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Madame Belmont lived at the edge of their little village. Her cottage was always well kempt and prim, unlike many of her neighbors who couldn’t be bothered to make repairs or create aesthetically pleasing homes. Like her house, the woman herself seemed set apart from the rest of the town. Her past might not have been shrouded in mystery, they all knew that in her youth, she’d moved to England with her husband from France. She’d been a ballerina, and now her husband and children had either passed or moved away from the tiny town. All that remained was the old woman and the enchantment she held for the children of Cheviot Hills.
If Lucy were to be honest, the woman scared her at first. Some of her youngest memories were listening to her sisters talk about the woman who was both willowy and sturdy as an oak, gentle and soft-spoken while feisty and stern. Lucy had seen her when her sisters had to pull her along to the town center for errands. The woman towered over their mother and any of the other Carlyle daughters. Lucy wished she’d one day be so tall and lithe, but looking at her sisters, she didn’t think she’d have much hope. The woman moved unlike anyone in their village, somehow all straight lines and sharp edges but with a fluidity like a stream freshly thawed in spring.
It wasn’t until Lucy turned five that her sisters finally started taking her to the cottage on the edge of town with them. By now, Lucy had learned how to keep a secret when her sisters told her to, and they deemed her worthy enough to sneak off after finishing chores early. That spring found the cottage a pleasant white with lavender sprigs speckling the gardens. Unlike those around town who used lavender solely as a method to protect from Visitors, Madame Belmont had artfully placed clusters around her garden. Lucy imagined everything about this lady was magical and pretty.
“Zee smallest Carlyle has come now, no?” The woman said from a seat in front of her door. She wore a thin, flowing gown. It was the same shade as the lavender, and oh so different from the drab colors everyone else wore. Lucy wished she could wear a dress like that.
Mary nodded enthusiastically. “We think she’s old enough now, Madame.”
“Eez that so? Vell, ve shall see. Leetle one, do you like ballet?” She asked, sharp gaze focusing on Lucy. She had to have been only but five or six at most, and yet, she could remember that moment with such stunning clarity. She could recall it for decades to come.
Lucy looked up at the tall woman, always the bravest of her siblings. “I don’t know what that is.”
“No? Your seesters did not teach you? Shame,” Madame Belmont said, tutting at the other girls. “Come, come. We watch the ballet.”
~~~
Even then, Lucy knew her eyes must have been saucers watching the telly. The way the dancers moved on the screen was intoxicating to a child with no concept for the sensation. She’d been immediately transfixed, and from that moment on, Lucy wanted to move like the ballerinas. Lucy wanted to be a ballerina.
For the next two years of her life, Lucy would race through her chores to spend as much time as possible with Madame Belmont. It was the highlight of her time. When Madame Belmont was busy, Lucy spent time with Mary in the fields near their home, making flower crowns and pretending to be part of the different ballets that Madame had told them about.
They’d run through their movements together, critiquing without truly knowing what was best like their formidable teacher. First the basics: First through fifth position, then pliés and tendus. Lucy would practice until her feet and arms could go to those positions on second nature. While standing for her chores, she’d often move her feet into each position, practicing the stance, pulling in her core so she could stand as tall as possible.
“You ‘ave made the best progress, sweet Lucy,” Madame Belmont praised. Mary had begun working at a job and often couldn’t make it to the cottage at the edge of town.
Lucy held fast to her dreams. She would one day be a ballerina, and that meant hours of practice and getting to learn from the best their town had to offer as often as possible. She wanted to pay the Madame, but she had no money and the woman would hear none of it. She constantly insisted that practicing her art once more, passing down the tradition to young souls, was more than enough payment. Lucy was certain her mum would’ve called her daft dimwit for passing up the chance at making a profit – and that made Lucy like her even more.
Her mum certainly didn’t enjoy dreaming big like Lucy. She once made an offhand comment to her mum about ballerinas being lovely. She told her mum that she’d read about them in a book at school, and her mum laughed in her face. They didn’t have ballerinas in their part of the country, and even if they did, they wouldn’t want Lucy. Frilly dreams had no place in a world like theirs. It was better to be realistic than get your head stuck in the clouds. Lucy hoped that someday, she could prove that her head belonged in the clouds. If she could get pointe shoes and work on her leaps, then maybe she'd find her head in those clouds. She could join her dreams and fly high above whatever fate was in store for her outside of ballet.
All it would take was practice, and Lucy felt drawn to practicing. She’d even come up with her own plan for figuring this all out. When she finally started earning money like her sisters at a store or on Nightwatch, she’d save some of her pay. When she finally got enough money save up, she’d book a train as far south as she could get. Further than even London, and then she would find her way to France. She hoped there would be a boat the could take her there, but Lucy didn’t know for sure. So, she came up with a plan for that too. Throughout the summer, Lucy taught herself to swim in the pond by their house. She would swim herself if she couldn’t find a boat, and by the time she got to France, she’d be so strong all of her dance moves would be effortless. It wasn’t necessarily the most foolproof plan, but Lucy firmly believed that this would be the way she could become a professional ballerina, like she’d dreamed about.
Madame Belmont had another step in the process. To live in France, Lucy needed to learn French. She’d hardly realized there were other languages out there – she had enough trouble in school with just English, but it made sense why Madame Belmont spoke funny. She knew two languages. Lucy was certain there wasn’t a smarter adult in their town than the woman who could speak a language no one else knew and theirs too. With this in mind, Madame began speaking French around Lucy and sent her home with books to study more herself.
“Zee mind eez most flexible at your age,” she told Lucy. “Eef you learn now, it will stick with vous.”
