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“Hurry, boy! Faster!”
Bickerstaff’s lantern jiggled madly ahead of him, as though it too had been possessed by its master’s frenzy. The boy’s feet burned with cold in his thin shoes and his calves ached with the effort of keeping up with Bickerstaff’s longer strides. But he was used to ignoring discomfort for the sake of a prize — and this was not any prize, but the prize.
“Beauty awaits,” Bickerstaff was hissing as he wove his way between gravestones. “Beauty — glory — life everlasting! Ours, boy.” He rounded on him with that sudden fierceness that the boy had never yet gotten used to. “There for the taking.”
The boy panted up at him, the fire in his eyes driving out the chill in his bones.
“Ours,” he repeated, savouring the word.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Bickerstaff’s mood had changed again, the glow of the shared purpose replaced just as quickly by vicious impatience, and catching the boy by the shoulder, he flung him forwards, towards an open grave. “Look! Tell me, what do you see?”
The view from the kitchen table wasn’t much, but the skull had had worse: the inside of a sewer; a dusty cupboard in a Fittes office building; the basement of Portland Row; George Cubbins in a bathtub — the list was long and mostly didn’t bear dwelling on. Suffice to say, the skull could take toast crumbs and inane conversation over most other experiences of his unlife.
The ragtag band to which his fate was sadly bound were in a sorry state after their latest bungling attempt at a case, which was at least a minor source of entertainment. Lucy and Holly had streaks of ash on their faces like war paint, Lockwood groaned whenever he moved and Cubbins and Kipps appeared to have tar in their hair. It would have warmed the cockles of his heart, had he had such an organ to avail of.
“Whose turn is it to make the tea?” Lockwood asked.
“Not it,” chorused the two girls.
Cubbins and Kipps exchanged a glance.
“Don’t look at me,” said the latter. “I don’t even live here.”
With a martyred sigh, Cubbins heaved himself to his feet. “You all take advantage of me,” he whined and waddled stiffly to the kettle.
“Three cheers for George, a hero for the ages,” said Lockwood in a muffled voice. He had keeled forward to pillow his head on his arms, as though he had actually done some work that evening beyond dashing around with his ridiculous coat flapping and brandishing his sword. “Hip hip?”
“Hurray,” croaked Lucy. She had pitched sideways so that her shoulder was resting against Lockwood’s and was doing her level best not to look pleased at the way he had leant back into her.
“Decaf for me, George?” Holly asked hopefully.
Cubbins sighed again. “Nothing but the very great respect and admiration I bear for you could persuade me to consent to such a thing,” he said, as if he hadn’t already put a separate mug aside for her with one of her special herbal tea bags in it.
“I’ll have a chai latte, Cubbins, if you’re taking special orders.” Kipps had produced a comb and a compact mirror from somewhere on his person and was waging a fruitless war on the sticky material in his hair.
“Earl Grey, drink it or wear it,” Cubbins retorted and plonked a full mug down in front of him.
“Have a biscuit, Quill,” said Lucy, playing peacemaker by pushing a packet of custard creams at him. He took two, ate one and dropped the other into the space between Lockwood’s ear and the crook of his elbow. Lockwood turned his head with another groan and flexed his arm to move the biscuit into his mouth. Munching noises ensued and Lucy started to laugh, that full, throaty sound that had become the soundtrack to the skull’s miserable existence, a torture and a pleasure all at once. He began to swirl his plasm within the jar for the sake of something to do, muttering to himself a little.
He was sick of watching them: they were always at it, this nauseating game of theirs. They threw out abuse to each other, called each other names and argued, dodging chores and skipping turns, dancing all the while around their delightful little secret: they loved each other. They loved each other so much that they could afford to pretend they didn’t, to play at finding fault with each other or being fed up with each other, when in reality, they were relishing every second of each other’s company. It had taken the skull a long time to give up on seeing their true colours: unfortunately, it turned out they really were like that, all the way down to their happy-clappy cores. It would have made him sick, if he’d had a stomach. Really, it was a blessing to be incorporeal under these conditions.
How many times had he imagined this moment? The silver glass in smithereens, the world at his feet, Lucy at his mercy — the skull burst free of the remains of his jar and felt his power, reaching and extending through this building, the three beating hearts in the other room of the penthouse and the four souls. He felt his power, his freedom, and was nearly gutted by the disappointment.
In fact, he had imagined this moment so many times in the long years of his confinement that he had forgotten what freedom felt like. It was only now, tasting it properly, that he realised what he had really been imagining was not freedom in death, but freedom in life. When he had imagined stretching his plasm, he had subconsciously confused it with the memory of stretching his legs, and when he had dreamed of roaming the world at his ease again, he had somehow assumed there would be free air in his lungs. He’d flown the one, smaller cage and forgotten about the real prison, the great jailer whose bars had never yet been broken. Death kept its grip on the boy who had become nothing but a skull.
All throughout that battle with Ezekiel, the first true test of his abilities in God alone knew how many years, the skull couldn’t shake the phantom taste of ash in his mouth — the mouth that couldn’t even taste anymore! Where was the justice in that? And then Lucy — witch! The loveliest, damn her, God damn her — suggested that he stay, gave him an implicit invite to join her circus of freaks in their sickly game of hide-and-seek love, and he burned for it even as he casually dismissed it. How could he stay alongside her, glowing, alive, with his bitter mouthful of ash?
He was still wrestling with himself when the scene with Marissa began to play out like a puppet show. Of course she was too stupid to know when she was beaten. Of course that bloody idiot Lockwood would get in the way and that even greater idiot Lucy would insist on dying pointlessly at his side.
“No,” she whispered, as the end of time counted closer. “I’ll stay with you.”
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” said the skull impatiently, as much with himself as with Lucy (God damn her, damn her, damn her). Suddenly his freedom in death seemed very sweet indeed. What a fool he’d been to dismiss it, to refuse to settle for it, as if beggars could be choosers. But if he had to choose, if he had an option between a world with Lucy and a world without — “Brace yourselves,” he said and caught those three living bodies in the web of his ghostly power, throwing them apart with all his might.
The bomb detonated. Fire bloomed in roses, peonies unfolding their white-hot hearts. The boy caught one last glimpse of Lucy, hurtling away from him, her eyes fixed on him even as her hands reached for Lockwood. Then the fire was cutting right through him and he tasted ash and ash and then — beauty. Glory. The prize!