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Carrying around eight kilos of glass is a very decent way to keep fit, just in case you were wondering. Want your arms to be stronger? Try hefting those kilos high over your head because their occupant wants a better view of the Changer you happen to be wrangling. Or is complaining about getting their tap rusty if you dunk it in that pond you’re doing your best to de-plasm. I find eight kilos are at their most anaerobically-beneficial when pursuing a Spectre up a set of service stairs inside a haunted skyscraper. Especially if you're carrying every other bit of equipment you need to do your job right.
Think you’d like to try it? Adopt a talking skull.
“Come on, Luce!” shouted an unfairly oxygen-rich voice from several levels above me. “We’re just about gaining on it!”
“Yeah, come on, Lucy!” chimed the ghost in my rucksack. “Only another twenty or so flights to go! Where’s your stamina?”
To my right, the centre shaft of the stairwell dropped away into terrible nothingness. By keeping my route tight to the wall, I had managed to banish the pit to the very edges of my vision: a deepening black box it didn’t bear thinking about as I wound my way around it. Best to focus on the floor of each landing as I climbed, my headtorch picking out the occasional busted light box and long-abandoned fire extinguisher. Overhead, lost in the ceilingless dark, my only living companion spiralled ever higher. I kept track of him by the echoes of his footfalls and his short, rhythmic breaths. My breaths on the other hand…
“I will happily drop you,” I hissed, my spare hand gripping hard to my rapier, ghost fog streaming past my ankles. “I will swing this bag off… and chuck you over the side.”
There was a harsh flare of other-light just behind my head and the concrete walls flashed a noxious aquamarine.
“Can’t think of anything better! From this height the silver glass will smash open and I can come straight back up and thank you personally for my freedom. Maybe I’ll give you a hug? Shake Lockwood’s hand, even.”
I scowled and pushed myself another flight higher. “Not a chance.”
“Then you’d best stop whining and put your back into it, hadn’t you?”
Don’t get me wrong, agents don’t make a habit of haring up multi-storey office buildings chasing after ghosts (most of our work is capped at two to three storeys – four if we’ve got ourselves a haunted attic) but on the whole we’re fit enough to manage it if needed. Tonight, I was struggling.
Almost three weeks had passed since Lockwood and I had been forced to run for our lives beneath a single spirit cape. We’d fought, we’d lived, and, on returning to Portland Row feeling like an over-mashed teabag, I’d thought I was suffering the side effects of a fairly hectic week. As the days passed, however, my limbs still felt leadened, my mind slower, more prone to distraction. Only the other morning George had bellowed my name so loudly across the kitchen table I thought he’d perforated my eardrum. I’d reacted, quite naturally, with violence. Holly had been the one to prise the spatula from my fingers and assure me that George had been trying to get my attention at a normal volume for several minutes only for me to continue staring blankly at the cornflakes.
“Lucy!”
My heart juddered and I looked up into the stair shaft. Anthony Lockwood’s slender face was peering down at me from a balcony several floors overhead: a pale, gibbous moon hanging in a starless night. His dark hair drooped forwards over his brow and the tie I’d given him the Christmas before pointed at me over the lip of the bannister, straight as an arrow. Predictably, he was grinning.
“Everything alright down there?”
“Fine,” I puffed, thankful to be able to stop running. I clutched my hip and smiled at him despite the stitch in my side. “Completely fine… But aren’t we meant to be chasing something?”
“We are. Or were,” he amended. “Until it decided to float through this here wall and vanish from sight.”
“Ah.”
“Not ideal.” He swept his forelock off his face only for it to flop straight back into place again. “How cooperative is he feeling tonight? Our friend in the jar?”
“About as much as usual.”
“Reckon he could give us any insights?”
I jabbed an elbow at my backpack. “Skull? You heard him. Any words of wisdom?”
“You need to go back to the old deodorant because the smell of this one really isn’t working for me. Oh, and this bag could do with a clear out. There’s a sandwich in here that’s been around longer than I’ve been dead.”
I spared a glance for Lockwood, waiting patiently above. “For God’s sake!” I hissed. “Forget about the sandwich.”
“And why so many pen lids in here? Are you building a collection? Planning to melt them all together one day and make a really thin and useless weapon?”
“Skull!”
“Alright, alright, keep your hair on…” The light from its silver glass prison darkened and rippled across the stairwell as if we’d both been plunged underwater. “Your spirit has settled in a room just along the next floor. He’s got a flip chart out. Looks like he’s directing a meeting, poor chap.”
“A meeting?”
“He’s still working through the motions of his death loop. So you can either chase him up there now like the predictable set of cretins you’re currently proving yourselves to be, or else you can get ahead of the curve and wait at the next part of the haunting.”
I relayed all this to Lockwood (skipping over the bits about my toiletries, the state of my rucksack, and us being a set of cretins) before enquiring exactly what the next part would be.
The ghost scoffed. “Was I the only one listening during Cubbins’ briefing? This chump met his end after falling forty storeys onto an unforgiving cushion of falafel stand and falafel vendor. Maybe, with that information, I would consider heading for the roof.” The glow from the jar receded and curdled, turning a resentful-looking yellow. “But hey, why listen to me? You clearly weren’t bothered a jot when poor old George was taking you through the research. Too busy making doe eyes at undertaker Bambi over there.”
“Anything?” asked Lockwood, who had circled back down the stairwell so there was only a single flight of stairs between us. His dark eyes shone brightly through the gloom.
I slipped off my head torch and ruffled my fringe, feeling rankled. “The skull says to head for the rooftop and I suppose that makes sense. We both know where this ends.”
Lockwood frowned. “The roof was where Lionel Nithercott jumped off, or was pushed off, certainly, but that isn’t a guarantee of where the Source will be. He was a high-powered stockbroker, wasn’t he? He’s bound to have had an office somewhere. The Source could be something he left in there. Something he treasured in life.”