The language sounded so elegant out of the old woman’s mouth. It flowed like rain sliding against a window pane, glided like well-executed fouetté. Lucy hadn’t managed one of those yet, but the way the dancers on the telly could whip their leg around to spin seemed like French. It was elegant but forceful. It knocked her breath out like when one of her older sisters socked her when they got into a spat. Well, yanking at her sisters’ hair wasn’t really like French at all, or biting, or scratching. But there was a power to it that Lucy wanted to learn. If ballet was magic, French was the spell used to cast it.
The days passed as Lucy practiced and practiced and practiced. French, ballet, and chores became her life. She’d hardly even realized her eighth birthday was approaching.
~~~
Lucy had always known on some level that she had more talent than her sisters. She’d thought it was in ballet because she practiced so much more than them, but it turned out her talent was really in her Talent. Something that her mother was anxious to finally utilize. The moment Lucy turned eight, it was adieu to school and bonjour to agency life.
Being an agent was so much more time consuming than being a kid. Her mum still expected her to do chores while she was in training. She said she’d consider lessening that once Lucy was an actual agent. For now, if she wasn’t the one saving the town, her energy was saved for keeping the house tidy.
It surprised her, but Lucy found she was actually a very good agent. Her Talents were much stronger than other kids, and she learned quickly how to keep herself alive and find Sources. Jacobs really did push them through the material. They needed more agents in the field, and Lucy made progress quickly. Even for Jacobs’s standards. She was learning wards, how to build salt bombs, how to use her Talents, and everything in between. It left very little time to focus all her energy on ballet or French, but Lucy found ways to make it work.
Lucy found that she learned her wards faster in ballet terms. When she tried explaining this to another girl a bit older than her, she’d laughed at her. But she got ghost touched and moved to Night Watch instead, so Lucy didn’t pay her any mind. It worked for her, and that’s what counted. It also gave her time daily to run through her ballet. French suffered a bit, but on days when Lucy did have time off, she’d sneak her way to Madame Belmont’s and listen for hours as she spoke French, uttering oui or non at the appropriate times. Her form was sloppier than it had been, but the Madame kept her as sharp as the rapier she hoped to earn along with her Grade Three.
Her voice was strong, but Lucy noticed she walked stiffer than she had when Lucy first was brought to her. The children in the village didn’t visit like they used to, and the lavender grew more wild each summer. Lucy recognized these things much later, but in the moments she spent with the waspish woman, it went unnoticed. Lucy enjoyed her sharp tongue and the way she always wanted Lucy to do better without ever saying Lucy would never fulfill her dreams.
Since becoming an agent, Lucy had kept her original plan. She snuck some of her wages out so she might keep a stash of money for herself. Her mum and sisters were happy with the money agent work brought in the house. They hardly noticed a pound missing here or there, and Lucy wasn’t about to give herself away.
She’d grown smarter over the past year. Lucy knew she’d never make it to France by swimming. That was a child’s dream. Instead, she would just need to buy a boat and row her way across like in the movies Norrie would show her if they went home together after a case. All the rapier wielding certainly made her stronger, and the money she saved would certainly add up fast. How much could a boat cost anyway? One hundred pounds? Two? Lucy could have those wages in no time, or she might if she didn’t have other things that needed money like new clothing when hers were worn down, new shoes for the same reason, or books from the little shop in town about France, ballet, and languages. She’d never been a reader in school, it’d all been so boring. Now, so long as the interest captured her, she was enraptured by the books.
“So studious. So much determination een such a small body,” Madame Belmont told her. It was rare she could visit the woman. She was a full agent now, and her hours were long. Daylight hours were for sleep.
“Have to have something when my Talent fades, right?” Lucy teased.
“ En français ,” she scolded as if she hadn’t started the conversation in English.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “ Je dois avoir…quelque chose quand…Talent disparu. ”
Madame Belmont shook her head, though Lucy knew the action was fond from years spent learning her insults and jeers had heart. “ Fille stupide .”
“ Femme stupide ,” Lucy countered, drawing out a grin on the woman’s face.
“ N'arrêtez jamais de rêver ,” the woman sighed.
Lucy always meant to look that up, but she forgot amid her agent work. She thought she should ask the woman to repeat what she told her, so she could learn what it meant. Lucy never got the chance.
~~~
Death certainly wasn’t anything new to Lucy. In her line of work, it was more common than the living at points. Death glows, death loops, and, well, Death. Her father died when she was too young to remember him, and then plenty of people in their town and neighboring ones throughout the years had died, been killed, or fatally ghost touched. Lucy figured that death was a part of life. It wasn’t something meant to phase an agent. It was their calling.
That was a firmly held belief, until the agency was called to salt the little cottage at the edge of town.
It was the first time Lucy had ever hesitated to cross a threshold.
Years of her childhood were spent in this cottage. The lavender had long since died. Her thirteenth birthday had just passed. She hadn’t even taken the day off. It seemed like another day out of many, and Lucy realized she hadn’t been back to Madame Belmont’s little cottage in six months. As she scattered salt around to prevent a manifestation, Lucy wondered if there had been a funeral. She wished she could’ve gone to it if there was. She didn’t think she’d seen any of the usual hallmarks of a funeral in town, however. Had this woman who’d been so much to her life been burned with items someone else deemed sentimental before they dusted themselves off and called it a day? Lucy couldn’t stomach it. She’d rather hate herself for being too busy and missing it than to think she’d been alone.
Lucy placed her hand on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, once upon a time her impromptu barre. She tried to see if she could hear any echoes of the older woman. She couldn’t tell if she hoped there was one or if she dreaded the idea of the woman coming back. She’d drive her rapier through the apparition, but what if she recognized the face in the ghost fog?
