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All she needs is a bit of glue and then she’s done.
Lucy presses back onto her hands and knees as she examines the Grade Four Certification she’s just mocked up. It’s sprawled out on her attic floor, looking new and shiny and every bit as prestigious and pristine as every other Grade Four certificate. At least, that’s what she assumes. She’s only gotten to glance at Norrie’s, and Paul immediately locked his away before someone could, like, steal it.
Paul might have been paranoid, but Lucy would kill to get her hands on it right now. All she’s got as a model is her Grade Three certificate. But DEPRAC has no imagination, so she figures the certificates are standard all across the board. No reason to worry, right?
Lockwood asked her to make a fake Grade Four Certification in an attempt to fool Inspector Barnes. He’s been sniffing around Lockwood and Co, and he’s highly suspicious of Lucy for some reason. Probably because she burned down a house. But that wasn’t her fault. She did it to save Lockwood, so really, it’s all his fault. Why can’t Barnes threaten to pull his records instead of hers? Surely he’s got less to lose than she does. He probably doesn’t have a Grade Four Certification, either, but he’s got money, so no one gives a fuck.
Lucy would hate him if he weren’t so…Lockwood.
She scowls at the paper unfurled across her bedroom floor. It’ll have to do. Hopefully, Barnes is so old, he’s started to lose his sight, so he won’t be able to look at this properly.
That last dab of glue does absolutely nothing except cheapen this whole experience. She feels used. Thanks, Lockwood. He clearly didn’t lie to Barnes convincingly enough.
She gets to her feet and shakes out the certification. It does look pretty, adding a touch of class to her otherwise mismatched bedroom. The pipes in her bathroom whistle, which has been slightly terrifying every time she needs to shower or wash her hands. Or, actually, do anything in her bathroom.
She should really bring that up to her landlord.
Lucy quickly finds Lockwood, tucked away in the library with a stack of society magazines lying on the side table. He looks up when she enters, his dark eyes meeting hers with a glint of expectation. As always, when she sees him, her heart threatens to leap into her throat, and her palms become a little slick and clammy.
Maybe she’s allergic to him.
Maybe it’s his cologne. She hopes not, though. It smells incredible. She’s considered asking him what scent it is, but doesn’t want to appear weird or creepy or stalkerish.
He is her boss, after all.
“I finished it!” she announces jubilantly. Her fingers are sticky with glue, her eyes are burning, and her back has quite possibly locked up, but it’s done. She presents it with a flourish to Lockwood, who reaches out with long, slim fingers.
Those fingers always cause a blush to burn brightly against her cheeks, and so she quickly turns her head. If she focuses on anything else, maybe it’ll go away.
Lockwood examines the certification with a careful eye, and despite her hard work and her confidence, she finds herself fidgeting like she’s about to be in trouble. It’s good enough, right? He’ll approve of it, right? It’s all going to be okay…right?
“This needs some work,” Lockwood declares, and Lucy’s face promptly falls.
“What do you mean, it needs some work?” she demands.
“What I just said. It’s very amateurish. A great attempt,” he adds hastily, “but you’ve clearly never forged anything.”
She snorts derisively and props her hands on her hips. “And you have?”
The smile he bestows upon her is wicked and wolfish and wily all at once, and she feels a deep throbbing between her legs that she pointedly ignores. If she doesn’t think about it, it’ll go away…she hopes.
"As a matter of fact," he replies triumphantly, "I have."
"An adult's signature for your company?" she counters promptly, and his gaze flickers. His lip curls up, and she guesses he's not impressed by her retort. That's okay. She is.
"Amazingly enough, no," he retorts. "I'm eighteen, so therefore I'm an adult."
If he were quite literally anyone else, she would sarcastically mouth those words right back. But for some reason, she still wants him to like her. To find her mature, even though she definitely is not. Not when she apparently can't even forge an official document correctly.
"Fine." She crosses her arms over her chest with an impatient huff. "Does that mean you're going to fix whatever forging mistakes I made?"
He grins again, this time genuine and almost sweet. Almost. He may have his moments, but he's definitely not a sweetheart. But then again, neither is she.
"I'll do you one better," he tells her. "I'll show you how to forge this properly."
She gapes at him, mouth open like a fish gasping for water. "Are you serious?"
"Sure, why not? Come on. All the forging equipment is down in the basement."
"All the –" She rubs her temples. "How have you not been arrested?"
As Lockwood gracefully gets to his feet, he smirks. "Barnes has tried a few times, but he's never quite managed it. It's really frustrating for him."
