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George found himself at a table, surrounded by bookshelves. This was nothing new, but he wasn’t quite sure how he got here. He didn’t remember coming in, didn’t remember sitting down. The white room looked suspiciously like his favorite stacks in the Archives, except everything was much too bright. Across from him sat a pretty brunette about his age who looked oddly familiar, but whom he couldn’t quite place.
“Um, excuse me, Miss…Where am I?”
The girl glanced around before settling her gaze squarely back on him. “It looks like the Archives to me.”
George furrowed his brow. “Do I know you?”
She shook her head, a sad smile he surely recognized playing on her lips.
“No, I definitely know you,” George insisted. He wracked his brain, choosing the most likely place he might have crossed paths with her. “Did you work at Fittes a couple years back?”
Laughter like tiny silver bells floated across the table. “No, I never had Talent. Not enough of it anyway. A good friend of mine worked there, though. Is Quill still there?”
He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. “You mean Kipps? You’re friends with Kipps?”
She pursed her lips. “I was. Is that a problem?”
“No, I mean, yeah, I know him, but no offense…I didn’t know he had any other friends,” George couldn’t conceal his bewilderment and completely missed the girl’s use of past tense. Sure, Kipps had been working with them a lot lately, but, who was this girl?
It was when she arched her eyebrows in response that it hit him.
“Are you…you’re Jessica,” George stammered out. He did the math quickly. Yes, she would have been about Kipps’s age. He knew the story of the fencing tournament that spurred Lockwood’s rivalry, but now he was wondering if there was more to the story.
The girl’s small smile across the table was steady, her face cool and collected, so like her brother’s. “I am,” Jessica Lockwood said softly. She didn’t seem surprised that he knew who she was.
His mind whirred, taking in his surroundings anew, grasping for clues. “Does that…does that mean I’m…?” George couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence. Automatically, he reached for his glasses to clean, a nervous habit. He was shocked to realize that they weren’t there.
“I don’t know, to be honest,” she said kindly. “You look okay though, George. Do you know what happened?”
So she knew who he was too. Maybe this was a dream. He screwed his eyes shut tight, a trick he’d figured out as a little kid when he didn’t want to finish a nightmare. When he reopened them, however, Jessica Lockwood was still there. Based on his own personal dataset then, likely not a dream.
“Do you remember anything?” she prodded again.
He shook his head. Although, in all fairness, he hadn’t really tried. He closed his eyes again, gently this time, and attempted to retrace his steps.
“Well, I was at the library.” That seemed like a safe place to start. He peeked at the shelves around him. “These stacks, actually, but not…” Disjointed images popped up like flash cards. Nothing was making sense. He looked up at the girl across from him. “Are you a ghost then? A Type Three? No, that can’t be right, my Listening isn’t that good—“
Jessica shook her head, interrupting him. “Focus, George. What happened?”
He took a deep breath. Again, he tried to scan through the hazy snapshots teasing the edge of his memory. “I think…I think I was on my way home. It was already dark, so I took the shortcut through Nightingale Way.” Here, the image went black, as if someone had pulled the plug. “Are you sure I’m not dead?”
Though she made an effort to conceal it, George couldn’t help but notice the twitch of Jessica’s jaw, the way she pressed her fingertips together. He was well-versed in Lockwood’s tics that revealed simmering impatience; they seemed to apply to his sister too. She shook her head again.
“I don’t know how much time we have here, George, I need you to focus. What happened?” Even the way she kept repeating his name was so like Lockwood when he was trying to get him to concentrate, as if he could somehow call George back to himself. Normally, Lockwood could. But she wasn’t him.
Thousands of questions tugged at him, threatening to spill off his tongue like a firehose. It took all of his willpower to settle for just one. “Why are you here?”
She shrugged. “I love Anthony. And he loves you. Besides, there’s one last thing I have to do before I go.” A sparkle in her eye flashed so quickly that George almost missed it. It reminded him of the look Lockwood wore when he was about to share a particularly audacious plan. But before he could ask what the thing was, Jessica’s face became serious again. “But George, the real question is, why are you here?”
George huffed. Why wouldn’t she give him a straight answer? He briefly wondered if this is what Lucy felt when talking to the skull. Oh god—Lockwood and Lucy. Were they okay? So many questions. But Jessica’s dark brown eyes bore into his as if she would drill out an answer one way or another. He would have to give a response to get one.
“I think someone hit me from behind.” He hadn’t known he was going to say that until it came out of his mouth. Yet, as he raised his hand to the back of his skull, he felt nothing.
Jessica nodded, but refused to relent her line of questioning. “Yes, George, you were attacked. I need you to tell me what you remember.”
“Why?” Truly, what did it matter? He was here, he was probably dead.
“Because I need you to remember what’s at stake here!” Jessica slammed her hands down on the table, standing up to tower over him. A lavender haze radiated from her, sending a cool breeze across George’s face. She spun toward one of the stacks and deftly pulled a thin volume from a high shelf. “Recognize this?”
Occult Theories. Suddenly, he felt everything snap into focus, the fragments piercing his memory like shards of glass. Gale. He remembered the sharp thwack at the back of his head, trying to get up but not being able to.
“Those bastards,” he whispered. He reached for the pamphlet, fingers running over the gold embossing on the black leather. It had been in his hands. He had had it. Carefully, he opened it up.
