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The first time Jenny Wong caught a glimpse of the famous Anthony Lockwood was three weeks after receiving her Fourth Grade certification, and she felt incredibly lucky. Lavinia Thomas, who was two years older and had been on jobs with multiple confirmed Type Two’s, had only ever seen him once, from a distance, in the aftermath of a job in a historic cemetery involving teams from Sebright and Grimble as well as their own.
“What did he look like?” Jenny had asked that evening. “Was it just like in the magazines?”
Lavinia shrugged. “Similar, I suppose. Older than I was expecting.”
“Really? What do you mean?”
But Lavinia wasn’t really a vivid storyteller, and insisted she’d been too far away to get a good look anyway.
So when Jenny saw him exit one of the DEPRAC vans that had arrived on the site of a surprise wraith at a Grosvenor Square mansion she was nearly beside herself. After waiting impatiently for one of the petty officers to finish taking her statement, she tried to find a reason to slip outside for a better look (and maybe, just maybe, a conversation).
Besides him, the van carried mostly senior officers, who bustled up the steps to the front door and only vaguely nodded at Jenny as they passed through the foyer on the way up to the bedroom, where her team had located the Source. But Lockwood lingered on the sidewalk, leaning casually against the side of the van and looking up at the building with a sharp, hawk-like gaze. Jenny waited for the DEPRAC officers disappear on the second floor landing, and then cautiously stepped outside.
As she descended the stairs, she noticed that Lavinia was right– he did look older than she was expecting. She knew, of course, that Lockwood had been in his mid-teens when he and his agency had Solved the Problem nearly fifteen years ago, meaning he couldn’t be out of his early thirties, but the man at the bottom of the stairs had salt-and-pepper hair and a thin face that seemed prematurely lined. All of him was actually quite thin, she realized. Somewhat obscured by his long coat, his suit appeared to be rather ill-fitting, as if made for someone a good stone heavier.
He regarded her steadily as she neared him with that same sharp gaze, although she could see the dark circles under his eyes. Luckily, he spoke first, as by this time her heart was pounding with anxiety and anything she’d ever planned to say to the most famous ghost hunter since Marissa Fittes had flown out of her mind. “You must be the Listener from Tamworth.”
“I– yes.” She self-consciously straightened her yellow vest. “Jenny Wong.”
He shook her hand, grip surprisingly strong. “Anthony Lockwood.”
“I know.” Immediately she felt her face burning, but he only smiled.
“I heard it was you who ultimately identified the Source.”
“Yes.” Christ, he’s heard about me already? “I could hear it best outside, but the malaise was stronger upstairs. That led us to the master bedroom, and to the planters on the balcony.”
He nodded. “Interesting case. Maybe now the clients know not to trust unverified antique dealers.”
“Doubtful,” Jenny said. “I think this place is owned by a Russian oligarch who only lives here a few months out of the year. The neighbors are actually the ones who contacted us about the disturbances.”
Lockwood let out a bark of laughter. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“Would you like to come in and see it?” Jenny said. “They’ve probably taken the planters away but there’s all sorts of weird stuff in there.”
“Ah.” Lockwood glanced at the stairs with something like a grimace. “No, I don’t think so.” Then he flashed an easy smile so charming she started doubting his initial expression at all. “You’re here now, and I’m sure you can give me the play-by-play of everything that happened last night.”
Of course, she obliged. Jenny hoped she didn’t seem too eager– this was more than she’d ever dreamed when she imagined meeting the legendary agent. To think! He wanted her account of a job!
She did her best not to go on too long, but by the end Lockwood had moved to sit stiffly in the back of the open van.
“…and that’s when we realized the source must be the planters, although it was still a scramble to find enough silver nets to cover them all.”
“Well it seems as though you managed it,” Lockwood said.