“What?” mocked the ghost. “Like a particularly precious stapler?”
I privately felt the phantom had a point, however a city-slicker’s private offices, firmly based on the inside of the building, were certainly a more appealing prospect to me than venturing out into the wind and the elements further upstairs.
“Then again…” said Lockwood and my optimism withered. He was stroking his chin as if tending an imaginary beard. “George did mention something to us about a rooftop garden... There was a party here the night Nithercott died, wasn’t there? Some CEO’s birthday.” He stared ponderously towards my glowing rucksack before catching my expression. “I know you’re not the biggest fan of heights, Luce.”
I sighed, resigned. “It’s fine.”
“So if you’d prefer for me to check it out alone–”
“We are not splitting up.”
I’d said it louder than I’d meant to and my last word pinwheeled about the stairwell around us: up, up, up, up… We stared at one another. Now Lockwood was closer, I thought his face did actually look a little flushed. Maybe he had found the race around the stairs harder than usual.
“Alright,” he replied neutrally. “Then we check out the roof together. I would have preferred it that way, anyway.”
“Fine,” I repeated. I ran a hand over my holdall, ensuring everything was secure. Salt bombs, iron filings…
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” crooned the skull in my ear. “When you inevitably do end up toppling over the edge, I’ll be ideal company on the Other Side. Always better to be somewhere new when you have a familiar face to talk to.”
“Oh, shut up,” I muttered as it cackled.
We followed the thin funnel of Lockwood’s pen light up the next several floors until we reached a fire exit with a rusty silver push bar. Under pressure it screeched open. Lockwood stepped through first. His hair was thrown sideways as the wind snatched it up, pressed his coat flush to his side, the London city skyline laid out before him like a star-spangled blanket. Wordlessly, he held one hand out behind him. Silently, I took it.
The roof garden had clearly been out of action for a while. Rusty white furniture was strapped into stacks and neatly corralled inside a pen to our left. Ahead lay a wide patio tiled with square, pale stones watermarked and furry with moss. A runway of plastic grass extended just beyond, stretched between two thick wooden planters made from out-of-use railway sleepers; pampas grass and fan-leaved monstera spilled their boundaries and, at the edge of the turf, just before a balcony of clouded glass, a pergola strung with fairy lights marked the final section of the garden before the drop.
I heard Lockwood’s slow exhale. He glanced back at me, his eyes very bright.
“Quite a view,” I said weakly with one foot still lingering on the threshold of the fire exit. “Bit higher than that warehouse we jumped off after Winkman’s auction.”
“Just a bit.” His smile was soft, his shoulders relaxed. “I’ve never seen the city like this before, Luce. Never had the altitude. It’s magical, isn’t it?”
It helped to stay focussed on his face right then and not the shimmering tangle of cranes, buildings and softly winking relic-barges floating on the river Thames. With the gale catching at the edges of my jacket, I took a small step closer to him. I felt his fingers tighten infinitesimally around mine…
“What are you looking at?” squawked the skull. “Let me see!”
I cursed and my hand clamped around Lockwood’s. The skull’s jar was glowing an angry magenta through my rucksack canvas: a boiling phantasmal warning light with impeccable timing.
“You’re going on about something being magical and all I can see is your tea flask! Take me out for a bit. I need an airing.”
“You’re vacuum-sealed!”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t need visual stimuli!”
“The skull?” guessed Lockwood as I swung off my backpack and dumped it on the mouldy patio floor.
“Yes,” I snapped, my hand tingling strangely. “He’s just asking to come out for a bit… There. Happy now?”
The face in the jar stretched itself flush against the inside of the silver glass like an infant straining to see a jellyfish through an aquarium wall. Its ectoplasm swirled and boggled and a rush of violet globules wove themselves about the eye sockets before calming into a pleasant sort of lilac colour.
“He wasn’t kidding,” it murmured, pulsating dimly. “Magical.”
Lockwood, too, was watching the skyline again and both Londoners stared out at their shining city with a deep and solemn reverence… I decided to focus on the task at hand.
Turning my back, I took a deep inhale of frigid midnight air and let the mortal world fall away. Time moved backwards. The heat of a strong sun pressed on the backs of my eyelids and I felt the wind shift from a gale to a breeze perfumed with an expensive, masculine scent. Laughter was coming from the garden. The clink of ice-filled glasses. The burr of confident conversation. Somewhere a bee was whining, a bit too close for someone, who shrieked in panic. But all in all everyone was getting along. Months of planning and it was all going so well. I was suffused with calm–
“Lucy! No!”
I gasped. Both my hands were outstretched and pushed against the grey steel of the emergency exit door– which had just slammed shut with a clang. Lockwood careened into me. I was dragged sideways, my palms scraping over a rough brick wall. He spun me around and pinned me back against it.
“What are you doing?” His pale face was close, his dark eyes wide and searching. “Lucy? What on earth were you doing?”
“Lockwood?” His hands were clasped to my shoulders. I could smell match-smoke and bergamot; that familiar leather-coat musk from the hallway of Portland Row. “I don’t… I don’t know. I never meant to do anything.” I shoved him away.
“You closed the door,” he said reproachfully. “I heard it creaking shut but by the time I could get to you…”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Lockwood!”
Heart hammering, I explored the edges of the doorway with my fingernails, hoping to find a crack I could wedge my crowbar into maybe, but it was no use. The metal was set flush against its housing. There was no handle on this side, just a blank sheet of steel. Lockwood was watching me closely.
“There’s got to be other exits,” I said. “This is a service stairs. For maintenance workers.The guests wouldn’t have come up through here.”
He shook his head. “There’s damage to the structure of the building, remember? This fire door is the only way up or down that’s even vaguely safe.”
There was a dismal tutting from beside one of the planters. “See? Not paying attention.”
