwich, pauses and considers it. Then she draws herself up to her full height (still small) and says, “Yes, I’m sure.”

It’s still, of course, fucking awful. 

It’s not one changer. It’s two. And they contain them, of course. Two bodies, a mere two rooms further than where the Jacobs’ agents lost their lives. A murder-suicide by the looks of it, and George starts chattering at entirely the wrong moment about how it must be a missing couple he found record of in all his digging and nearly gets ghost-touched. But they contain the sources, and they quiet the ghosts, and the sweep of the rest of the mill is entirely anticlimactic.

Lucy makes it out the front door again and is immediately sick in the grass. And then she cries for a whole twenty minutes without stopping. Holly and Kipps clean up their gear, and George keeps watch, and Lockwood keeps Lucy, and the sky is turning grey over the hills when they finally gather themselves and troop wearily back to the hotel. Once there, Lockwood turns Lucy over to Holly’s ministrations and falls face-first into bed.

George wakes him near noon, only slightly apologetic. “Lucy wants to get a move on, and I didn’t figure you’d take kindly to being left behind,” he says. Very astute, so Lockwood doesn’t complain. He’s out of the room in fifteen minutes, including time taken to shower off agent-detritus and clean a couple of scrapes. He finds his team in the pithy excuse for a dining-room again, where someone has provoked George to standing up straight for once. Said someone is a stocky woman with Lucy’s exact frown lines. Lockwood draws quick conclusions.

George has placed himself between Lucy and Mrs. Carlyle and drawn himself up to his full height, a gesture which seems to have startled Lucy and Holly and impressed Kipps, and he seems to be right in the middle of telling Mrs. Carlyle exactly what he thinks. This could be a while. Lockwood requests a cup of tea from an understandably distracted waitress and sidles over, close enough for Lucy to shake her head a little when he tries to approach. He diverts a little to join George instead. “- so really, Mrs. Carlyle, your attempts to belittle and embarrass Lucy in front of us embarrass only yourself, so I’d stop while I’m ahead if I were you. Will there be anything else?” He finishes, and Mrs. Carlyle gapes a little bit, clearly still reeling from the George Karim effect. Lockwood takes the moment to bump George’s shoulder in greeting. 

“What’d I miss?” He says.

“Thought we were in for a slightly awkward family reunion,” George says, “Until Mrs. Carlyle referred to the best listener in fifty years as a useless slut and an embarrassment to her family. I set her straight.”

“Oh, well done, George,” Lockwood says, as calmly as he can while pride for his best friend and indignation for Lucy’s sake war in his chest. “Mrs. Carlyle, is it?” He adds. “I hope you’re done harassing my agency now?”

That helps Mrs. Carlyle rediscover her steam, at least. “ Your agency, is it?” She says. “That’s rich, then, a pack of children with no supervision wandering the countryside, making a fool of beloved public servants -”

“If by public servants you mean Mr. Jacobs, who pitted two grade four licensed agents and four junior operatives against two type-two changers in a criminally under-researched operation and was so unattentive to his charges that he failed to realize their peril, leading to the untimely deaths of four agents, the ghost-lock of a fifth, and the trauma and public humiliation of a sixth, perhaps,” Lockwood says. “Unless there’s another public servant in these parts who we’ve out-performed, which I find unlikely. You can ask my administrative team if you like, but really ghosts are the only thing we’re good at, which is why we’re here and why the Moorgate Mill is finally safe for occupation and use again. Despite what anyone may say about us, Mrs. Carlyle, our work really does speak for itself. That being said, it seems that my tea has just arrived, and I am quite extravagantly hungry, so if you’ll excuse us I’d like to sit down with my team and I’m sure you have plenty of more important things to be doing. Excuse me.” He turns to thank the waitress, and finds that instead of his cuppa she’s brought a full tea service for the table and cups for all. “Er- thank you.”

“No, but - thank you, ” she replies. “For Julie - my sister. And for all of them.” Her voice gets suspiciously wobbly at the end, and she quickly sets down the tea service and hurries away. Mrs. Carlyle hesitates, then accepts the clear dismissal with a disdainful look and leaves without another word. George has already slouched back down to his normal height, but he’s still holding Lucy’s hand. They let go of each other to sit down again, George between Lockwood and Lucy.

“That was nearly as entertaining as watching Lucy and George squabble over the last biscuit,” Kipps says. “Well done.”

Lucy looks at them all, and she’s not smiling, but it’s a near thing. “Thanks,” she says. “And - Georgie, since when are you so tall?” 

“I am also wondering about this,” Holly says quietly. George leans back in his seat and smirks.

“It’s for the good of the company,” he says. “We wouldn’t function properly if I had to be taller than Lockwood all the time.”

“Come off it, you are not,” Lockwood says.

“Are,” Kipps says. “Although to be fair, I think that most of it is actually Karim’s hair.” The entire table casts their eyes on George’s enormous mass of curls, and Lockwood concedes the point. If it’s mostly hair, it’s alright.

