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Norrie White was awake.
Norrie White, who had been in deep ghostlock for nearly two years, was awake, and it was news that should have brought joy and relief, but the news came strapped with a bomb–a veritable magnesium flare of ill tidings.
Norrie was awake, but missing, and the promise of redemption from that tragedy, which Lucy had supposedly obtained from Penelope Fittes, was never fulfilled. Norrie and those promises had dissipated like Visitors, their sources locked in an iron blanket.
Lucy’s reaction was swift and explosive. She raged, and then she bolted, ejecting herself from 35 Portland Row at a blink of an eye.
When she first shot out of the sitting room, Lockwood thought she was headed for the attic, but then they all heard the front door slam, and Lockwood hissed a curse, bringing to the fore that internal ringing sound in his head everytime Lucy ran off her feelings.
He didn’t even remember what he told George and Kipps at that moment. All he could think was that Lucy, the marathon runner, could be out of sight by the time he found the wits to go after her.
He left in a hurry, just in time to catch sight of her rounding the corner. He could hear the furious pounding of her footfalls, and his calls after her had gone unheard.
When he finally caught up with her, he was out of breath, but he found that they were at the old Marylebone graveyard amidst mottled headstones, many of which were choked and unrecognisable by creeping ivy.
Were it not for Lockwood and Lucy, not a single living soul lent life to the space.
Lockwood knew this graveyard well, having visited the three graves within its gates countless times, and he’d brought Lucy for company, too, but Lucy was not here to pay her respects. She was here for the isolation, the privacy of letting out a yell of frustration before bursting into a dam of tears.
She did not crumble. She wouldn’t. When Lucy Carlyle felt defeated, she did not wilt; she went down fighting.
As the tears streamed down her face, she paced and threw her hands up. “I recorded tapes for her like a fool! I carried on here in London without a single clue of what’s happened to her! God, what are they doing to her? I fucking should have known!”
“Lucy, how could you have known?” Lockwood asked, giving her the space to walk off her storm of emotions. “Not a single person from back there sent word of it.”
“Because they blamed me for her ghost lock in the first place,” Lucy said, a tremble in her voice. “And the deaths of my friends. Lest you forget, everybody still thinks I’m responsible for all of it. I don’t know if they’re wrong.”
Lockwood needed to put an immediate stop to that spiral. “They are. None of that was your fault, Lucy.”
“If I’d stayed there,” she went on. “If I had just had a little faith that she would—“
“Lucy,” he interjected, stepping forward and finally taking her gently by the shoulders.”If you’d stayed, George and I would’ve never met you and everything we’ve done, everything we’ve worked hard for, would have never come to pass. Norrie would not have wanted that for you, passing the days just hoping she would wake up, when never in the history of such severe ghost lock has anyone ever awakened from it.”
Though she stood still, she was still breathing hard, still furious, and the rigid set of her shoulders showed little sign of abating.
He couldn’t help but tilt a smile, appreciating Lucy’s fierceness in this very trying time. “I know all this is very overwhelming right now, but l need you to listen. Can I go on?”
Though her eyes remained ablaze, she nodded.
“If you’d stayed back in Cheviot Hills, I don’t think Norrie would’ve woken up. You heard what Kipps said. She woke up the night you connected with the bone glass. I think that had something to do with it.”
A flicker of reason seemed to cut through her maelstrom of emotions.
Lockwood continued on, calmly. “And even if it weren’t—let’s say you stayed in Cheviot Hills and she did wake up. Do you think Fittes would’ve left her alone then? Do you think you could’ve prevented them taking her?”
Her shoulders perceptively softened under his hands and she closed her eyes with a sigh. “I would’ve been completely helpless.”
He nodded. “What I want you to realise is that all that’s happened since you left your hometown has made you ready for this moment, this situation. Because of who you are right now, you will find her and get her back. We will find her and get her back. Do you believe me?”
Her eyes shined still, but she was nodding. “I do.”
He smiled and gave her shoulders another squeeze. “Good. Besides, I cannot imagine never knowing you, Luce. Don’t make me imagine it. It hurts. It really does.”
A smile managed to work itself through her lips and that look of trust that he so often craved settled on her expression.
“Lockwood,” she admonished softly, sinking into his embrace. Her breathing tapered to normal and the tightness on her shoulders dissipated within the circle of his arms.
Lockwood shed his own worries for now, letting the calm silence the echoes of abandonment in his chest, triggered as it had been by her explosive departure from the house.
Lucy was going to be okay. They were going to be okay. They had a task, and it was what would ground them.
Nothing brought out the best in them like a high-stakes job.