“Oh now you pipe up!” I snarled. “Where were you when I was headed for the door? You should have warned me there was a second presence up here!”
“Speaking of which,” interrupted Lockwood. My head whipped about and I could see he’d drawn his rapier.
The fairy lights, previously dead, were now humming merrily from their nest atop the wooden pergola. Beneath them stood a figure. It was very still with a bent head and sharply sloping shoulders. Composed completely of shadow, I couldn’t tell whether it was facing towards us or away. The hairs rose on the back of my neck and I took an involuntary step backwards.
“It isn’t moving,” continued Lockwood in that same preternaturally level tone, “but I’d say that’s quite enough sightseeing for now. How about we set up a circle, Luce?”
“Sounds like a plan,” I replied. Dropping into a squat, I dug through my bag for a chain before pulling it through my hands towards Lockwood. I scowled across at my old roommate. “If we’re trapped up here, so are you,” I hissed. “So you’d better start being useful. What can you tell me so far? Who is this ghost under the fairy lights?”
The ichor in the ghost-jar stirred. “They are one and the same. Two sides of the same coin. Soon they will be reunited.”
I translated this for Lockwood who had made quick work of arranging the iron ring on an area beside the stacks of garden furniture.
“We’ve got time,” I told him, piling our kit inside the chain, which didn’t really leave space for much else. “When I was Listening earlier, the party had only just started.”
Lockwood knelt over the links and started laying out snuff lights in a neat semi-circle around our position.
“Good,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m hoping this should help if anything else decides to show up–” He struck a match and ignited the candles one by one– “even if the skull isn’t feeling much like guard dog duty tonight.”
“Dog? Did he just call me a dog?”
I gave his jar a slight kick with my boot.
“I can’t tell what’s going to happen,” I continued, folding myself down between the bags. “When I was Listening, the atmosphere was really happy. No malign intent. No foreboding. Nothing.”
Lockwood shook out the last match. “Then we’ll just have to find out together.”
He stared intently at the grotesquely glowing ghost-jar before gripping it by the handles and hefting it over to the edge of the circle so he’d have better room to sit. I shuffled across to make space and, with difficulty, Lockwood lowered himself so he was sitting beside me with both knees clutched to his chest.
“Well,” he said after an awkward pause. “This is cosy.”
I snorted and felt some of the tension I’d been holding melt miraculously away. “I stopped packing my longer chains when I went freelance. Didn’t need the extra weight...”
“And I suppose you didn’t fancy bringing a 30-footer with you when you knew we were going to have to climb all those stairs?”
“Why is it all on me? You could have brought one.”
“Ah, but you know my philosophy on chains, Luce. Iron filings will do just fine.”
I glanced sideways to find he was already grinning at me. It was a cold night, and I knew it was only going to get colder, but his smile was doing a decent job of warming me up right about then.
We hadn’t had a proper moment alone together since Albury Castle and Penelope Fittes’s breakfast drop-in session. George had dived head first into the research and sometimes provided thrice-hourly updates. Holly, a newfound source of comfort and conversation, hung around me a lot more nowadays (which I liked), and, with this strange new weariness, I’d been tending to turn in early after jobs. It was nice to just sit like this. If you could ignore the malignant presence, the vertigo, the fact we were both probably locked out until sunrise, it was really quite pleasant.
Then I noticed the mark on the side of his neck.
“How did you get that?” I asked softly.
“This?” He tipped his chin self-consciously. “Oh. Erm. I’m still fairly new to shaving and I’m not the best with a razor–”
I shook my head. “No. This one.” Ignoring the clumsy red knick just below his jaw, I touched my fingertip to the raised white scar.
Lockwood’s eyes widened. He clapped his hand around the column of his throat and for a moment I thought I’d breached some invisible line.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, flooded with regret. “I know it’s none of my business. I just saw it and…”
He gave a short, humourless laugh. “No, it’s fine. I… I suppose it does look a little dramatic.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
It had never been a good idea to ask Lockwood direct personal questions when I’d lived at Portland Row previously. It was something you found out quickly. But things had shifted between us since our shared experience in the land of the dead, I was sure of it... What exactly they had shifted to I wasn’t so certain. There were moments, between jobs and after meals, when I’d caught him looking at me with a sort of… curiosity? We were both making sense of what we’d been through beyond the Rotwell circle and that was bound to be playing on his mind. How could we not see each other differently after that…? All the same, I held my nerve and I waited. Looking out over the snuff lights he was quiet for a long moment before, eventually, starting to speak.
“It was just after New Year,” he said. “We’d worked maybe sixteen or so nights in a row and everyone was exhausted. Holly told me she thought I was accepting too many clients. I said the agency was down to three people again and we needed to pick up the slack.”
I stared determinedly at a burn mark on the hem of my skirt. My heart was beating very fast.
“Anyway,” he continued. “One night she refused to come on an assignment. George didn’t. I knew he was thinking the same thing as her by that point but maybe he was just too tired for another row.
“The job was on Whitehall, at Banqueting House. Charles the First had been executed on a scaffold just outside the first floor windows so there was a chance it was a royal ghost.” He glanced at me, the smallest of smiles tugging at his lips. “A royal ghost, Luce. How could I think about turning that down? So we went along early enough and set up circles at either end of the hall.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been there; it’s a bit of an out-of-the-way tourist attraction for adults who want to look at the Rubens on the ceiling. A big open space with beanbags strewn around so you can just lie there and look at the roof. So there I was, slumped inside an iron circle, staring up at these gaudy old paintings waiting for something to happen.”
Dread prickled along my spine. It was something drilled into you when you first started training as an agent: never – never ever – lie down when on stakeout for a Visitor. I could picture him in my mind's eye in that vast empty hall, staring blankly upwards into the dark.
“Holly had been right, of course. Every word.” He sighed deeply. “I fell asleep. Poor George was as beaten as I was and must have nodded off, too, because the next thing I knew my rapier was sliding from my kit belt.”
