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“Oh, hi love. Looks like you’re getting a little sleepy, hm? No, no, you don’t need to get up. You don’t need to do anything at all, if you don’t want. I’m here to take care of you.”
Lucy adjusted her headphones and snuggled down into the covers with a contented sigh. The sun may have been just peeking up above the horizon, waking up the rest of the world, but for her, it was the end of a long and miserable workday. All she wanted was help forgetting what she had seen and heard and felt for just long enough that she could sleep, recover, and do it all over again the next night. And if that help getting to sleep just happened to come from a faceless voice on the internet, speaking softly and making little taps and crinkles and slow, elegant motions with his very attractive hands , then where was the harm in that?
“Are you comfortable? I’ve got a heavier blanket if you’re cold. It’s even your favorite color.” The voice laughed softly, as if she’d said something funny. “Of course - it makes me happy when I can do things for you.”
The sound of his hand stroking her hair - a cheap, blue party wig according to a photo he’d shared ages ago, but in her headphones, it felt like her own - sent shivers down Lucy’s spine, same as it always did. “I just want to thank you for letting me take care of you. I know it doesn’t come easily for you, but it means so much to me. Especially with all that you do every day to take care of me.”
When she’d heard him say that the first time, almost two years ago, she’d frozen, suddenly tense all over again. He wasn’t speaking to her. He couldn’t be. He was some random person among countless random people on this site, uploading content for the world. Commenting on his videos in the past, even when she got replies back from him, didn’t change that. It just made him friendly.
Yes, she had once mentioned in a comment how easily she got cold. And he, in a reply, had joked that he would make sure to use the heavy blanket in future RP videos. But that was exactly why she turned to his videos night after night. With her job, with the hours it forced her to keep, it was easier to accept a pantomime of tenderness and affection from a faceless man in a video than to go out and try to find it for real.
And a video wouldn’t get tired of her waking up screaming after nightmares. So there was that.
“Shhh, it’s alright, love.” More hair stroking, and that voice, so full of warmth and gentle, loving reverence. “I’m here. I’ll stay here with you for as long as you need.” The sound of a kiss, predominately in her right headphone, almost felt like it was being pressed against her temple. “I’ll do what I can to keep the bad dreams away tonight. You deserve rest.”
As Lucy’s eyes fell shut at last, she almost believed him. This voice that had kept her company across countless videos for years, AnthonyWhispers.
As Lucy stretched out in the back of the cab, the late afternoon light glinted off the screen of her phone, bouncing directly into her eyes. She squinted, angling it this way and that, trying to see the information George had sent her about that night’s job.
“I really wish you were here to help me with this one, George. You know how I get in these old country houses.”
“Can’t be helped, I’m afraid. But you should be fine, Luce. The client - one A.J. Lockwood - has some Talent, according to the information he sent us. He’s not asking for you to do the job for him. He’s asking for you to do the agent-y bits and he wants to help with whatever doesn’t require DEPRAC certifications.” His words painted one picture, and his sardonic tone another.
Lucy rolled her eyes. The only thing worse than a client was a client who thought they could keep up with her and wanted to come along. They only ever got in her way, and then she had two jobs, the one she was actually hired for, and keeping her client alive long enough for them to pay her for it.
“I can feel your scorn from here,” George said, and Lucy laughed.
“I’ll put on a good face! I always do.”
“You’ve got no poker face to put on. You’re nearly as bad as me.” He was right, and that irritated her.
She frowned as she scrolled through the documents in George’s dossier. “This Lockwood is from money. You’ve got me going to a posh, old house all on my own, to deal with some posh Sensitive.” She paused on the photo of the house the client had included. In it was a young man, maybe a year or two older than her, caught by surprise by whoever had taken the picture. He had dark hair, artfully tousled by the wind, and the easy smile of someone who’d never had to deal with the random cruelties of the world. Typical Sensitive. They’d peek through their fingers at the horrors wandering about at night, shout for the nearest agent, and retreat to a safe space with tea and biscuits and a crocheted blanket wrapped around them without ever actually doing anything useful . At best, they were a jumpy early alert system. At worst, an untrained bystander playing at agent and then panicking when the real agent work began.
“Luce? Did I lose you?”