No echoes were left in the house, and Lucy thought it was likely there never would be. The woman she knew would be hard pressed to return as a Visitor. Somehow Lucy knew she’d never interact with the woman herself again in this life. One of her teammates, Joy, found a collection of French books with a note on top directing them to Lucy. She allowed her friends to tease her for this, even joked back with them. The mysterious woman at the edge of the village died and wanted Lucy to learn French. How posh did she think a Carlyle girl could ever be? Lucy knew she wasn’t posh. She wasn’t trying to be, but she loved French.
As she looked over the new books in her collection, Lucy realized she’d hardly even been practicing French or ballet in the time between her last visit. All that she’d done had been agent work. Lucy wanted to be more than an agent; she’d hardly wanted to be an agent in the first place. Being an agent was a way to make money so she could live out her real dream. She’d been so wrapped up in reality, she’d forgotten to dream.
She could do better. She would. Lucy now had more books to go over, and some of them were about ballet as well. Even if Madame Belmont was no longer of this world, she could still make her proud. Lucy would find a balance between her agency work and her goals. They would not slip away like everyone else’s dreams did in this town. She’d escape her home, she’d escape agency life. Lucy knew she could do it.
~~~
In the end, Lucy would make it out of her hometown. She’d been right enough about that bit for her future, but the rest was slipping through her fingers faster than she had anticipated. It seemed like agents really only had one way out of things, and her entire team had met that fate. Lucy escaped by the skin of her teeth, and then decided that wasn’t nearly enough space between her and the disaster.
It was obvious Lucy would continue being an agent. Her Talent set her apart and would get her a position at an agency down south. With a heavy heart, and an even heavier bag, Lucy took her savings that she’d foolishly dreamed of buying a boat with and bought a ticket to London. She’d brought some of her books with her, but she couldn’t afford to pack things that were unnecessary. Being weighed down by her ridiculous past dreams was one of those things she just couldn’t afford. If an agent wasn’t paying attention and focusing solely on their Talents, they’d die. It was a fact as much as the Problem itself.
Even considering being a dancer once her Talents faded felt too dangerous. There were no thoughts to be had about her Talents fading. If she thought that far ahead, she’d become complacent. If she became complacent, she’d get sloppy. And if she got sloppy, she’d die.
Lockwood and Co. wasn’t the typical company like Fittes, Rotwell, or even Bunchurch, but Lucy liked that there were no supervisors to get in her way. She also was fond of the stock Lockwood put into her Talent. He seemed to understand better than any adult she’d met what was at stake. He was capable, even if amateurish in forgetting key components of fighting an active haunting. Lucy could forgive all this because she knew their focus was on ghosts and the Problem itself.
She had no time to be a fille stupide .
~~~
Lockwood was better than Jacobs ever could’ve dreamed with a rapier. He’d shown her on the grand tour of his house and their training area. It had been lackluster, but even the one back home left plenty to be desired. It was no Fittes gymnasium or even a run-down school’s gymnasium. It well and truly was a basement with some straw dummies.
And yet.
The first time she came down the stairs, exploring the house but also in hopes to practice herself, she’d stumbled on his own practice session. It reminded her of how she’d first learned her wards. The way she’d put it all into ballet terms since those had made sense. It had been a long time since she’d thought of wards as anything other than wards, but the death glow of her former practice seemed to radiate as she watched Lockwood with his blade for the first time.
He moved like the Prince in the Swan Lake ballet Madame Belmont had shown her growing up. Lockwood moved through the air as if he were made of liquid, energy flowing through his sharp moves and languid body. Every parry and strike, shift and turn, stole her breath like watching those professional dancers always had. It was magic, but instead of tutus and pointe shoes, it was with slacks and a rapier.
After striking their straw dummy once again, he turned to face her. Lockwood’s face split into a grin, and he ushered her in the room. He offered to spar with her, teach her more intricacies to his movement. She yearned to move as he did. Agents fought Visitors, this was their tool, their craft. Lockwood turned it into an art. Lucy could’ve watched him for hours go through the most simple actions, just to see the way he moved. Even when she practiced daily, Lucy was certain she never moved with such grace. She’d seen this boy trip over his own feet. How could he possibly move like this? Lucy didn’t know for certain, but she hoped to find out.
It took her the better part of a week, though George probably would’ve taken a month to do the same. Lucy never had that amount of patience, and likely it would’ve led her to the same outcome. In her old journal she used for working through French words and dance moves, Lucy turned to a blank page and made observations about when Lockwood’s mood was best. She jotted notes about how he was particularly jovial after a case well-done or when they got almond buns from Arif. He was a prim boy, as much of a toff as she’d seen with his fancy suits. It was a quick and easy discovery to find he liked compliments. It also became quickly apparent that Lockwood’s mood was contingent on George’s mood. If the other boy was particularly cross or sour, it bled into Lockwood’s mood too.
With all her detailed notes on Lockwood’s moods, Lucy devised a plan. She was determined to get Lockwood to teach her how to fence like he did. Jacobs would’ve never had the time, it just wasn’t something a boss would do – personal lessons with a junior agent. She didn’t want to take up his time or to make him think she was needy or incapable. She was neither, but she did want to learn more about how to move like that . The plan felt simple enough. It was fifteen steps, but Lucy figured they would go buy rather quickly with the proper groundwork.
The night after a successful case, Lucy picked up Arif’s for breakfast, ensuring there just happened to be an almond bun that she knew Lockwood would grab in the morning before he went down to train. She wore a jumper he’d complemented her on the first week she joined the agency. When she finally heard him in the basement working on his drills, Lucy meandered downstairs as though she just happened to be awake and figured it would be a good time to go down there.
Lockwood stopped and smiled at her as she came down. “Morning, Miss. Carlyle.”
Lucy smiled back tentatively. “Morning. Sorry to intrude, I was just up and about.”
“No intrusion at all,” he insisted. He gave another flourish, one that Lucy couldn’t name.