Jenny noticed he’d removed a mobile phone from his pocket and was turning it over in his hands. “I’m sorry if I’ve bored you– really, you can tell me to shove off at any time–”
“What? Of course not,” he said. But he looked rueful. “I do mean to leave soon, unfortunately. To be honest, I didn’t exactly intend to come on this call in the first place. I just happened to be at the office when it came in and thought I’d tag along, although I’m hardly in a state to…” He trailed off and glanced back at the stairs to the front door, before shaking his head. “Nevermind that.” he held up the mobile. “I’m supposed to call my wife with this address so she can pick me up. I don’t remember her mobile number, but I’m told she’s programmed it somewhere in this.” He flashed another winning smile. “I don’t suppose you, being a young person, would know how to access that? I still haven’t quite managed to figure these things out.”
Jenny gaped, stunned that she was in a position to do such a favor for him, but tried to recover herself quickly. “Yes, of course. You’ll just want to navigate to the contacts folder.”
“Contacts. Ah yes, that makes sense.” Lockwood flipped the phone open, thumb hovering above the buttons. “Now how exactly does one do that?”
“Um, by using the…” Jenny reached out hesitantly, not sure whether she meant to point out the exact buttons or, heaven forbid, press them herself, but to her surprise Lockwood handed her the phone freely, leaning over to get a better view of what she did next. “Use these buttons around the circle to navigate around the home screen, yeah? And then middle one to select, and then scroll down–” She tried not to look at the other numbers programmed into his phone. Surprisingly few, but that was probably because the phone was new. She cleared her throat. “What’s– what’s your wife’s name?”
“Lucy,” he said, a hint of fondness creeping into his voice. “Although I suppose she could’ve written anything in those funny little boxes, couldn’t she?”
“Seems like it.” Jenny scrolled passed the L’s, no ‘Lucy.’
“Huh. Oh– that looks right.” Lockwood pointed to a name near the bottom of the list.
“‘Youre Luce?’” Jenny tried and failed to keep her cheeks from reddening. It seemed like an impossibly intimate thing to read. “I think that’s the wrong your.”
But Lockwood just chuckled. “Of course it is. You wouldn’t know how to fix that, would you?”
She did.
“Excellent. Thank you. Would’ve driven me crazy, that. Now, how do we call My Luce?”
“Uh, just select the contact, like this. And then press call.”
“Ah, right! Seems so simple when you do it.” Lockwood followed her pointed directions and held the phone to his ear while it rang. “Thank you so much, Ms. Wong. I really couldn’t have managed it without you.”
Jenny felt herself glowing, and reluctant to leave Lockwood to make his phone call in private. The problem was, she didn’t really have anywhere else to be. DEPRAC would no doubt still be interrogating her supervisor and the senior agents, asking all sorts of boring questions for their paperwork as they cleaned up the scene. Her team wouldn’t be released until all that was done, so she couldn’t very well leave now and go back to the dormitories for some much-needed sleep, even if she wanted to.
She wondered if Lockwood would dismiss her, either verbally or with a gesture, or walk some distance away himself, but he did none of those things, and before she could gather up the courage to ask, someone, presumably Lucy, picked up and he started speaking.
“Hello, Darling. A phone call, as promised. … Yes, I figured it out all by myself.”
Jenny gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, or crying out in protest.
Lockwood’s eyes twinkled at whatever Lucy was saying. “Alright, fine, I asked an agent to help me. … Yes, I thanked her.”
He winked, and Jenny allowed a singular giggle to escape.
“Right. Well, the house is off Grosvenor square, near the intersection with Brook Street. I’ll be waiting in one the vans parked out side. … No. … Yes. … No, Luce, I’m perfectly fine.” Lockwood sighed, and brought his other hand up to rub his temples. Jeny noticed that it was shaking slightly. “A little tired, maybe. Just need a bit of a lie-down, I think. … No, no. No need to rush. Please don’t run out on your client for my sake.”
Jenny’s ears perked up at the word client. Did Lockwood’s wife run an agency? Everyone knew the famous Lockwood and Co. had shuttered nearly a decade ago.
“How are you doing?” Lockwood dropped his hand and took on a more intense expression. “Any more… signs, d’you think?” His voice lowered, and he looked back at Jenny, who suddenly felt quite self-conscious.
She took a few large steps back and tried to appear very interested in examining the door of the mansion she’d just cleared, but it wasn’t quite enough for her not to hear what Lockwood said next.