I stared at him. My breath had caught in my throat. I don’t think I could have spoken even if I’d wanted to.
“I saw the blade hanging over me and at first I thought I was dreaming. Then I realised I was lying outside the chains. My legs were still propped on that stupid bean bag but my chest and waist had rolled right off… The sword came swinging down and I screamed. That woke George up well enough, but by then it was too late.”
I flinched as if the steel had bitten deep into my own skin. It was a nightmarish image: Lockwood, prone, defenceless, in the exact sort of psychic danger I’d been trying to prevent by leaving the agency. It was horrifying, unthinkable.
“It was idiotic,” he said dully. “There was a lot of blood. Neither of us had any clue if it was too much. I was in no state to help fight off the Visitor – who was quite obviously the headsman and not the dear departed Charles – so there was George, standing over me, slashing at the apparition over and over, trying his best not to slip... I’d never seen him so angry. He half carried, half dragged me to a night cab which took us straight across the bridge to St Thomas’s, and once the doctors had finished stitching me up he gave me the dressing down of a lifetime.”
Wind rustled through the foliage in the planters and made the flames of the snuff lights dance.
“I don’t blame him,” I said numbly. “Lockwood… It could have killed you.”
He nodded. “Would have. If George hadn’t been there. My head could well have been sharing jar space with our friend over there.”
My stomach swooped and I gripped hard to the sleeve of his coat. “Don’t joke about that. I don’t ever want to think of that.”
“Neither do I. Besides, I don’t reckon it would fit. This jar is for petite noggins only, not overgrown zeppelins like his one.”
Lockwood, thankfully deaf to this latest comment, inhaled deeply.
“It was a while ago now,” he said, and his boots scuffed against the patio stone. “I stopped taking on so many jobs, and we never worked when I knew we were too tired to manage.”
I wasn’t so sure about this. Judging by the size and colour of George’s eye bags at Solomon Guppy’s house, the exaggerated looseness at his waistband, I thought that Lockwood’s definition of ‘too tired’ might still have been a bit different from his deputy’s.
“You’re back to four now,” I said, my voice sounding far calmer than I felt. “Five if Kipps is happy to keep freelancing. There’s no need for Lockwood & Co. to do any job we’re not prepared for again.”
“Including this one? When all you’ve achieved is locking yourselves out on a haunted roof?”
“Thanks, Lucy. It’s… it’s been a hard few months without you. You can’t know how glad I am that you’re back. That you’re home.”
We looked at one another.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” groaned the skull. “If this is how my evening’s going to go, then take me to the furnaces. I’m ready.”
“Could you do me a favour?” I asked quietly.
He gazed boldly back. “Anything.”
“That sticky out bit on top of the jar? Could you just… flip it shut? Yep… Yep, exactly like that.”
The spirit released a last-ditch string of verbal effluent as the flange levered closed. The image of Lockwood’s hollow-eyed face suddenly superimposed itself upon the jar and my heart clenched painfully. What if the Visitor had got hold of something heavier than Lockwood’s foil? What if his scream hadn’t woken George up? Would things have been different had I been there, beside him in that hall?
“I’m glad I’m back, too,” I whispered. “There wasn’t a day went by when I didn’t–”
“The figure’s getting clearer,” interjected Lockwood in that faraway voice that told me he was using his Talent. His slim face was turned towards the distant pergola. “His death loop must be coming to an end.”
“Yes,” I said bracingly, reminding myself that I was at a live haunting and Lockwood’s scar was, in fact, neat and healed. “I think there’s a bit of Creeping Fear starting up now I’m thinking about it…” I forced myself to look at him. “I could always try Listening again? Now I’m in an iron circle, the spirit shouldn’t be able to influence me.”
“Alright,” he said, turning back and eyeing me, “but I think we should still take precautions… Take my hand and I’ll hold on to you. Just in case.”
“Right. OK. Good thinking.”
We struggled to our feet and, after a bit of fumbling, managed to lace our fingers together. It was a professional sort of hand hold, strictly business; Lockwood flattened his palm against mine and his grip was steady as an anchor. His left hand held tight to his sword. Was it the same sword he’d had with him that night in Banqueting House? Would he have kept it, after all the damage it had done? Knowing him, yes. It wasn’t as if the rapier was to blame for what had happened.
Throwing aside any other thoughts for the moment, I closed my eyes for a second time, probing outwards. The party was in full swing now. The polite titters had been replaced by full-throated guffaws. Someone was shouting for refills and I knew by the goose flesh rising on my arms that the sun had disappeared. That pleasant musk of cologne and summer flowers was soured by sweat and booze on unbrushed breaths. If things got much more animated we weren’t even going to make it to the cake cutting. And where the hell was Lionel? Wasn’t he meant to have started the toasts already–?
My arm jerked. “Lucy!” shouted Lockwood. “Lucy, stop!”
I cried out, eyes flying open, to find myself wobbling on one leg, my boot about to take a large step outside the iron chain. I reared back in shock and Lockwood gripped me about my shoulders.
“You’re alright. I’ve got you,” he told me, steadying me before I could trample any of the kit bags. “But what were you Listening to? The second you started using your Talent the ghost just flared out at–” He cut off. His expression stilled. “The other one’s here. It’s just come through.”
We looked out across the garden. A second shape was moving along the runway of plastic grass towards the wooden pergola. It was wearing an old fashioned business suit, narrow-waisted and expensive-looking, one hand dipped casually inside a trouser pocket. Pausing beside a long-rusted patio heater, it plucked a ghostly glass of something sparkling from a tray floating in midair and took a shallow sip. Its head tipped back and roared with laughter; the undead mouth stretched wide and deep, as seemingly bottomless as the stairwell locked safely away behind us.