"You enjoy driving Barnes insane, don't you?"
He lets out a mournful sigh. "It's one of my few pleasures in life."
Somehow, she doubts that. She's seen the way female agents look at him, even the Fittes crew. He might be a nobody, but he's a gorgeous nobody. That alone will garner him interest, even if he doesn't realise it.
To be so pretty and yet so clever. Some people have all the luck.
Lucy follows Lockwood out of the library, and he leads her into the kitchen. George has the skull's jar placed on a Bunsen burner, and both Lucy and Lockwood stop in astonishment to stare.
"What?" George asks. He's got goggles strapped over his glasses, and he's wearing his flowery apron. There is something mildly deranged about the whole picture, but it's sort of like watching a trainwreck – you just can't look away.
"I didn't know we had Bunsen burners," Lockwood remarks, clearly stunned by the sight before him.
"Oh, they're mine. I got them when I worked at Fittes. Don't worry, Lockwood, I'm not going to burn down your house." He smirks for a beat. "It's not like I'm throwing flares in a confined space."
Lucy grimaces. Just what she needed: A reminder about her biggest fuck-up to date.
Lockwood rolls his eyes. "Very witty, George. I'm taking Lucy down to the basement to show her the forging equipment. It's high time she learns."
"Oh, great. Someone else who might accidentally blab to Barnes," George complains. "If we get arrested, you'll know why."
"I'm not going to go running to Barnes," Lucy snaps back. "It's because of Barnes that I even need to learn how to use forging equipment – where did you get forging equipment?" she demands of Lockwood. It has just occurred to her that this is hardly the sort of thing you can walk into Satchell's and ask for.
Lockwood shrugs noncommittally. "Ask no questions, I'll tell no lies."
She groans. "Super. I probably don't want to know, anyway."
Lockwood appears pleased by this realisation. He crosses the kitchen and wrenches open the door to the basement. "After you, Miss Carlyle," he says with a teasing grin.
She picks her way down the spiral stairs, far too aware of Lockwood just a step or two behind her. Occasionally, she catches a whiff of his cologne, and it's all she can do not to spin around halfway down to the basement and haul him against her, so she can bury her face in his neck.
That cannot be a normal response.
Another thing she shouldn't think about.
When they reach the basement, Lockwood shows her to the high-security storage room.
She eyes the door. "You're joking, right? You can't even remember to lock it."
"I did this time," he retorts, and whips out a key ring from his pocket, and she wonders what the others are for. One is definitely the house key, but that's all she recognises.
Before she can ask, however, he unlocks the door to the high-security storage room, and nudges it open.
When Lucy was shown the storage room before, Lockwood whisked her out after about three seconds. She remembers seeing some extra flares and salt bombs, but he quickly announced there was more to show her, and she trooped out after him.
Now, as he pulls on the chain to turn on the single light in here, she spots a large tote box simply labelled F on the very bottom shelf. F for forging, apparently. She points at it. "Is that the equipment?"
"Maybe I need to re-label it," he grumbles, but nevertheless tugs it out. Once he's pried the lid off, Lucy peers in. The box is stuffed to the top with papers, a generous variety of inks, stamps, and all sorts of tools that she's never set eyes on before in her life. Lockwood lays Lucy's attempt at forging an official document down on the floor. "So, the first issue is there is no watermark," he explains to her. "Every DEPRAC document will have a watermark."
"Oh." She frowns. "I didn't even think of that."
"It's easy to miss because it's small, but Barnes will definitely look for it. So we have to rectify that. Plus, the ink is wrong. DEPRAC uses a very specific kind of ink, because they're arrogant pricks who think people will try to copy their stuff."
Lucy stares at him with so much judgment, he can't possibly miss what she's silently getting at.
"That is beside the point," he insists. "I wouldn't have to copy their stuff if they weren't such arrogant pricks."
She snorts. "Whatever you say."
"Lastly, they use a certain font. You were pretty close, but it's difficult to replicate without a typewriter. Luckily, I've got one in the office."
Lucy scowls at him. "You were setting me up to fail," she accuses.
"Not setting you up. I was curious how well your forged copy would come out. And it's not bad. It just looks fake, which is normal. I figured if we had a template for it, we could go from there."
"Right…" She shakes her head. Sometimes talking to Lockwood gives her a headache.
This is one of those times.
He grabs a new sheet of paper, an ink cartridge, and a stamp. "This way."