Lockwood eats. Slowly, the rest of the table relaxes. After another round of tea (and Lockwood’s first) courtesy of Julie’s sister, Lucy announces that she’s going to Norrie’s.

“Come with, if you like,” she adds, and of course no one stays behind.

They walk in a little huddle with Lucy in the lead, and knowing what he knows now, it’s interesting to see the way that the villagers divert around and look and whisper. Word had been all over town like greek fire nearly as soon as they’d gotten off the train two days ago; the hotel staff had been hopping with the knowledge that the big, fancy visiting London agency was a bunch of strange children and one Lucy Carlyle. (and Kipps.) Jacobs had known of them possibly within the hour. By the time they return to the hotel later, possibly the whole county will know that Lockwood & Co. went to visit Norrie White.

Everyone crowds around the front stoop, but only Lucy climbs the steps to ring the bell. There’s only a moment’s pause, and then a mum with a thin face and long, red hair answers the door.

“Lucy,” she says. 

“Hi,” Lucy says. “Can I - can I see Norrie?”

“Of course,” Mrs, White says. “And -” She looks out at the rest of them - “are these your friends? From the tapes? I don’t mean to eavesdrop, of course, but sometimes I overhear -”

“Yeah,” Lucy says. “This is my team.” There’s that note of pride, and Lockwood is warmed by it. Mrs. White smiles at them all and opens the door wider.

“Come on in,” she says. “While Lucy is visiting, you can tell me all about how she’s getting on.”

The others follow Mrs. White into the kitchen, but Lockwood trails Lucy quietly up the stairs as she moves through this house as easily as she moves through Portland Row. He tries to mimic her, sidestepping the same floorboards, and pauses next to her at the last door in the hall. Without looking, she takes his hand.

“Go on,” he says. “No hesitating, and all that.” He squeezes her hand. She shakes her head and opens the door. The room beyond is strangely reminiscent of Lucy’s attic space: warm, sun-filled, papered over with posters and polaroids and a lot of the same colors, if Lockwood’s not mistaken. The biggest differences are the view of the village instead of the Marylbone skyline from the window, and, obviously, the swarm of machines surrounding the bed and its ghostlocked occupant.

Norrie White’s hair is braided. Someone has painted her nails, the color a dark blue to match Lucy’s. There is a radio by the bedside playing something with loud guitar - he thinks he may have heard this song before, maybe when Lucy has commandeered the basement radio.

Lucy’s hand slips from his and she pads further into the room, deftly turning the radio down and taking a seat by the bed. “Hey, Norrie,” she whispers. “Been a while, yeah? Sorry I haven’t sent you a tape recently, it’s - it’s hard to know what I can and can’t put in a recording, and you deserve to know the truth. About everything. And - gd, just, so much has happened. Most important, though, is we finally cleared the mill. And it can’t - it won’t bring them back, but I hope they get some peace, you know? And you too, if you’re there - argh!” She abruptly breaks off with a start, as if she’s been stung, and yanks her backpack off and dumps the skull inside out onto the floor.

The ghost of a young man with wild, spiky hair appears in the darkest corner of the room.

“Now?” Lockwood says, and the boy who was once a skull in a jar flips him the bird. “How do you even know how to do that? You haven’t even had hands for two hundred years,” Lockwood says, and the boy rolls his eyes and says something to Lucy.

“You do realize that my ‘sentimental qualities’ are the only reason we’re having this conversation?” Lucy says. “You were gone! For months! You could have been gone forever, for all I knew an’ I’d ‘ave been better off pitching your stupid source into the furnaces and moving on with my life!” Skull smiles. It’s almost entirely sardonic, but it’s dulled by something else. 

“Yeah,” Lucy says after a moment. “I did miss you, you stupid git.” Skull puts ghostly hand to ghostly chest and flails like he’s been struck. Then he fake-yawns, and examines his ghostly nails, and sidles as close to the bedside as he can.

“What,” Lucy says. “Sorry, what?” The Skull shrugs innocently, casts his eyes towards the ceiling, and flickers. Lucy hisses in pain and Lockwood would protest, except that the psychic energy in the room just shuddered. Skull vanishes.

Norrie White gasps and blinks, brown eyes no longer shrouded in fog.

“Oh my gd,” Lucy whispers. “Norrie, are you -”

“L’ce?” Norrie whispers.

“Oh my gd, ” Lucy says, clutching Norrie’s hand. Then she turns to Lockwood, frozen where he’s been since Skull appeared. “Get Mrs. White.”

Lockwood goes. Down the hall, clattering down the steps, hurtling towards his best guess of where the kitchen will be. “Mrs. White?” He calls, and Mrs. White calls back. He sails around the corner and catches himself on the doorway. Mrs. White looks at him, and she must see something in his expression, because her grip on the tray of biscuits in her hands falters.

Lockwood crosses the room and gently takes the tray from her. “You should go upstairs, Mrs. White,” he says. “Norrie’s woken up.”

In the darkest corner of the kitchen, Skull reappears just long enough to smirk.