Lucy jumped, startled out of her thoughts by George’s sharp tone. “Sorry, no, still here. I was just looking at what you sent me.”
He scoffed, knowing exactly what she’d been doing. “We can always postpone, if you’re not up to the task of playing nice with this Lockwood person. Hold off until Holly can come with you, maybe?”
“No!” She cut him off, cringing at the thought of asking Holly to be a buffer between her and a rich prettyboy. “No, I can do it. And we need the money. Besides, I’m pulling up now. No turning back.”
Lucy ended the call just as the cab turned onto the long gravel lane leading up to the house, and the sound of the tiny stones crunching and shifting beneath the wheels gave her those familiar, pleasant shivers. The cab pulled to a stop on the loop directly in front of the home, and there, on the step, was her client, a magazine cover-worthy smile on his face.
“Miss Carlyle! Right on time,” he said, opening her door for her. “Do you need any help with your bags? I’d be happy to lend a hand - seems the least I can do for you after you came out on such short notice.”
“Thank you, but no.” Lucy shrugged the shoulder strap across her chest and pasted on her best customer service smile, hoping he couldn’t spot it for what it was. “I have delicate equipment in there that I’d prefer to keep-”
She stopped short as he held his hand out to help her from the cab. Crisp, white shirtsleeves rolled up to expose toned forearms that led down to fine boned wrists and hands with long, elegant, familiar fingers.
“Mr. Lockwood?” She recalled the name from the paperwork, first and middle initials only.
A.J. Anthony. Shit.
What were the odds that her Sensitive prettyboy client would be the voice that had lulled her to sleep several times a week for the last six years? She looked up from his hands to meet his eyes. “Should I call you A.J.?”
He grinned brightly, curling those fingers around her hand and steadying her as she stepped out into the sun. “Just Lockwood is fine. No one calls me A.J., and only my uncle still calls me Anthony.”
“Of course,” she said, too focused on the familiar flow of his voice to hear more than half of what he was actually saying. She stared openly at the face she’d imagined a thousand times and never dreamed she’d really see, lost in thought until the driver cleared his throat, expecting payment but not wanting to be crass by saying it outright.
“Sorry! I - one moment. The drive was so peaceful that it put me half to sleep.” A weak cover for whatever he must have seen her face doing, but it would have to do.
Lucy spun on her heel, pulling a handful of bills from her wallet and thrusting them at the driver, not bothering to count and probably grossly overpaying.
“If you’re sure you’ve got everything under control?” Anth-, no, Lockwood said, looking her up and down in a way Lucy wished didn’t thrill her. “Would you follow me to the conservatory? It has the best light this time of day, and I’d like to discuss the details with you before night falls.”
She nodded, following behind him, her eyes glued to her hand, still held gently in his.
Lucy was in hell. Or, to be fair, she was in the conservatory, drinking tea from antique china she recognized while seated at a table she recognized. She felt like an interloper somehow, or maybe Alice after falling through the looking glass. This world wasn’t supposed to intersect with her own, and she was never supposed to step through the phone screen to see parts of this home always concealed out of frame. She had to exert effort to appear at ease and focused on the conversation while they waited for night to fall.
“So, how did you first notice the visitor? You mentioned that it only ever appears after midnight in the…” She squinted at her notes. “The party barn?”
He laughed, a small, polite thing, and in the back of her mind, she wondered what it would take to make him laugh for real. Not that false charm, and not the quiet chuckle he used from time to time in his videos, but a genuine belly laugh.
“I’ve never liked the name either, but it fits. You came right past it when your cab dropped you off - it’s the building next to the house. We really only use it at holidays, when my uncle invites a whole crowd over for dinner. The rest of the time, it sits empty. Except for the visitor, I suppose.”
“Then, if it sits empty, what had you out there after midnight?”
He turned the most enticing shade of pink at that, and Lucy’s eyes widened. She felt her own cheeks grow warm as she realized what the answer must be. She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him he didn’t have to answer, that it wasn’t her business and didn’t impact the job at all, but he beat her to it.
“I go out there to work sometimes. I need peace and quiet. To concentrate, that is. Can’t focus half so well as when I’m all by myself with no interruptions and no worries I’ll wake anyone with the light.”