“I’m going after it,” breathed Lockwood, narrowing his eyes at the Spectre. His hands had dropped from my shoulders and immediately I missed their heat. I gripped tight to my rapier handle instead.
“Alright,” I said, finding my voice. “I’ll come with you.”
“Only if you’re ready, Luce? You still look a little shaken. If you need some time inside the chains to recover–”
“I don’t.” My head felt fuzzy, and a thin grey dishwater of nausea was swilling around my belly, but like hell was I letting him get more than a few metres away from me. Not after everything he’d said. “If you take one apparition, I can take the other. They’re going to converge anyway, according to the skull. We can do a pincer move and hit it with bombs from either side.”
He grinned. “Excellent plan. We can walk along the two plant beds to get some height on them, too.”
“More height. Excellent.”
“What’s another few feet at this altitude?”
“You’re taller than me, you’re used to it.”
“I’m sure we can find you some thicker-soled shoes if it’s a problem, Luce.” His dark eyes glittered. “We can ask Kipps where he got his from.”
“Not sure I’d be able to pull off those pointy toes.”
“I’ve always assumed they’re special editions. We might not be able to get hold of them at this time of year.”
His patter was doing its job in calming me down (slightly). That and I’d fetched a magnesium flare out of a pouch on my belt and was finding its weight reassuring: there was nothing like a weapon in the hand for making one feel better. Lockwood was on the very edge of the chain now; I could sense his energy vibrating within him like a greyhound straining for release from a racing trap. He’d pushed one side of his coat back exposing a belt bristling with arms.
“Better bring our other team member back off the bench,” he murmured, dipping down and flicking the lever on the top of the skull’s jar.
A horrid babble burst immediately through the mesh. “—this absolute bell-end?! At least I had the good sense not to get my head sawn off by my own bloody sword! The Virgin Mary herself couldn’t have wormed that story out of me, and you let him touch my jar? I’ll need a bleaching when we get in. A full cavity scrub. And do you know what it takes to make me feel dirty, Lucy? After spending seventy years in a sewer? In Lambeth?”
“Any vital insights?” asked Lockwood.
I gave him a watery smile. “Erm. Nothing much yet.”
He shrugged, eyes already refocused on their target. “Worth a try. You take left, I’ll take right.”
“Understood.”
And we moved forward as one.
The instant I stepped free of the chains a psychic hubbub crowded around me as if someone had shoved me inside a jam-packed room. I felt the press of invisible bodies and the shadows of remembered heat; it was overwhelming, disorientating, but it was also part and parcel of having my Talent and I was too much of a professional to let it stymie me for long. Lockwood had already pushed himself up onto the right-hand planter and was zipping through the undergrowth like a soldier advancing through a foreign jungle. I scrambled over its sister and did my best to weave around the triffid-like bushes, hopping from foot to foot to avoid hooking my ankle on a root. Ahead, the Spectre was still busy socialising. Lockwood was almost upon it. He brought his arm up and slashed his rapier towards the back of its head. The Spectre turned. For a single, splintered instant I saw them look at one another, eye to eye, Lockwood high above but descending fast: an avenging angel in rubber-soled size tens. The ghost released an earth-shattering shriek.
Without thinking, my hand snatched back. I launched a flare towards its wailing gob. The canister smashed at the base of the black form standing beneath the pergola and green flames erupted into life. Lockwood gave a cry. He bunched his arms over his face, flying between the two spirits in a whirl of emerald sparks, and landed, hard, rolling over the plastic turf before springing back to his feet.
“What were you doing?” he yelled at me. “I was mid manoeuvre!”
“You didn’t hear the noise it was making!” I sent two salt bombs the way of my flare and heard a satisfying screech of phantasmic displeasure. “It was coming for you, Lockwood! It was going to attack!”
“They’re always coming for me!” he countered, whipping a short length of silver chain from his kit belt. The ghost’s body swivelled. Its fingers extended towards him like spectral tiger's claws. “That’s why I was attacking first!”
He whirled the chain about his head and bisected the Spectre at the midriff as neatly as if he’d been using cheese wire. The apparition spasmed, strings of other-light spearing outwards from its severed belly and lighting the rooftop bright as day. For an instant I saw the garden as it was meant to be seen: a sunlit oasis utterly separate from the towering dreadnought of glass and steel beneath us.
“Always such an inspiration to see you two in action,” commented a droll voice from the iron circle. “You’re so simpatico. A picture of harmony.”
I raced forwards. My sword hand shot back and I lashed my rapier towards the Spectre’s neck. It stumbled, trying to dance out of the way of the blade, but the edge caught it about the ears in a hot hiss of burning ectoplasm. Behind it, the anonymous statue of shadow was stirring. Momentum drove me towards it. I swung my elbow back again, ready for the attack. Its head lurched up.
Lockwood got there first. From the glutinous, smacking sort of noise I knew his sword had found its mark. He darted backwards and I saw his rapier quivering, its blade wedged deep between where the creature’s shoulder blades should sit. Black bouts of ectoplasm flooded over the rapier’s handle and Lockwood was forced to wrench his fingers away or risk a very syrupy ghost-touching.
“Ah,” he said, beating a steady retreat towards the clouded glass balcony. “That’s never happened before.”
“I was going to try a ward knot,” I told him angrily. “You should have stayed over there and let me handle it.”
“Like you were letting me handle the Spectre?”
We caught each other’s eyes.
“I didn’t mean to stop you, Lockwood, I was trying to help.”
“As was I.”
He wrapped his silver chain slowly around one fist. The two ghosts beneath the pergola were lurching towards each other like spectral zombies.
“Maybe we’re both feeling a little… protective… at the moment,” he suggested. “We’re so busy watching each other’s backs that we’re getting in each other’s way.”
I snorted, frustrated. “Then you need to be more careful.”
“Me more careful? How can you think that I—? Watch out!”