She watched him move through another complex moment, steeling herself for step one to officially go into effect: stroking his ego. “You’re very good at fencing.”
Lockwood turned to her. “Would you like me to train you? I can give you lessons if you’d like?”
Her eyes widened, steps two through fourteen burning up before her eyes. “Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly ask you to take that time.”
“No, no, I insist,” Lockwood said. “George never wants to spar with me. I’d happily teach you.”
“Show me everything ,” she told him, watching the grin widen on his handsome face. He had a spark in his eye that she’d felt in her heart whenever she danced.
Ballet might never be in her future, but being an agent was her present. If she couldn’t dream of dancing in Swan Lake or the Nutcracker, the least she could do would be to learn how to wield a rapier like Lockwood. It was a new kind of dance. The world would be her stage, and with Lockwood as a dancer partner, she thought she might be unstoppable.
~~~
Lockwood and Co. kept Lucy busy, somehow even busier than Jacobs ever had. She’d almost figured that a small company in a place as big as London wouldn’t be given much to do, but there was plenty to be done. It just wasn’t anywhere near as prestigious work as Fittes or Rotwell would be doing. With a team of only three agents, they were kept incredibly busy. Lockwood had difficulty saying no to cases, but Lucy didn’t mind it too terribly. She liked keeping busy.
Her sparring with Lockwood had taken a bit of a backseat with their schedules being so packed. They would when they could, but so often, between sleeping and everything involved with cases and their write-ups, they just didn’t have any freetime. Lucy missed it more than she would’ve ever expected from her experience at Jacobs. Back North, rapier drills and sparring were a necessity – it was robotic. Move this direction, flick your wrist just so. The actions were formulaic; if the ghost is this Type and doing this thing, then you’d use this ward. Lockwood didn’t operate precisely in that way. He knew the best wards for each situation, but there was a finesse to it. Lucy loved seeing how he moved, watching him even when she wasn’t training herself.
That largely never happened anymore.
Cases together had even become less frequent. Lucy had never been more confident in her capability as an agent, but she missed the camaraderie of having a team to rely on. The Skull could only do so much when she lugged him along with her – and more often than not, what he did do was insult her. Sometimes it was fun engaging him in the insults, bantering with him to pass the evening on her own. Other times, she had her sketchbook to pass the time, but there were times neither of those were quite enough. Her nerves would be electric with energy and sitting still made her joints ache and twitch, wishing for a release of the jittering sensation coursing through her.
It’d been years. After losing Madame Belmont and then her team so soon after, Lucy hadn’t thought she’d dance again. It’d been a long time before that since she had, mostly out of how little free time she’d had, but then life had felt too heavy with so much loss to be light on her feet for ballet. The entire thing had been a silly childhood dream that she didn’t have the time to entertain. Loathe as she was to admit it, her mum had been right all along. In a world like theirs, there was no room to dream grand dreams about another life. When she forked over her life savings to move to London, she’d passed with it the dreams of being a ballerina. Her pack had already been too stuffed with her agent supplies, clothes, and a book or two, there hadn’t been any space to pack silly dreams a stupid child believed could one day come true.
It’d been years. She knew it had been, but the memory had seeped into her muscles. With only a Skull present who could tell no one what he saw, Lucy began to practice again to pass the time spent on her own. Since joining Lockwood and Co and finding her place among the two boys, she’d felt lighter than she had in years. It was closer to the way she’d been before all the death of those she’d once known.
The ice thawed from her limbs as she remembered how it felt to move in this way. It really wasn’t so different from fencing practice, and yet there was a world of difference without the rapier in her hand. Lucy started small with moving through the positions. Then, she adjusted to practice various moves that were stationary to remain in the iron circle she constructed. Eventually, Lucy reached a point where she’d practice her turns and leaps so long as the haunting was still too early for a manifestation. Dancing brought her more in tune with her Talents and body than sitting and drawing ever had.
It seemed to be a domino effect whenever she began dancing, soon after the desire to learn French would grow within her. The second language had been harder to get back into, but in London, Lucy was surrounded by more resources than she’d ever been back home. Bookstores contained rows upon rows of books on ballet, French as a language, France as a place, and everything in between. When she got paid, Lucy found herself wandering towards bookshops every so often to add a new one to her collection.
She tucked each book under her bed as though it were a stash of contraband biscuits. They were not for the boys’ eyes. Her mum and sisters had found one of her French books once upon a time and had teased her mercilessly for it. Lucy had no desire to hear their taunts if they discovered what she spent her time learning. Maybe George would understand, since he’d always been in the pursuit of knowledge, but she couldn’t risk even that. They were strange about France in Britain. She’d known it her whole life – her obsession wasn’t a normal one. However, she continued to pursue her strange habits be it conversing with a skull locked in a jar, learning French, or dancing. Lucy only cared about being seen, but not nearly enough to stop it. If anything, she dove further into her interests.
On nights Lucy miraculously didn’t have a case but the boys were out and about, Lucy would turn on the radio in the kitchen or the record player in the library and choreograph her own ballets to the music. It took the place of most of her rapier training, which at first, frightened her. But after a sparring match where Lockwood complimented her on her form, she figured it might be doing better than fumbling about on her own.
Dancing brought her joy, an awareness of her mind and body and how it all connected. Life settled around her bringing about a routine that both exhausted and exhilarated her. Lucy knew she would never be a professional ballerina, but she could still dance. She could hold fast to this warm feeling of being surrounded by her boys, doing something she loved and something she was competent in.
She deserved to do things that brought her joy, didn’t she?
~~~
A pillar of agent life was that joy never lasted long – or maybe that was just a pillar of hers.