Now she follows him to the office, feeling a bit like she's just trudging from place to place for no actual reason. The office is cluttered. There's a copy machine pushed against the wall, and filing cabinets that seem disturbingly dusty. Lockwood closes the door behind them, and Lucy glances his way. Then he points at the desk chair in the office, and she dutifully takes a seat.
He pulls a typewriter out from under the desk and sets it in front of her. From there, ink is added, and the paper is fed in. He tells her exactly what to write, how many spaces she should use, and when she needs to indent for a new paragraph. Her fingers are clumsy and awkward against the keys, and it doesn't help that he's got one hand braced on the back of the chair, and the other one resting beside the typewriter on the desk. He's crowding her in, his breath pleasantly cool against her cheek, and she can so easily inhale his cologne that it almost feels illegal. She doesn't want this moment to end, but at the same time, her heart is beating so quickly that she's worried she might just fall over from too much excitement.
Anthony Lockwood's mere presence should not be this exciting, but somehow he manages it.
Once she's finished with the draft, he tugs the paper out of the ribbon. "Move the typewriter to the side for me?" he asks, and she shoves it across the desk. It's heavier than she expects, and the desk wobbles beneath her efforts.
"Does DEPRAC still use typewriters?" she inquires curiously.
"Typewriters are more manual than computers," Lockwood tells her. "You know how ghosts can short out electronics with their presence?"
"Yeah."
"DEPRAC doesn't believe in taking chances, so they just use typewriters. Personally, I think it's because their inspectors are all too old to try to use new-fangled technology, but whatever. It makes copying their documents that much easier."
"How do you know all this?" She's wide-eyed again, just as she was during her tour of the house when she caught a glimpse of his fencing awards. He seems impossibly mysterious and so smart. So clever. So mature. Everything she's not.
He smiles. "It's a long story. I'll tell you about it sometime."
"Okay," she agrees at once, because the promise of a long story only serves to intensify her curiosity. It's nearly overwhelming right now, but she's happy to wait. When he does explain it to her, she'll undoubtedly savour every moment.
She watches as he smooths the paper out on the desk in front of her. He's even closer now; her elbow keeps bumping his hip, and she keeps glancing back at him. Lockwood doesn't seem to mind, though. If anything, he presses in even tighter.
"This is where the watermark is going to go," he murmurs, and his lips nearly graze her ear. She feels as though she's about to shoot out of her skin, and goosebumps erupt all up and down her arms. Thank goodness she's wearing a jumper. "You're going to use the stamp for that. Lightly, though. Too much pressure and the ink will seep through the paper."
Lucy carefully applies the stamp in question. Mild pressure, and she pulls it back. "How's that?"
Lockwood examines it before grabbing the paper and holding it up to the light. "It's perfect. Think you can forge your old boss's signature?"
"I can give it a shot." She feels giddy with excitement. They're basically partners-in-crime, now. Forging DEPRAC documents. Faking an old boss's signature. Even using an ancient typewriter to make sure it looks just right. And Lockwood – Lockwood so close to her, she can nearly feel every corded muscle, every jut of bone. He's so warm that she just wants to lean into him forever, and then mentally slaps herself. That's not possible. God, why does she have to have a crush on her boss? What did she even do to deserve that?
Lockwood passes her a pen and the forged document, and she does her best to bring to mind Jacobs' old signature. It was mostly a mess of scribbles, so that's what she emulates. When she drops the pen, it looks just like something Jacobs signed.
"What do you think?" she asks him.
"I think it'll fool Barnes." He pats her shoulder, and there's a little bit of uncertainty in the movement, as though he's not sure if he should do this or not. She exhales slightly; it's almost a relief that he's not entirely positive about what he's doing, either. What they're doing. If they're even doing anything.
It's probably just Lucy reading too hard into everything, but she knows she's going to remember that shoulder pat. It's not as good as kissing him, but it's something.
It's better than nothing, anyway.
"Well, if you ever need to forge another document, I'm happy to help," she volunteers, and he breaks into a wide smile. Right now, he doesn't look like her mysterious boss with the past he won't talk about. Instead, he strikes her as an eighteen-year-old boy who's grinning at a girl he maybe-possibly-hopefully thinks is pretty.
"I've got a list," he informs her. "We'll get on that first thing tomorrow. Anyway, I'm going to run this through our copy machine. No sense in wasting a perfectly good forged document."
She giggles at that, and she feels very light-headed as she stands up. Maybe, just maybe, Barnes will be fooled, and she won't have to worry about her future with Lockwood and Co.
For now, it's enough. And she thinks that if she really tries, she might even be truly happy here.