His arm hooked around my stomach and threw me bodily to the side. I landed hard on my back on the plastic turf, winded. The dark rope of ectoplasm that had been about to smack into both of us whirled harmlessly overhead.
“This isn’t about me being more careful,” he insisted, his arms steel columns bracketing either side of my head. “I wasn’t the one getting moved about by a ghost earlier—”
I launched my knee into the side of his hip, tipping him off of me. The Spectre screamed in frustration as yet another branch of ectoplasm hurled uselessly over us, coming within inches of Lockwood’s shoulder.
“I really don’t think you’re in any position to lecture me,” I gasped, both of us on our sides now, face to face. “You told me a ghost nearly took your head off three months ago—”
“Exactly! Three months ago. And George put me right on that one, Lucy, believe me. You weren’t there.”
And wasn’t that exactly it? But something sharp and twisting made me bite back my words. That and the fact I’d looked past his ear and spied the next danger threatening to strip our flesh from our bones and send us hurtling to the Other Side mid-argument. With one hand I shoved his head down and with the other I threw a magnesium flare. The canister collided with its target in an explosion of burning stars. The black, plasmic veins which had been creeping ever closer towards us across the artificial lawn retracted hurriedly into their owner, keening like neglected puppies.
Lockwood rolled onto his elbows. “That was a near miss,” he said soberly as acrid smoke blustered around our bodies. He blew his fringe out of his eyes and gave me a rueful smile. “Didn’t I say something once about you keeping me safe?”
“How about,” I grunted, struggling onto my front, my heart thudding uncomfortably hard, “we both concentrate a little harder on staying alive. Deal?”
“Deal.” He squinted towards the two ghosts. “Where’s its Source, then? That’s still our main problem.”
I scowled towards the overgrown foliage. “Here’s hoping it’s not a palm tree.”
“Don’t say that, Luce. That would be extremely tragic.”
“For the ghost or for us?”
“A bit of both I think.”
“Why would it be a tree? Please, for the love of God, apply some lateral thinking.”
“It’s not a tree. The skull’s happy to tell me that much.”
“Well, is he happy to tell you anything else?”
“That haircut makes him look like a loose-minded halfwit. In my day he’d have been arrested and carted off to Bedlam.”
“Nope. That’s it for now.”
Lockwood pushed up onto his feet. I let him heave me skywards. The gale from the drop now only metres away from us jiggled at my coat. My bones felt weary. I brushed a patch of soot from my sleeve and even that small movement made my muscles ache dully. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have given at that moment to already be back at Portland Row with a fresh mug of tea in hand, maybe a few bourbons, and Lockwood sitting opposite me with that curious look in his eye…
“Luce?”
I glanced quickly away. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I was going to say,” said Lockwood archly, “that our targets seem to be moving towards the finale. Maybe we can try bamboozling them with a few more bomb attacks and the little one will spit out my sword. I feel I’m a lot more useful with a rapier in my hand.”
He was correct, of course. Rather than moving together, the Spectre was advancing on the smaller, slope-shouldered ghost and backing it towards a secluded corner of the garden which was strung with ragged orange caution tape. Sun-bleached and completely broken in places, the tape was doing a poor job of cordoning off a jagged section of extended paving, a sort of floating catwalk, where the glass balcony beyond was irreparably smashed.
“God,” I breathed, my head spinning just at the sight of it. “You don’t think–?”
“What else?” he said grimly. He was standing so close his arm brushed mine. “Nithercott’s Spectre is going over that edge. We just need to pay attention in case it drops anything, shows any indication of a Source.”
I swallowed. If the Source was something near that break in the glass then Lockwood would be fetching it alone. I don’t think I could have forced my legs to take a single step towards it.
“I’ve got three flares left,” I told him, deciding to focus on some certainties. “Five salt bombs, a canister of iron filings, and two bottles of lavender water.”
He quickly checked the weaponry stacked about his hips. “I’ve got about the same. I say we use salt bombs first, and maybe I could snatch my sword. We don’t want it going over the side and skewering some poor unsuspecting civilian out on an evening stroll. Can you imagine Barnes’ face?”
“I can’t. But who goes on evening strolls nowadays? If a sword falls on your head I think that’s your lookout.”
The two Visitors had reached the cordon and, predictably, wafted straight through. Lockwood’s lost rapier snagged briefly on a bit of flapping tape. There was a thrumming in the air that was setting my teeth on edge: a psychic tension, a sort of paranormal drum roll. The out-of-bounds area beyond the warning tape was shimmering in and out of focus as my Sight flickered between what it was and what it once had been.
“What’s all this lollygagging?” demanded the skull, still safely encircled by my iron chain. I’d half forgotten he was even there. “Are you waiting for the green man or something? If you don’t get going soon, the death loop will start all over again. He’ll have his flip chart out before you can say corporate manslaughter.”
As if he had heard the warning, Lockwood took a step towards where one ghost was backing ever closer to that ruined edge. I instinctively reached for his coat to yank him back but clenched my fingers in thin air. I really needed to get a grip on myself. He was an agent, same as I was. We were trained experts when it came to staring death unflinchingly in the face and defeating it every time.
“I’m going to get nearer,” said Lockwood, not looking at me. “You stay here and cover my back, Luce. On my signal, we throw the first bomb. OK?”
Well, it wasn’t ideal, but I nodded all the same. We were more than sufficiently armed. It was a perfectly sensible strategy for him to start forwards and for me to provide protective bombardments from my position near the plastic turf. Besides, Lockwood was carrying just as many weapons as I was. And even without a sword he was lethal. It wasn’t like this was any old operative, either; this was Anthony John Lockwood, the bane of many a night terror, and he was about to walk off a bloody roof–
“Stop!” I bellowed. “The tape!”
He faltered, his silver chain clasped in hand, just short of the orange line. “Righto,” he said, dark eyes widening. “It’s alright. I see it.”