Holly Munro brought a weight to her life that wasn’t unlike tying bricks to her feet. Holly Munro would’ve made the most perfect ballerina. She was prim and proper with perfect posture she didn’t seem to even think about in the way Lucy would’ve needed to. Every move she made was like walking on air, and her clothing was the closest Lucy thought someone could get to a ballerina’s without looking abnormal. It was pinafore dresses or stylish, sleek outfits that would’ve looked like a frumpy librarian on Lucy. Holly made them look as though she’d walked off the set of a modern dance expo. Lucy had read about those in one of her books. It didn’t appeal to her as much as ballet did, but she loved the idea of different styles.
She did not love Holly Munro.
Every time Lucy laid eyes on her, she found a new perfection that could’ve led Lucy to her dreams. She’d since discovered that there were ballets still being performed in London. France still held her heart, but her dreams could’ve been so much closer if she weren’t an agent. But being an agent was all she’d really known, and it was the only thing she could justify doing. She didn’t have the ballerina’s physique, as her mum would’ve pointed out. Lucy didn’t need her mum, she had a mirror and all the pictures of ballerinas that her salary could buy.
Holly Munro wasn’t an agent; she was just a beautiful secretary. Sure, she helped Lockwood and Co. with things that they’d been severely lacking. She’d been instrumental for getting them back on the right path, but she wasn’t an agent. If she wasn’t going to be an agent, Lucy couldn’t fathom why she’d be wanting to work for an agency. Holly was elegance personified, a crane taking flight, the Princess in her favorite ballet, Swan Lake. She and Lockwood would’ve been gorgeous dancers, but at least he was an agent. It made sense that he’d have no such time for ballet and no desire to do so with his agency ambitions. Holly had no such hangups.
It seemed unfathomable that someone might pass up the chance to live a dream like that to file someone else’s paperwork or clean their kitchen. Lucy hated the idea, and even though she’d given up her wildest dream, she still often wondered what if whenever she danced. Holly didn’t have to wonder “what if” if she didn’t want to, and it made Lucy see red. If they were in a production together Lucy would’ve been the Black Swan to Holly’s White. Holly who could’ve easily been the White Swan in any production, while Lucy was more apt to be the Ugly Duckling when she’d give up anything for a different life.
Her life was meant to be this way; she knew that. Her Talents were her strength; her ability to be an agent was what set her apart from others. Even if she wished it were dancing, Lucy knew that she was made for bobs not buns, rapiers instead of pointe shoes, and salt bombs rather than ribbons.
The knowledge weighed her down as much as Holly’s presence. It made dancing more difficult. It made practicing her French more difficult. Holly seemed like the type who would also appreciate French, but Lucy just knew if she ever brought up French with her, she’d be laughed at. Her skills in the language would be looked down on because perfect Holly Munro would never be caught dead taking so long on the basics. Elegant Holly Munro probably would have perfect pronunciation and the perfect lilt to her voice that made people question if she was a native. Lucy would have no such poise. She hadn’t heard French spoken since Madame Belmont was alive, and the only thing left of her memory was the sharp way she said her words with a smoothed over accent.
Lucy had visited Madame Belmont’s gravestone when she last came to town. It was a sad thing, nothing at all representative of the woman she’d been in life. She’d placed lavender there in hopes it would look artsy in the way her cottage always had. Lucy couldn’t bring herself to go that far. Her hometown hadn’t changed a lick, but she had. She’d thought it was for the best that she’d found a life in London. Not only had she found ballet and French again, but she’d made a name for herself as an agent.
Now, it seemed it all was slipping through her fingers once more. Lockwood didn’t appreciate her methods. He didn’t trust her Talent. Holly’s presence loomed worse than malaise, and Lucy’s limbs had never felt so sluggish even in the face of the strongest Visitor. Everything that had made up who she thought she was had been slipping through her fingers like a particularly chilling breeze. It felt like she was losing everything, and Lucy didn’t know what the price would be to reclaim herself.
~~~
It was a long winter.
The winter itself could’ve been two months or twelve, and Lucy wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. The frost clung to her heart, coating her skin literally and figuratively. It felt like she’d been etched from a block, then tossed aside when the project hadn’t formed in the way the artist wished. She’d been chipped away at until she couldn’t tell what she was supposed to be.
Lucy left Lockwood and Co. in the dead of night, most of her books stayed hidden in her room where she doubted the boys would ever look. Maybe they would when they finally repurposed the room or hired someone new. They could all have a good laugh at their strange former Listener who liked French and dancing. She kept some books and, Lucy hoped, her dignity. It seemed hard to know when in her dingy new flat all alone.
Like winter into spring, Lucy slowly felt like she was blossoming again. At the very least, the frozen branches on a plant she couldn’t decide was dead or dormant, started to bud. When she had time to sit and think, her mind shifted to Lockwood and Co, wondering what they were doing and how they were. If she had a moment to herself where the world stood still, she began to wonder if Lockwood would ever come to her, asking her to come back. Sometimes, she let herself fantasize, but it always led to a feeling of indigestion that probably had more to do with her diet of Thai food and burgers than anything else.
It didn’t do to dwell on her past. She was perfectly fine, and she’d made her choice. As Madame Belmont consistently told her Comme on fait son lit, on se couche or that she made her choice, now she had to move forward. That was what Lucy intended on doing.
All her life, she’d never been on her own. Her house back North had her mum in it and a various collection of sisters at any given time. It was harder to be alone there than it was to constantly be around someone. At Jacobs, there were always arrangements to be shared with her team. Sometimes that meant literally sharing a cot with someone, but at minimum, she’d be in the same room as others. Then, for Lockwood and Co, she’d been with her two housemates. The sudden absence of another body was strange, even if the box she now called home had less space than her attic. Skull still made his presence known, but he came with an easily turned off valve, and it was rather easy to stuff him in the closet like a bulky coat should she need a reprieve from his face. Lucy could hardly say the same about her sisters or the boys.