“Very respectful of you,” she said. “So you’re also a night owl?”
He nodded, and that brilliant but impersonal smile was back. “I have difficulty sleeping sometimes, so I might as well get something done while I’m up.”
Maybe that was how he’d found the ASMR community in the first place. Sleepless people, searching for anything to help, stumbling upon videos of soft, soothing voices and sounds setting off that comforting, warm, buzzy feeling that started in the skull and spread outward, like a mental fluffy blanket, sun-warmed straight from the line. Finally being able to relax enough to drift off and get a few hours of sleep with a little help from a stranger on the internet.
“Are you alright?” he asked, a curious expression on his face. “You looked miles away for a moment there.”
“Oh! I - yes, just thinking.”
She felt his focus zero in on her, his eyes on her suddenly far too intimate. His voice dropped to something much too similar to one memorable video. More than once, she had removed that one from her watch history out of bashfulness. “Do tell. I’m excellent at keeping secrets.”
He had to know. Why else would he be there, leaning in close, with a smile that felt almost real and a voice that sounded like the one she imagined in her private daydreams?
“About the job,” she said, relieved she hadn’t squeaked or made some other, equally embarrassing noise.
“Of course.” And just like that, the moment had passed. He lounged in his seat, one elbow resting on the back and his forefinger resting thoughtfully on the swell of his bottom lip. His eyes flicked to the view from the wall of windows, where the sun had long since vanished below the treeline, and had finally disappeared entirely below the horizon. What light remained was a muted, watery lavender that did little to illuminate the sprawling estate. “It’s half ten. We should make our way over to the barn so you have time to set up.”
Lucy shot up and out of her seat, grateful for the distraction and ready to get to the part of the job she felt most confident in. She hoisted her duffle back onto her shoulder, looking to him to lead the way. He let his finger fall from his lips, his expression wholly unreadable, and gestured for her to follow as he stood. “Right this way, Miss Carlyle.”
The ticking of the clock reverberated across the barn, impossibly loud in such a large, empty space. It was nearing midnight, and neither Lucy nor Lockwood had said anything for the past twenty minutes. Lucy’s relief at beginning the part of the job where they sat together in a ring of iron chains and waited for hours on end with nothing to distract them had been, in a word, foolish.
As soon as they had gotten the circle set up, he had opened a storage closet and returned with a plush, royal blue sweater. He pressed it into her hands with a soft expression. “I thought you might get cold.”
“Oh. Thank you?”
“Because of the ghost.”
“Right.”
She shrugged it on over her shirt, confused but appreciative. It was soft, and it smelled fresh and clean, the same laundry soap smell that clung to Lockwood’s clothing. Had he put it there just for her? No, that didn’t make sense. She dismissed the idea.
After that, he had tried to break the silence a few times with questions about her job and life, but the unnatural chill in the air had put them both on edge, and he had eventually given up. Still, he was holding up better than most Sensitives she’d met in the past. Any Sensitives she’d met, actually. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought him a full agent, grades one through four and all.
“Did you ever think about becoming an agent?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Speaking normally felt…incorrect, somehow, for the moment.
“I wanted to. I’ve - I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve done rather well in fencing tournaments in the past.”
That much, she’d known. George had turned that up in his research when trying to determine how much of a liability he’d be if he insisted on becoming involved once the visitor appeared. And she dimly remembered Anthony mentioning fencing in a reply once, years ago.
His voice softened, not just in volume, but tone as well, and she felt her gaze unfocusing, her thoughts growing fuzzy and slow. “I brought it up once with my uncle, not long after I came to live with him. I’d lost my parents when I was small, and my sister just a few years after. When I asked him about it - I’d seen him cry before, at the funerals. But I’d never seen him look afraid. He looked afraid then.”
Without realizing she was doing it, as if in a dream, Lucy reached out to take his hand in hers, squeezing it.
“I couldn’t find it in me to press the matter. We’re the only family either of us has left.”
“So you went the route of training as a Sensitive instead?” she asked, her voice distant and dreamy.
He nodded, not seeming to notice the state she was in. “I still want to keep people safe from what goes bump in the night. Life throws enough nightmares at us when we’re asleep, and I don’t know how much I can help with those. But the real nightmares, I have to at least try.”