Inside, however, were not the ramblings of Marissa Fittes. Perplexingly, George saw himself, lying in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped around his head, a compress over his left eye. Where the gown didn’t cover, he saw bruises peppering his limbs. Next to the bed sat a wrecked Lockwood, vacant eyes and a hard jaw that sent chills down his spine.
He stared at the image for a long time. “I’m not in my body, am I?”
“No George, I don’t think you are,” Jessica’s face remained kind but unreadable.
“But I’m alive,” he puzzled, watching the machines slowly beeping around his body. His head swam. None of this made sense.
“I think you might be kind of in between. I can’t say for sure,” Jessica offered. “But you need to go back. Anthony needs you.” Her voice caught, bringing a lump to George’s own throat.
“How?” George looked around. Was there even a way out of here? He didn’t see one.
“Do you want to go back?”
Anger flared. “Of course I want to go back! What are you doing here, Jessica? If you can’t help me, why are you here?” Suddenly, he felt a searing pain behind his eye. Pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes, he cursed loudly, making her jump. His head was really starting to hurt.
“I’m sorry, George. I’m trying to help, I really am. Tell me why you want to go back. Tell me about everything that ties you to life. That’s your way out.”
Still gripping his head, George couldn’t see the sadness in Jessica’s face, but he heard it. There were so many things, he thought.
“My friends. Lockwood, Lucy—” Through the pounding at his temples, he remembered meeting Lockwood in the Archives, in these very stacks. He recalled eating pizza with Lucy and telling her about his family. His family...
“Go on, who else?” Jessica’s voice felt faraway from across the table.
“Who else?” he echoed.
“Who else are you living for?” she coaxed.
He thought about his mum, his dad, and his brothers gathered around the table during the holidays. He remembered the time he brought home the whole company for dinner, even Holly and Kipps, on a rare night off. A smile spread across George’s face. “There’s this girl, Flo—” he was interrupted by a sharp pang in his ribcage.
“Tell me about Flo,” Jessica urged.
George recalled the smell of the river, the way Flo laughed with her full body at his terrible (even he could admit they weren’t very funny) jokes, how she lit up when she pointed out different birds at the crack of dawn from Matilda. He opened his eyes.
“You’re almost there.” Jessica’s face was wet now, but she was smiling. “You can do this, George. What else do you want to do before you die?”
The pain that started in his ribcage was now building up in intensity like a forest fire through his entire body. He grit his teeth. “I’m going to figure this out, Jessica. I’m going to solve the Problem. Who knows—” he let out a laugh. “Maybe you can even see Lockwood one last time.”
She shook her head sadly. “Give Anthony my love,” she whispered. Reaching across the table, Jessica grasped his hands. The last thing George saw was blinding white light.
When George finally came to, he couldn’t remember his dream, just felt the deep pain radiating throughout his body. His hands were cold. In a dark room, there was a blurry face inches from his face. For a moment, Jessica was his first thought. Odd. He blinked. No, it was Lockwood. “You’re a little close there, mate,” he whispered hoarsely.
He wasn’t sure if any sound had actually come out. His throat felt like sandpaper. How long had he been out? The room started to come into focus (and stopped, his eyesight was always terrible, but it seemed to be a fair amount worse at the moment), just enough that he could see that this was not his room. He was aware of slow, steady beeping above his head. A throbbing behind his left eye started to pulse. Now that he was starting to wake up, he realized he couldn’t actually see out of said eye. Shit.
“You’re gonna be alright now, George, we’re going to take you home,” Lockwood’s voice was even, but he’d spent enough time parsing the many moods of his best friend to hear the violent storm brewing under water. It was an apt analogy for how he was feeling right now. He tried to move, sending shockwaves of pain throughout his body and let out a low groan. Jesus, what happened?
From the comfort of Lockwood’s room, Flo had filled him in on what she had heard from various sources: how Jake had found him in the gutter, how Gale’s thugs had been bragging in the taverns about an agent they left for dead, how Kipps had found her already a block from Portland Row and set her up as sentry over their home while Lockwood waited for him to be released from hospital.
Memories came back in bursts of pain: the thud at the back of his skull, his glasses breaking on his face, repeated kicks blossoming in violet and aureolin bruises in body parts he had frankly forgotten existed. He had panicked when he realized that the book had been taken, relieved when Lucy dropped the copy from the Orpheus Society in his lap. Turning the pages of Occult Theories had given him a strange déjà vu, but he had brushed it off as part of his concussion. Déjà vu was common when dealing with the dead anyhow. It didn’t mean anything.
In fact, George had hardly given it another thought until they had returned from their journey across Dark London. The spirit gate in Jessica’s room was destroyed, her death glow gone. They were taking a break from repainting the upstairs and gathered around their new kitchen table, debating the nature of the dark gates they had seen fenced off by Fittes’s barbed wires.
“Of course, you know what my theory is?” Something was niggling at the outskirts of George’s brain, but he couldn’t quite say what. “Dark London’s just an interim stage. You linger awhile, then move on.” The others looked at him askance. “I think the spirit passes through those door things—however you want to call them—and reaches yet another London, but this one’s shining with light….”
Lucy gave him a weird look. “Where’s your evidence for that?”
Maybe it was a dream. He wasn’t even sure where the idea came from anyway. “Haven’t got any. Just feel it.”