Even if it didn’t feel like much, Lucy had space , and it was space that no one else would ever walk into. At first, that was exciting in itself, her body still stiff from her fall and a rigorous case schedule with only herself and bills to blame. Then, a day came when she was out finding a cheaper location to buy her supplies for a case, and she stumbled on a thrift store.
Lucy was no stranger to thrift stores, not when most of her clothing was destroyed on cases by debris and ectoplasm. She was smart enough not to blow her budget on clothes that wouldn’t last. But in the window were the most perfect pair of ballet slippers Lucy had ever seen. They weren’t pointe shoes, but Lucy had done enough research to rival George on the Problem when it came to dance. She’d never dream of attempting pointe with no training, but these were ballet slippers. Anyone could wear ballet slippers. Even when working with Madame Belmont, she’d never been able to have a pair.
The mannequin wearing them was dressed like a ballerina, with a flowing, knee-length tutu. It was a periwinkle color, as were the shoes. The slippers had a rounded toe unlike the block that characterized a pointe shoe. The ribbons were the same silky periwinkle, wrapping around the plastic mannequin legs. Lucy figured with how little sunlight she’d seen recently, the ribbons would look much the same against her own pale skin. The shoe itself had silver embroidery of vines intricately sewn into the fabric.
She found herself in the shop before she could even consider what she was doing, making her way around to the mannequin. How someone could ever give up something so beautiful, Lucy didn’t know. She refused to question it as well, feeling that their loss would be her gain. A worker came up and offered to take them off the mannequin so she could try them on. Lucy waited agonizingly as they untied the little ribbons, but she couldn’t find it in herself to rush them when she wanted them to be as delicate as possible with something so beautiful. Aside from the necklace Lockwood once had given her, she’d never owned anything so beautiful. And these shoes, they’d be hers . If Lucy bought them herself, she would finally own something beautiful that was entirely her own.
Or they would’ve been had they been the right size.
Lucy stared at the slippers, too small for her feet. She’d never thought she had large feet. Of all the things she found herself comparing to perfect Holly Munro, her feet had never been one of them. Likely, these shoes were meant for a small child, the mannequin’s feet just being deceiving in the window, but Lucy still couldn’t help but stare at them even as her heels hung over the edges. Maybe it was a sign that her departure from Lockwood and Co. was solely to find her footing as an agent. She wasn’t meant to buy pretty things – pretty wasn’t her profession after all.
“Sorry, miss,” the worker said, looking truly apologetic over the slippers not fitting.
Lucy shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”
The woman frowned, eyes still on the slippers. “Come with me.”
Even though Lucy needed to get a move on before her case that night, she couldn’t help but follow this woman through the rest of the thrift shop. They passed by racks of clothing and other shoes. Lucy wondered for a moment if there was another pair of slippers somewhere deep among the dingy shelves, but that seemed too serendipitous to be anything Lucy could hope for. Lucy didn’t believe in luck. She got by on skill and skill alone. Luck was not for Lucy.
They came to a cash register, and Lucy still held the slippers in her hand. The woman held the tutu from the mannequin, and began to wrap it up. Lucy watched her package it, and then the woman slid it across the counter.
Lucy shook her head. “Oh, I’m not looking to buy a tutu.”
She smiled sadly. “I’m not asking you to buy it. You agents are always out working for our sake. I’m sorry the slippers didn’t fit, but you should be able to have something. Go on and take it with you. It’s the least I can do.”
Not knowing what to say, Lucy simply nodded. She left the small slippers at the register’s counter and took the package with her. She didn’t unpack the tutu for another several days, not until she finally allowed herself a night off from agent work.
Slowly and carefully, Lucy took the tutu out of the wrapped package. She let her fingers glide against the gauzy fabric, feeling the flow of it beneath her finger tips. She moved the skirt around, letting the material billow out, seeing the ripples as the periwinkle fabric danced about the air as it moved. In just a vest and leggings, Lucy pulled the tutu on, the skirt falling to her shins rather than her knees like the mannequin. She still didn’t have slippers, standing in her flat with socks on her feet, but the tutu was now the most beautiful thing she owned. It wasn’t as beautiful as the slippers or the diamond necklace, but it was beautiful enough, and Lucy thought that “beautiful enough” was rather fitting for who she was as a person.
A day or two after purchasing the skirt, Lucy had found a sad radio at a shop. She didn’t need anything state of the art or hoity-toity. The fact it played music was enough for her. So, she tuned it to a station and moved about her flat, twirling nonsensically at first before going back to her roots.
Soon it was piqués and arabesques throughout the room. Lucy leaped from her bed and mentally choreographed to the different songs as they played. Stopping briefly at points to find new stations when the inspiration was dwindling. She might have gotten a better workout that evening than she had on any solo case she’d taken in the last month. It made everything feel lighter again.
Skull ribbed her mercilessly for the tutu and the dancing, but Lucy could hardly bring herself to pay him even a fraction of her mind. The dancing didn’t make up for the loneliness, or the smell, or the long hours, or the lack of good food. But she could dance in her flat without a single concern that someone would walk in on her. Lucy had never felt that amount of freedom when it came to dance. It was that little piece of coming home that she could grasp onto. Her home was no longer Portland Row and it certainly wasn’t the flat in Tooting, it was the feeling she got when her feet hardly touched the floor. She was untethered. She was free.
~~~
In her flat, Lucy danced much more than she used to. The same went for solo cases where it was just her and Skull. If Lucy found herself working with another team of agents, she’d refrain, but otherwise, Lucy felt as if she were constantly in motion. It made it much easier to ignore everything that wasn’t currently serving her when she was more focused on proper positioning and posture.