I’ll do what I can to keep the bad dreams away tonight, he had said to her just that morning. Well, not to her exactly, but close enough. She shivered, not because of the temperature of the room, but from the soothing sensations running down her spine. Lockwood noticed and, misinterpreting the cause, pulled her in close against him. The room may have been icy, the floor hard beneath them, but Lucy felt as safe and comfortable as she did in her own bed, his voice floating directly into her ears. More than, really, because she wasn’t alone. And Lucy realized she wanted to let him take care of her. Anthony had said he wanted to so many times in his videos, even if that was always directed at a camera, that she allowed herself to want it from Lockwood. Even if only for a few hours, huddled together on his floor.
“That better?” he whispered. His lips were close enough that his breath ruffled the baby hairs at her temple, prompting another shiver. “It’s nearly the time they tend to show up. That would explain the cold.”
“Mmm,” she said, thoroughly distracted.
“Miss Carlyle?”
“Just Lucy.”
“Just Lucy, then,” he said, his voice still hushed, but his tone increasingly urgent with every word. “I believe we’re no longer alone. There, by the fireplace.” He stood slowly, his fingers still entwined with Lucy’s and pulling her up with him.
Sure enough, leaning against the broad, stone mantle, there stood the dimly glowing outline of a woman in clothes at least two hundred and fifty years out of date. George had prepared her for this, digging up records of residents from that era. The most likely candidate was Beatrice Grenville, connected distantly by marriage to the Duke of Buckingham at the time. She had died young of what the local church records claimed was “a broken heart”. Incredibly unhelpful, but that wasn’t uncommon in jobs like these.
“Any thoughts as to where the source might be?” She cast her gaze across the room, searching for anything that looked promising.
“Afraid not. There was a fire a few years back. We had to build back practically from the studs. That fireplace is the only thing that’s original now.”
“The fire didn’t start in the fireplace? ” She could feel the gears of her mind spinning, coming closer and closer to a breakthrough.
Lockwood shook his head. “An electrical short. A mouse chewed through some of the wiring.”
“You’re proficient with a rapier?” She locked eyes with him, and all hesitation about allowing a Sensitive on the job with her evaporated. He nodded, realizing her plan. “I have a spare in the bag, along with extra salt bombs. I need you to keep her away from me while I find what in that fireplace is her source.”
Lockwood, rapier in hand, stepped out of the circle. In any other circumstances, Lucy would have been entranced at the fluid, confident motion of his blade, gripped so lightly in his long fingers as he swirled it back and forth as deftly as any agent she’d ever seen. But she had work to do, and a reputation to uphold. And beyond professionalism, part of her wanted very badly to impress him.
“Go, now!”
As he drove the ghost back away from the fireplace, herding her far from Lucy’s path, Lucy darted over and began inspecting the stone of the fireplace, intricate carvings and all, as efficiently as she could. Her fingers traced along mortar lines and dips and swirls, searching for a hidden switch or lever or something that felt out of place.
There. Dead center on the mantle, a carving of a Green Man, his face a mass of oak leaves and acorns. And one of those acorns, when pressed, sank back a few centimetres with a click. When she removed her finger, it popped forward and she was able to pull it out, revealing a tiny drawer. Behind her, she heard the ghost shrieking. She risked a quick look over her shoulder, afraid for Lockwood and ready to leap to his aid.
What she saw instead was Lockwood advancing with his rapier, his movements precise and full of joyful swagger, driving the ghost ever farther away from her and her work. On his face was a look of wild delight, and for a moment Lucy forgot to breathe. He was beautiful, and so clearly born to do this.
“Got it yet, Lucy?”
She jumped, remembering where she was. “I think so! She certainly sounds angry enough!”
Quickly, she turned back to the drawer. Inside, she found a neatly folded handkerchief with the initials R.T. in deep red thread. She fished a drawstring pouch of silver mesh out of her pocket and tipped the handkerchief in, pulling the strings taut.
No sooner had the pouch closed than the ghost vanished with a single, abbreviated wail. Lucy slotted the drawer back into its spot, clicking it shut.