He saw it then, but I knew his superior Sight had been showing him only what the catwalk used to look like: the crown jewel of the roof garden, extending out over the London night like the prow of some fantastic ship. I cursed viciously under my breath. Why couldn’t our client have had a nice, deep basement he wanted clearing? We’d have had a fine time destroying undead evil in a basement.
All around me the party was building to a tumult. “We should just throw the bombs now!” I called, my words almost lost amongst the wind and the gathering ghostly crowd. “The skull’s saying we could lose the Spectre if we stall any longer.”
“Hold fast,” he ordered. “We still haven’t got a Source, remember?”
I grinded my thumb along the edges of the salt bomb and felt the grains shifting inside their thin cotton skin. The Spectre was almost at the lip of the catwalk now. Its shadowy target, still impaled on Lockwood’s rapier, was floating within arm’s reach of it. Lockwood himself was watching both spirits intently. One toe of his boot crept beneath the cordon tape. My blood was suddenly pounding in my ears.
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered.
“What else is he going to do?” drawled the skull in a bored voice. “Is it risky? Semi-suicidal even? Opportunities like this don’t come along every night, Lucy. This is like Christmas for him.”
Fear gnashed its jaws inside me like a rabid mutt. “Shut up, you! Did I ask for your opinion?”
Lockwood was standing maybe ten feet away. I could cross that distance in just a few strides. I could tackle his bony backside to the concrete should anything unexpected happen.
The Spectre stumbled against a hazy glass barrier at the end of the catwalk and something faint and rectangular dropped to the shattered tiles. It merged with something there already. Something important. Lockwood glanced back at me. His eyes were dancing. I could read in them the usual grim determination, that familiar flint-spark of excitement and, was that… an apology?
“I need to get closer, Luce,” he said, one hand outstretched behind him, thin fingers ready to cast the cordon tape aside. “The Source is right there, at the end of the walkway. I can be under and back in five seconds.”
The skull sighed. “Quelle surprise.”
I spoke through gritted teeth. “But there’s a reason that part of the walkway is covered in warnings that say DO NOT CROSS, Lockwood. You can see the floor is all broken up, not to mention the barrier being gone. George told us this building isn’t safe.”
His shoulders gave a sort of dismissive half-shrug which didn’t serve to calm me. “They would have demolished it if it was completely unusable.” He smiled at me in a way I honestly believe was meant to be reassuring. “And I’ll be quick, Luce. Ten seconds. Probably less.”
For a moment we looked at one another. He was pulling that face when he wanted the last heel of the bread to make toast with; when he’d drunk all the tea from his thermos too early and wanted to cadge some of mine; when, all too often, he’d forgotten his wallet in his other trousers and needed me to pay for our night cab home. His head cocked to one side. I raised my eyebrow. His index finger tipped the cordon tape one inch higher. My eyes rolled to the heavens, I made a noise like a Shrieking Spirit with a particularly stubborn head cold, and, lightning fast, he ducked beneath the orange cordon and raced out onto the broken walkway beyond.
“Oh ho! Here we go!” cackled the skull and I could sense his ichor bubbling with pleasure. “Lockwood & Co. choose lunacy once again! I do hope you’ve both brought parachutes...”
I didn’t bother answering. I was too busy haring towards that self-centred, infuriating, no-good string of tape; I released my salt bomb mid-sprint along with a stream of curses that would have made an East End dockworker blush. Just ahead of Lockwood, the shadowy spirit had grasped the Spectre by its arms. It must have had one heck of a grip because Lionel Nithercott’s body was frozen in a rictus of terror. My bomb landed just short of the ghostly grapple and blasted both spirits apart, a plume of white smoke bursting across the catwalk between them. Lockwood skidded inside it, bisecting the cloud into two billowing curtains. Glass shards scattered beneath his boots and his left arm wrenched back. He fired a second bomb towards the Spectre and the ectoplasm caught neatly beneath Nithercott’s chin, setting his face spinning and fizzing like a Catherine wheel. I saw a flash of grinning teeth, an encouraging flick of silver. Then the shadow was lunging for him–
I was still too far to intervene. “Watch out!”
Lockwood ducked. I barrelled through the cordon with my rapier outstretched. The shadow spirit was coming round for another assault, forcing Lockwood towards the shattered ruin of the railing. Behind that gap lay only cold night air and, beneath that, the pavement of Fenchurch Street forty storeys below. I sliced desperate, complex patterns in the air with the tip of my blade and the shadow turned its malignant attention towards me. Behind it, I saw Lockwood’s chain-wrapped hand dip towards the walkway floor: he was clutching a silver seal. If he could only get to the Source…
Nithercott’s Spectre was suddenly goggling at me. It had recovered from the blast of Lockwood’s salt bomb and was rising from the left-hand side of the catwalk, face upside down, spindly fingers outstretched. I took a faltering step backwards and chunks of broken glass crunched beneath my soles.
“Lockwood…”
“Almost have it, Luce!” His gaze was darting about the catwalk floor, his hair an untidy black flurry getting in his way. “I definitely saw it drop here. It’s got to be close!”
Lionel Nithercott had been handsome in life, with a delicate, fluted mouth and well-kempt, lustrous hair – I could tell all that even from the way his face was positioned right then and it was a shame to have to cut a sword through it. Needs must. I popped a flare from my belt and jabbed at the Spectre’s nose with my rapier.
“Just a few more seconds,” promised Lockwood as I fought determinedly on. He was still focused on the walkway, frantically digging through lumps of debris. “Hold on, Luce!”
Cold air burned my throat. The shadow spirit was creeping nearer towards my flank but my sword was too extended, already busy keeping the Spectre at bay. My other hand fumbled the magnesium flare. It dropped to the catwalk and rolled away from me, under the remains of the glass barrier, and over the drop. Where the spirit’s face should have been was only an oval of inky blackness. If I wasn’t careful it was going to touch me. I reared back with a cry–
“Lockwood!”