It was a cycle of eat, sleep, work, and dance for Lucy. It kept her busy, and she didn’t have time to think about much else. She didn’t even believe there was something else to think about. There were things to absolutely not think about, and she was doing a great job with that. It did turn out however that there was one thing she hadn’t considered returning to as she worked on being alone.
It knocked on her door in mid-January.
The old woman had knocked on Lucy’s door one morning after a grueling case. It was lucky she’d even gotten up, but Lucy had. She was a short thing, even shorter than Lucy. Her back was hunched, but she still had sharp eyes. When she opened her mouth Lucy nearly had a heart attack.
“I do zee laundry. Eef you can pay, oui?” Her accent was a punch in the gut. Lucy hadn’t heard an accent like that in so long she nearly felt tears prickling at her eyes.
The words felt foreign on her tongue, for more reason than one, but Lucy tried regardless. “Oui. Êtes-vous français?”
The woman blinked at her in surprise. “Your accent eez atroce. I do your laundry, and I teach you.”
“Oh, I’m an agent, my time is very limited,” Lucy tried to argue.
She made a noise of disgust. “Sottises. I do laundry. You come.”
There wasn’t much of a fight to be had. Lucy missed speaking French terribly, and obviously this woman had a desire to teach her. It was the first chance she’d had since she lived back North. She’d never encountered someone in London who had wanted to. And, despite looking nothing like her, this woman reminded her of Madame Belmont. It seemed that old, French women had much the same spirit.
“Okay, I can make sure I have one night off,” Lucy insisted.
“Good girl. I leeve in flat 206 on second floor. You call me Delphine.”
“I’m Lucy,” she said lamely.
Delphine nodded. “Good, good. Bring your laundry, oui? Oui.”
That was how Lucy found herself every Tuesday on the second floor of her flats where Delphine set up a water basin in the center of the room, washing laundry for others. Lucy would leave her things with the woman to be delivered later when they’d dried in a neat package.
Growing up, Lucy’s mum had been a laundress for their town. She was intimately familiar with the process and had watched it for as long as she could remember. Delphine treated it with much more care than her mum had. It might have been that Londoners’ clothing was more delicate and needed that kind of touch, but Lucy had no way of knowing for certain. Delphine lived alone, much like Madame Belmont had, but while her old mentor lived in a beautiful cottage in their village, Delphine lived in the same shoddy Tooting flat that also oddly smelled of baked beans. Lucy couldn’t fathom how every flat might smell of baked beans.
They spoke in French. Lucy’s was halting at best, but it slowly began to grow stronger. With chiding from Delphine, Lucy learned faster than she had on her own. Sometimes when packing her kit bag for the evening, Lucy would say it all to herself in French. She let the words wash over her like a memory from the past of simpler times. The language wrapped around her like a gauzy shawl, the words as familiar to her as a relevé or tendu. Though the woman would never say anything, Lucy had even caught Delphine smiling at her as the conversation flowed much easier between them.
Sometimes when neither had the energy to converse, Delphine would put on an old French movie. They were often romances that once upon a time would left Lucy cringing, but she was learning plenty of curse words in a couple. As she watched with Delphine, Lucy couldn’t help but place herself in the heroine’s shoes. Her mind often strayed into substituting the love interests for a different boy, one who grew more distant but more painful to think about each day. They both ended up tearing up at the end of the movies more often than not. Neither of them acknowledging the emotions.
Delphine confided in Lucy as April neared that she’d lost her family to a visitor a decade ago. She’d been a stay at home mum before then, never bothering to learn much of the language with a working husband. After losing them, she could no longer afford their home and ended up moving here. It was a devastating story. The woman was alone, unable to fully speak the language, and no longer where she’d once lived with her family. Lucy felt the loneliness in Delphine’s voice in her own chest, even if her situation was much more self-imposed.
“Dites-moi,” Delphine said, wiping her own eyes.
With more finesse than she’d had in her life, Lucy went through her history, sharing everything with the other woman. Madame Belmont, her dreams of being a ballerina, losing her team, coming to London – absolutely everything. Maybe it was the different language that made it easier, but the words felt like silk as they left her tongue. What had once felt so incredibly heavy, seemed to thaw as dancing did. Instead of her limbs lightening, her tongue was.
“Et ce beau garçon? Allez-vous revenir vers lui?”
Lucy felt herself blush. “Je souhaite, mais non.”
Delphine tutted, but she didn’t press.
It seemed she knew something Lucy didn’t.
Lucy would go back to Lockwood. She’d never step foot in that Tooting flat of hers again while the Problem still raged. When Holly and Lockwood went to pick up her things, Lucy pulled Holly aside asking if she could tell Delphine she was safe and to not go looking for her. Holly agreed.
It wasn’t until Fittes fell that Lucy found herself wandering back to that area. Delphine held up a paper, pointing at her on the cover of it with Lockwood. Lucy had never seen a smirk so self-satisfied from the old woman.
“Je ne reviendrai jamais vers le beau garçon, non?”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Faire taire.”
Delphine chuckled and gestured to the telly. Lucy put in their favorite movie. It really had been too long, and she would not make the same mistakes as she had with Madame Belmont.
~~~
With the Problem dwindling, cases became fewer and far between. Everyone seemed to have their own way to pass time. Lucy would visit Delphine in Tooting, and lately she’d been looking at London dance studios in hopes that she might be able to find something that would take an older student. She was Lucy “bloody” Carlyle, she could handle dance lessons even if she was behind. She’d faced Type Threes and her own possible death.
They did have a case that night, and Lucy found herself in the kitchen with the rest of the team as George laid out what he found at the Archives earlier. He was agitated, not finding what he wanted. Everyone looked around each other as he went through the little he did know.
“It’s these bloody pages,” George huffed, throwing some sheets on the Thinking Cloth. “I grabbed everything for this house about the family, including these write ups from a murder confession that happened there. But I didn’t realize it was in French. Who the bloody hell just has a French translation book lying around? Not Lockwood’s family apparently.”