“That was a rush,” Lockwood said, appearing suddenly at her shoulder. His hair was mussed and his cheeks pink from the exertion. “Does it always go that smoothly?”
“Almost never.” She realized there was a wide smile on her face to match the one on his. A real smile that reached his eyes, wholly unlike the affected charm he’d tried on her before. “You would have been an incredible agent.”
“In another life, maybe.” There was a wistful note in his voice, but as soon as she had that thought, he was once again smiling. “Your rapier, Miss Carlyle.” He swept into a deep bow, holding it up to her like a knight to his queen.
She accepted it from him, feeling something like regret at how quickly they had finished the job. It wasn’t even two yet, and she wasn’t looking forward to saying goodbye only to sleep at the inn down the road.
As if he had heard her thoughts, Lockwood said, “It’s still early…would you like a cup of tea before we consider the job done?”
“I would like that.”
Instead of the conservatory, with its walls made entirely of windows, Lockwood had led them to the kitchen. It was a comfortable, lived-in room, where everything was obviously of high quality, but well loved and practical. It felt homey, and more importantly, it was not a room she already knew from her nightly viewing of AnthonyWhispers.
Lucy wrapped her hands around her cup, letting the warmth soak through the porcelain and into her skin, and sighed contentedly. Lockwood leaned back against the counter, too keyed up to sit, chattering about his fight with the ghost. She was only half absorbing his words, instead letting them wash over her and distract her from the reality that, by that time tomorrow, she would be back in her tiny flat, alone. She was dreading it, because now that she had experienced the real thing, how could she go back to recordings of the persona he put on for the camera?
AnthonyWhispers and Lockwood were two wholly different people in some ways - Lockwood was a whole person, for a start, with all the foibles and flaws that came with that. And in others, they were so achingly identical. The way he puttered around the kitchen, fussing over her and making sure her tea was exactly to her specifications, the way he had held her hand, the way he’d pulled her close inside the chains.
“You know,” he started, a faint crease between his brows as he drew them together in thought, “there’s a guest room on the second floor already made up. There’s an en suite and everything. If you’d rather that instead of calling a night cab and paying for a room in town.”
She knew that this was only prolonging the inevitable, but she heard herself agreeing eagerly, and she couldn’t help but notice the way Lockwood’s face lit up at that. He didn’t seem ready to let the night end either.
It made sense. He’d wanted to be an agent for years, and he finally got a taste of what it could be like at its best, when everything went perfectly. Who wouldn’t want to hold on to that a little while longer? And here she was, ready to take advantage of that because of a crush on a faceless voice suddenly given a face. And warmth. And the scent of laundry soap and strong tea and ginger biscuits. She felt her stomach flop with guilt. She stood, walking to the sink with her cup.
“Lockwood, I have a confession to make.” She kept her voice steady, but her eyes were trained on the remnants of her tea. She couldn’t bear to look him in the eye when she said this.
“I’d like to go first, if that’s alright?”
What could he have to confess? She looked up, surprised, but nodded.
“I didn’t hire you because of your reputation, or your reviews. Though they were impeccable, and you should be proud!” A blush crept across his cheeks and down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. “I… Damn, I didn’t get this far.”
“Get this far with what?” Lucy stared at Lockwood. Had he hired her for her looks? That seemed unlikely. She’d come a long way from the body image issues she had at 15, but even so, he didn’t strike her as shallow.
“I know you’re LucyJustLucy13.”
Silence.
Lucy blinked.
Had she heard him right?
“You what?”
Lockwood groaned, raking his fingers through his hair and leaving him looking more disheveled than before. “I’ve known who you were for almost two years now. I got curious who this person was who kept leaving such nice comments on my videos, who I kept getting to have conversations with in the replies. I came to think of you as a friend, and I looked forward to the mornings after my upload days because it meant I would hear from you again. And when you suddenly stopped-”
Oh no.
“I got it in my head that something had happened to you. And that thought took hold. I didn’t want to fixate on it but I did. So I looked up your username on a few other platforms.”
Oh no.
Lucy knew exactly which video she had stopped commenting after. The one she kept removing from her watch history. The one titled simply, “Love You”.
“I was so relieved to find out you were fine, and I meant to stop after that. I didn’t mean to keep looking.” Lockwood sounded wrecked. He sounded ashamed, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I found the article.”