“Well, if it’s not this month, I’m sure it’ll be the next one. … Yes, I’m aware that’s what I said last time, but this is different, I just know it–” He broke off as if interrupted, and released a long, slow sigh. “Luce, I know you hate getting your hopes up, but we have to be optimistic at some point. … Yes. … Yes, I’m aware. … I’ll call the doctor as soon as I get home, and then I promise I’ll rest, so long as you promise not to worry overmuch about–” he glanced back at Jenny, “–about the other thing. Like everyone keeps saying, it’ll happen when it happens. We’ve just got to be patient. … Okay. … Okay, I’ll see you in a bit. … I love you, too.” He closed the mobile, and looked at Jenny again. “You can stop pretending not to eavesdrop now.”
Jenny felt her face redden, and resisted the urge to flee back into the mansion without another word. She turned stiffly back towards him and lowered her eyes. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean–”
But cut her off with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine. I probably would’ve done the same, in your position.”
She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and for a moment felt almost dizzy– maybe from the stress, or exhaustion from being up all night. She felt herself sway, and Lockwood patted the tailgate next to him.
“Please, sit down before you faint. I don’t think I could catch you at the minute, and I’d have to figure out this mobile again in order to call for help.”
She managed a weak chuckle and sat carefully beside him, legs swinging in the air. Up even closer now, she could see that Lockwood really didn’t look well. The lines on his face looked as if they might’ve been from pain, and he was quite deathly pale. He’d mentioned having a lie-down on the phone, and it was clear he needed it.
If he noticed her scrutiny, he ignored it, and Jenny was so curious and almost delirious with exhaustion she nearly asked about his health point-blank, but at the last minute caught herself so when she opened her mouth what came out was, “Is your wife a supervisor?” She cringed anyway at the directness of the question, but couldn’t bring herself to retract it.
Lockwood looked at her sharply, but more, it seemed, in surprise than in offense. “No. Why do you ask?”
Another wince. “It’s just… I overheard… she had a client.”
“Oh.” He actually huffed a laugh, and Jenny felt her hands shake as her adrenaline receded. “I wasn’t talking about that sort of client. Lucy manages an art gallery. She’s got to wrap up a meeting with a collector before leaving to get me.”
“Right.” Jenny laughed as well, a bit nervously. Sometimes she got so wrapped up in being an agent she forgot the rest of the world still existed. That most people had lives outside of fighting the lingering dead. She cocked her head. Lockwood had once been like her, hadn’t he? An agent totally immersed in the fight. And his wife, too. If memory served, he’d married one of his agents. Obviously, that life was far behind them now.
“What’s it like?” she found herself saying, quite before she could stop herself.
Lockwood raised an eyebrow. “What’s what like?”
“Real life,” she said, and then stuttered. “I mean, life… after.”
“…After being an agent, you mean,” he finished.
“Yeah.”
He looked at her steadily for a long moment, before turning away to rub his chin in his hand. “It’s… normal, I suppose. Minus the nightmares. Normal people probably don’t get so many of those.” He made an attempt at a lighthearted grin, which she returned just as weakly. Good to know those didn’t disappear with time.
He shook his head, growing serious again. “I don’t quite know how to describe it. Growing up just sort of… happens. And I don’t just mean your Talents fading, although that’s part of it.”
Jenny’s insides twisted uncomfortably, as they always did when this came up. It was almost impossible to imagine her life without her Hearing, although she knew it wouldn’t last forever.
Lockwood went on, “Everything feels like a big deal when you’re young. I don’t know why– perhaps because half of everything you experience you’re experiencing for the very first time. And maybe sometimes it is a big deal.” He shrugged, stiffly, and grimaced. “But a lot of the time, it isn’t.” He flashed her a grin. “I remember thinking my life would be totally pointless if I didn’t make Lockwood and Co. the most famous agency in London.”
“But… you did do that. I don’t think there’s an agent now who doesn’t learn about you, and what you did.”
He looked a touch gratified at that, but shook his head modestly. “But then it ended. And after it did…” He trailed off for a minute, his gaze far away. “My life wasn’t over.”
He was quiet for a long while, and finally Jenny said, “So what happened next?”