“So, what then? Do we push the case back a night or can we go there to survey what we’re dealing with but not engage?” Lockwood prompted.
Lucy took a look at the papers on the table as George groaned. “I don’t know, Lockwood. Either it’ll be a harmless Type One or it’ll be an intense Type Two with the possibility of a cluster. I couldn’t find any news articles on this case, but this is the written confession.”
“He suspected his wife of cheating, and believed the kids weren’t his as well. Nasty business. Very unhinged and rambling,” Lucy said, looking over the paper. “I’d say it’ll be a cluster. Too violent not to be.”
Silence.
Lucy glanced up at her team as they looked at her half with bulging eyes and the other with mouths hanging open. “What?”
“You read French?” George spluttered, looking at the pages as if he’d missed an English translation written in the margins.
She blinked for a moment. “Right. I suppose I never told you.”
“They taught you French in your little village up North?” Kipps scoffed.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Of course not. I learned myself.”
“You just…learned French?” Holly asked, and there went her theory that Holly could speak French. “Just like that?”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Lockwood said, hurt creeping into his voice.
Lucy glanced back at the papers. “I kept it a secret. There’s even French books under my bed in the attic. My mum and sisters used to tease me for wanting to learn, so I just…never said anything. It’s a bit stupid to think about now.” She fiddled with the sapphire necklace around her neck, unable to look at the others.
“Lucy, you learned a language on your own. That’s insane,” George said, his tone unusually animated. “Do you know how bloody difficult it is to learn a language? French is a bit of a choice there, but you taught yourself? I want a translation of this, and then to learn how you managed it.”
“Well, I suppose I had some help from elderly French women who really enjoyed spending time with me,” Lucy admitted.
George shook his head. “I’ve no idea what that means, but I’ll note it.”
Later that evening after a successful case solved mostly because of Lucy’s translation of the confession George had found, Lucy found her and Lockwood sitting together in the library to wind down. He’d gently taken her hand in his, smiling at her with a look she couldn’t entirely decipher. Lucy played with her necklace with her other hand.
“You amaze me, you know? I feel I’m still learning new things about you,” Lockwood told her.
Lucy flushed. “I didn’t mean to keep it a secret. I just thought it was embarrassing that I was learning French. I didn’t want to be made fun of.”
“Why French?”
So, Lucy told him the story of the old woman who lived on the edge of her hometown. The woman with a magical cottage and a love of ballet that she passed down to all the children who lived there. Lockwood, to his credit, didn’t interrupt her. He listened as she told him about all the moments she’d found and lost her love for French and ballet throughout the years.
“Should I learn French then so we have our own secret language?” He asked, squeezing her hand.
Lucy grinned. “Actually, I already promised George I’d work with him so we could talk behind your back.”
“Traitors.”
“Traîtres.”
A light pink tinged Lockwood’s cheeks. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you speak French.”
“Aimes-tu quand je parle français?” Lucy said, sliding closer to him. The tips of his ears took on the appearance of a ripe tomato.
“I have no idea what you said.”
“Good,” Lucy responded with a kiss to his cheek.
~~~
Lockwood refused to tell her where their honeymoon was. The Problem had been contained enough to allow travel to slowly be allowed once again, which left the possibilities endless. Lucy looked through Lockwood’s family’s pictures, wondering which of their footsteps the newly wed couple would walk in. Lucy loved that Lockwood seemed so excited about wherever he was taking her, and she was more than content to sit back and let him lead on their first adventure together. It’d be the first time either of them ever left the country.
In the early hours of the morning, Anthony and Lucy Lockwood took a cab to the train station. He directed her to keep her eyes closed, not wanting to spoil a lick of his surprise. Lucy let him have his fun. Traveling by his side was already more than she’d once thought possible. Lucy felt certain Lockwood must have planned an early train because she fell asleep before the announcement of where they were going was made.
“Luce,” Lockwood whispered, rousing her.
“Are we there?” She asked.
He chuckled. “No, it’s only been an hour, but I wanted to see if you cared to look out the window.”
She glanced in that direction to see an expanse of water in every direction. Lucy turned to face him, a question in her eyes and sitting idly on her tongue. His eyes sparkled with mischief, his smile as wide as the day he offered her rapier lessons all those years ago.
“Where are we going?” Lucy asked, turning towards the window once more.
She could hear the fondness, mingle with a bit of smugness, in his voice. “Paris.” Lucy turned to face him so fast she nearly collided with his head. “Surprise, darling.”
“Really? I’m going to France?” She said.
Lockwood gave her a cheeky grin. “Oui. But I decided I’d get one of the recently reopened trains there. Sorry you won’t be fulfilling your lifelong dream of swimming there from the English Channel.
Lucy snorted. “I think I can forgive you.”
“Well, in case you can’t, I do have something else.”
He pulled two tickets from his suit jacket, handing them to Lucy. She took them, trying to ignore the slight tremor in her hands. They were ballet tickets for a show at the Opéra national de Paris. Lucy had read about the place in all her books. It’s where Madame Belmont once worked. Tears gathered in her eyes and she pushed forward to give Lockwood a kiss.
He laughed. “I thought you’d enjoy these. I know how much this has meant to you.”
Lucy swallowed thickly. “I never imagined I’d get to go someday.”
“And I never imagined I would get so lucky as to spend my life with you. We both get to live our dreams,” Lockwood insisted, that smile he saved just for her dancing on his face.
Lucy looked back out the window, resting her head on his shoulder. As the train got closer to France, she figured that she also was living a dream she never expected but was grateful for nonetheless. Between France and Lockwood, her dreams were realized.
Just as Madame Belmont had told her decades before: N'arrêtez jamais de rêver .