I saw his head turn. My back was to what was left of the barrier now and I could feel the terrible space behind me like a giant mouth sucking in a breath, urging me to fall back, to be swallowed whole. I slashed my rapier left and right. The slope-shouldered ghost was almost upon me–
“Lockwood!”
There was a flash of white light, the shadow spirit’s head dipped towards mine, and then… disintegrated. A silver fist was shining in its place. Ectoplasm burned bright around the edges of the newly-made hole like a magnesium halo. I stared at it, dumbstruck, trying to make sense of this metallurgical intervention. Then I saw the familiar, fierce-eyed glare over the ghost’s shoulder and as Lockwood’s chain and silver seal-wrapped hand retracted, my sword arm jolted into life, cutting a fresh ward knot, regaining control.
"Did he just... punch a ghost?" demanded the skull, sounding almost affronted. "Did I just see that right?"
Behind the two Visitors Lockwood had fallen to the walkway. He had landed awkwardly, his bare hand outstretched, the other still clutching that silver seal. His thin face was hidden by his dark slash of fringe. I continued to lash my rapier to and fro and both Spectre and shadow spirit were stuck, trapped by my whirling blade.
“Lockwood!” I screamed. “Are you alright? Did it touch you?”
He didn’t answer, but both ghosts were too strong for me to take my eyes off either one of them for long. It was taking everything I had just to keep up the barrage of sword-work. I daren’t throw another flare. Not now. Not with Lockwood on the ground and so close and potentially gravely injured… I gave a roar and swiped my rapier so hard at the shadow it swerved out over the edge of the building. My heart was in my throat. I saw that Lockwood had struggled up onto his knees. Glass shards must have been cutting into the cloth of his trousers but he was crawling, reaching for something, something that had, at last, been uncovered. The silver seal flashed forwards…
Nithercott’s Spectre tore its claws towards me and I let my rapier fall as, right on cue, his spirit winked out of existence. In the tail of my eye I saw the slope-shouldered ghost flicker and fail, Lockwood’s rapier falling away and down towards Fenchurch Street, soft as a sigh. My hair blew back against my cheeks. For a moment all was silent. London still loomed ahead of me, a speckled hellscape of far too many tiny lights, but it was safe from at least two extinguished Visitors tonight. Up ahead another dark figure moved: Lockwood, slumped sideways, right at the limit of the catwalk. Lockwood. Lockwood.
“Well done, Luce,” he said hoarsely, smiling wanly at me as I stumbled towards him. “Bit tight there at the end, but that’s another successful entry for the casebook.” I dropped to my knees, ignoring the painful shards snagging on my leggings. “Careful,” he complained. “There’s glass down here. Hey! What are you–?” I’d snatched up his left hand and was unwrapping the silver chain from around it as fast as my enfeebled muscles would allow. He tried to pull his arm back but I held fast. “Luce–” Ignoring his protests, I threw away the silver links, I twisting his palm this way and that, bending his fingers so I could inspect every pale inch of them. They were calloused and slightly bloodied but there was no blue tinge about them. I shoved his coat cuff down, exposing his wrist–
“Lucy.” His right hand clasped mine. “Lucy. It’s alright. I’m alright. Nothing touched me. I promise. Luce. Stop.”
My inspection stilled. I was still holding tight to him. His dark eyes were focused on mine, heavy and imploring. I could barely keep mine open. A wave of exhaustion washed over me and I tipped my head so it was resting against the ridge of his knuckles.
“What were you thinking?” I asked hoarsely.
“Well.” I heard him give a low chuckle. “I’ve always wanted to have a defensive move named after me in the Fittes Manual. Maybe this could be my submission for next year's edition?”
I looked up at him. “I can’t believe you would–”
“Defend you? Like you’ve done for me countless times? Like we’ve done for each other countless times? Come off it, Luce.” He snorted and I felt his hand grip mine that little bit tighter. “I took an educated risk. My hand was wrapped in so much silver I could have punched through the Putney Road Phantom… And anyway, what choice did I have, really? When you were so close to that edge? There was no choice at all.”
I held his gaze, my face uncertain on what emotion to settle on. Had what he said made sense? Sure. Silver worked against ghosts, every child out of nappies knew that. And in choosing to come back to Lockwood & Co. I’d decided to accept the perilous duty of being in a team and having to protect your teammates’ backs. Hadn’t that been what I’d missed the most while I’d been a freelancer? Having colleagues who cared? And there was no more scouring the columns of the Times and Ghost Hunter Weekly to check up on him… and George and Holly. I could see they were OK, sitting beside me still smiling, albeit with a little less wattage than an hour before.
Behind his head London still shone brightly and I felt the urge for any further conversation slam shut like a steel trap. “Can we just get off the roof now?” I gabbled.
There was an instant of quiet, then the sounds of crunching glass and the rustle of Lockwood’s coat. “Yes,” he said gently. “I suppose we can. Come on. We’ve got forty storeys to get down and also my sword to find when we get there.”
“If it hasn’t stabbed and killed a passerby,” I reminded him shakily as he pulled me upwards, and I heard him laugh: a warm sound, as sweet and fortifying as honeyed tea.
We still had a way to go before we’d be home (and the skull complained the entire way, especially when Lockwood volunteered to take the ghost jar in his own bag seeing as I’d hefted it up to the roof – “God. Has he got heavier, Luce? What were you feeding him in Tooting?” versus “This is untenable. The man’s got no bum, Lucy. Zero padding. I’m going to eject my plasm.”) but I knew, sure as we would face another ghost soon enough, and no doubt have to risk ourselves for each other once again, willingly, inevitably, that without one another we would be taking a greater risk still. That together, we were stronger. And with Anthony J Lockwood by my side I could walk on a thousand rooftops and survive.