“Oh, lots of things.” Lockwood pursed his lips, clearly trying to decide what to reveal to her, a total stranger. “It’s almost funny, looking back on it, how adult life sort of sneaked up on us. Suddenly we were dealing with all sorts of stuff we’d never imagined as kids, complicating our lives in whole new, not-Problem-related ways. And everything that had seemed so important, so central to who we were as teenagers…” another painful-looking shrug, “…suddenly seemed a lot smaller.”
His words seemed to hang there in front of them for a long while. Jenny’s swinging legs stilled as if the air had grown thicker, even though the sun was rising in a rare, cloudless London sky.
“I’m sorry,” Lockwood said, forcing a bit of lightness back into his tone. “I didn’t mean to get so maudlin.”
“It’s okay,” she said quickly, although truthfully, she was frightened. It terrified her to imagine what sorts of adult problems could make teenaged woes seem small.
“It isn’t all bad, I promise.” This time, the lightness was closer to genuine, and Jenny looked up at him, his smile now encouraging. “You asked what life was like after being an agent– well, there it is. Good stuff, bad stuff, everything in between. Life simply… continues.”
Jenny nodded, turning his words over in her mind. “What’s your favorite part?” she said. “Of your Life After?”
“Oh, I’ve got lots of ‘em,” he said easily. “My wife, for one, and being a good husband for her. My job, learning about cases like yours.” He bumped her shoulder fondly. “I know it’s a good thing they’re getting rarer and rarer, but that makes big ones all the more fun.”
She nodded, heartily agreeing.
He tilted his head, hands folding around the mobile. “But honestly, I hope my favorite parts of life are still ahead of me.” He pressed the tips of his fingers together, almost as if in prayer. “With any luck, my next adventure is only just beginning.”
Jenny wanted desperately to ask what he meant by that, but she didn’t get the chance. A gray, modest-looking hatchback pulled up next to the DEPRAC van, driven by a curvy woman with a ruddy brown ponytail.
Lockwood’s whole face lit up when he saw her. “Hello, Love.”
“Sorry, I tried to get here sooner,” the woman, Lucy, said through the open passenger window.
“On the contrary, you have perfect timing,” Lockwood said, pocketing the mobile and standing carefully from his seat on the van, one hand out to steady himself. “Ms. Wong here was just keeping me company.”
“Oh, really?” Lucy peered around Lockwood to offer Jenny a little wave. “Entertaining you with battle stories, was she?”
“And I her,” he said.
She huffed. “With tales from the old days?”
“Hardly.” Lockwood turned back to Jenny and winked. “I was telling her all the thrilling adventures we’ve had since hanging up our rapiers and joining normal society.”
Lucy raised her eyebrows. “You’d call them thrilling, would you?”
“‘Course I would.” Lockwood slid into the passenger seat and leaned over the gearshift to give her a kiss. “Every day with you is a thrill to me.”
Lucy accepted the kiss, but rolled her eyes. She leaned around Lockwood to look at Jenny. “Thanks for waiting around with him. He very much appreciated it, even if he didn’t tell you.”
Lockwood let out an indignant noise, and Jenny felt her lips pull into a smile. “It was no problem, truly. I had a wonderful time.”
“Still, thank you.” Lucy offered a smile and another wave before pulling away, the car quickly disappearing in London traffic.
Jenny watched the road for a long time after it disappeared. Although she’d seen plenty of pictures, and even the odd TV interview, of Lockwood and his agents when they were her age, it was suddenly difficult to reconcile those rapier-wielding teenagers with the normal, quite average-seeming adults she’d met today.
But she supposed it was like Lockwood said– they simply grew up, as all agents did. As she would one day, with any luck. Merge into normal society with a profession that dealt mainly with the living. Maybe adopt a dog. Maybe get married. Do household chores. Pay taxes. Things most of her friends would scoff at.
Boring, they’d say. Who wants that. And Jenny used to laugh and agree with them.
But maybe, she thought as she turned to head back into the house to reunite with her team, a normal life isn’t as bad as all that. Anthony Lockwood seemed to enjoy it, at any rate.