He didn’t need to clarify. Lucy Carlyle had been in a handful of articles in different papers, but all of them were bland puff pieces on cases she had worked. All save one.
“You know about the mill.”
“I do.”
“So you know why I started watching in the first place.”
“Yes.” He paused, looking uncomfortable. “You also alluded to it in one of your first comments, so at least that, I didn’t get completely from digging on my own.”
The air in the kitchen had become stifling. Lucy couldn’t begin to sort out how she felt about everything he’d just said. It made her earlier embarrassment pale in comparison. She may have had a crush on AnthonyWhispers, but she didn’t know how to feel about Lockwood. He’d known all along. She had been tying herself in knots trying to decide if it was better to tell him that she recognized him or not, trying to figure out if she owed him that honesty or if it was crossing a line, and he not only knew - he had engineered this entire meeting.
“Did you plant the handkerchief?” She hated that she had to ask, but she needed to know.
“Did I-?” Lockwood repeated her words, needing a moment to process what she was asking. “Lucy, no, I promise. I kept what I knew a secret but I would never, ever do something I thought would put you in danger. I knew about the ghost and she had never seemed violent or even interested in the living. She only ever seemed sad. I wanted a reason to meet you and that seemed like the best, safest way.” He paused, looking unsure of what to say next.
He straightened back up, putting on a brave face. “I’ll understand if you want to leave. I can call a cab for you, have them bill me for the ride. Anywhere you want to go.”
She considered it. He seemed genuine in his offer. And part of her wanted to say yes, wanted to get out and start figuring out what anything that had happened that day meant. But another part of her - a larger, louder part - had one more question.
“You explained how you knew who I was,” she said, and she took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “But I need you to explain how you went from knowing that to hiring me, because that is one hell of a leap to make. And I think, before either of us does anything else, I need you to apologize for lying to me. Because I know I’ve told you how I feel about that.”
He swallowed uncomfortably, his full attention on her. The veneer he’d tried to put back in place earlier was gone, blown away like smoke. “Lucy, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it this far, bringing you out to my home. I had built you up in my head, and that seemed the wrong thing to do. You’re a person, not an idea. I didn’t want - I don’t want anything from you. I just wanted to meet you. To see what you were like, so that when I thought of you, it was you I was thinking of, and not some fictional LucyJustLucy up on a pedestal.”
Huh , she thought. That wasn’t a completely terrible reason. She wasn’t sure there were any good reasons he could have given for hiring her under false pretenses, but of the ones she’d imagined, his was at least less bad.
“I might have put you on a pedestal too.” It seemed only fair to admit it, since he’d bared his secrets to her.
He looked bewildered, as if the thought that she might have mythologized him in the same way he’d done to her was impossible. In spite of herself, something about that charmed her. But if she let herself be charmed enough that she went against her instincts, if she stayed the night, what message would that send? She wanted to stay, but didn’t want to pretend she wasn’t still upset with being kept in the dark.
“I thought of you as a friend too. I didn’t think about what disappearing like that would look like.”
“You’d mentioned being an agent, so I feared the worst,” he said, rocking back on his heels and shoving his hands deep into his pockets. A moment earlier, she had seen him move them as if to hold her, only to stop himself. “I’m glad I was wrong.”
“Me too,” she said simply. She glanced at the clock. Almost three in the morning. When she looked back at Lockwood, he was searching her face, his hands still firmly in his pockets. “I think it’s best if I sleep at the inn tonight.”
For a flash, his face fell, but he quickly schooled it into an attempt at a pleasant expression. “I understand. I can make the call-”
“And then I think you should call me in the morning, after we’ve both gotten some sleep, and we can get a late breakfast and talk. We are old friends, after all.”
It was like Lockwood’s face was the sun at dawn, light spilling off of him in every direction. Relief and joy radiated from him and his hands flew from his pockets, ready to hold her tight. He stopped just short, remembering himself, and looked to her, waiting for permission. She nodded, leaning in and wrapping her arms around him as he melted against her.
“Thank you, Luce.” His words, barely even a murmur, set off that warm, comforting buzz in the base of her skull, and she held him just a little bit tighter.