“Thanks,” I said. “Look, do you want to sit down? No—! Not there!” Lockwood had made a move toward the hideous tangle of my bed. “There’s this chair here….No, wait!” I’d spotted the pink towel draped over the chair back, still damp from this morning’s shower. “Let me move that for you.”
I whipped it away, revealing a snake pit of tangled gray undergarments I’d tossed there a few days before.
Oh, God.
Lockwood didn’t seem to register my squeal of discomfort. He was looking out the window. “I’m actually quite happy to stand. So…this is Tooting, is it? It’s not an area I know well, but it’s a pretty nice view you’ve got here….”
I threw some clothes under the bed, nudged a crumb-strewn plate under the chair. “Which part? The industrial boiler company or the ironworks?” I gave a light, slightly hysterical laugh. “It’s not exactly Portland Row.”
“No. Well.” He turned back to me. We looked at each other.
“So,” I said, “do you want some tea? I could do with some.”
“That would be nice. Thanks.”
Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you. Everything pauses while you do familiar things with taps and kettles; it allows you to catch your breath and become calm. I’ve made tea on camping stoves while Specters paced beyond my protective iron chains; I’ve brewed some while watching a Revenant claw itself free of its grave. I’m not normally a shaky tea-maker, but somehow in Lockwood’s presence it took me twice as long as usual. Even tossing a tea bag into a mug was a task fraught with difficulty; I kept sending it spinning across the counter. My thoughts were racing; my body scarcely seemed my own.
He was here! Why was he here? Excitement and incredulity kept smashing together, like waves colliding at a jetty. There was so much noise going on in my mind that the first priority—making small talk—was a bit of a problem.
“How’s business with Lockwood and Co.?” I asked over my shoulder. “I mean, I see you in the papers all the time. Not that I’m looking for you, obviously. I just see stuff. But you seem to be doing okay, as far as I can gather. When I think about it. Which is rare. Do you take sugar now?”
He was staring at the clutter on my floor, blank-eyed, as if lost in thought. “It’s only been a few months, Luce. I haven’t suddenly started taking sugar in my tea….” Then he brightened, nudging the ghost-jar with the side of his shoe. “Hey, how’s our friend here doing?”
“The skull? Oh, it helps me out from time to time. Hardly talk to it, really….” To my annoyance, I noticed a stirring in the substance that filled the jar, implying a sudden awakening of the ghost. That was the last thing I wanted right now. At least the lever was closed; I wouldn’t have to listen if it chose to speak.
I bent down to get milk out of the little fridge. “Did you get someone else, then, to help you?” I asked. “Another agent?”
“I thought about it. Never got around to it, somehow.” Lockwood scratched his nose. “George wasn’t keen. So it’s just the three of us still, muddling along without you.”
Still the three of them. For some reason the idea both pleased and pained me. “And how is George?” I said.
“You know old George. The same.”
“More experiments?”
“Experiments, theories, weird notions. He’s still trying to solve the Problem. His latest hobby is buying every new invention the Rotwell Institute churns out. He tests them to see if they work as well as good old-fashioned salt and iron. They don’t, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from filling the house with all manner of ghost-detectors, divining spindles, hex-wands, and things that look like teacups that are supposed to tinkle when a ghost draws near. All claptrap, basically.”
“Sounds like George hasn’t changed at all.” I poured the milk and put the bottle cap back on. “And how’s Holly?”
“Hmm?”
“Holly.”
“Oh, good. She’s good.”
“Great.” I stirred the tea. “Can you flip the trash can open, please?”
“Of course.” He put a polished shoe on the pedal; I lobbed the tea bag in. Lockwood removed his foot and the lid clanged shut. “Little bit of teamwork there,” he said.
“Yeah. We still haven’t lost it.” I handed him his mug. “So…”
He was watching my face. “You know, I think I will sit down, if you don’t mind. Anywhere will do.”
He took the chair; I took the bed. There was a pause. Lockwood nursed his tea; he seemed unsure how to begin.
“It’s nice to see you,” I said.
“You, too, Luce.” He smiled at me. “You’re looking well, anyway; and I hear fine things about you from some of the other agencies. Sounds like you’re going great guns, doing the freelance stuff. I’m not surprised, obviously—I know all about your Talents—but I am happy for you.” He scratched behind an ear and fell silent again. It was an odd thing, seeing Lockwood so unsure of himself. I could still feel my pulse beating in my chest, so I wasn’t much better off, but at least I didn’t have to do the talking now.
As I waited, I saw a greenish light at the end of the bed and realized that the ghost in the jar had fully formed. It was staring at Lockwood with an expression of extravagant disgust and derision, while mouthing soundlessly against the glass. I couldn’t lip-read, but whatever it was saying was clearly uncomplimentary.
I scowled at it, then caught Lockwood’s eye.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just the skull. You know what it’s like.”
Lockwood set his tea down. For a moment he looked around the room. “I’m not sure this is really the place for you, Lucy.”
“Surely that’s my business.”
“Yes, yes, of course it is. And I’m not here to try to talk you out of it. I tried and failed at that months ago. You made your decision, and I respect it.”
I cleared something in my throat. “It was the right thing to do.”
“Well, we’ve been down that road.” Lockwood brushed his hair back from his eyes. “Anyway, the thing is, Luce…I’ll get straight to the point. I’m in need of your help. I’d like to hire your freelance services for a case.”
It was one of those moments when a single strand of time looped off from the rest, carrying me on it, and everything else seemed to freeze. I sat there, thinking back across that long, hard winter, to the awful day I’d left the company. To walking with Lockwood through the park as he tried to talk me out of it; to our final dreadful conversation in a café while three successive cups of tea grew cold; to how—growing angry with me at the end—he’d left me there. I recalled my last night in the house, with everyone so distant and polite; and my departure when all the others were asleep in the blue light of the dawn, dragging my duffel bag and the ghost-jar softy down the stairs. Ever since then I’d rehearsed our eventual meeting, running through different scenarios in my head. I’d imagined Lockwood asking me to rejoin the company. Asking, or begging, even—going down on bended knee. I’d thought of how I would have to refuse him, and how the warm pain of it would pierce my heart. I’d also conjured visions of meeting him unexpectedly, while out on moonlit cases, and of us having bittersweet conversations before going our separate ways. Yes, I’d imagined plenty of situations, all sorts of variables.
But never quite this one.
“Run that past me again, slowly,” I said, frowning. “You want to hire me?”
“I don’t ask it lightly. It’s just a one-off. A single case. One night’s work; two, max.”
“Lockwood,” I said, “you know my reasons for leaving….”
He shrugged; the smile lessened. “Do I? To be honest, Luce, I don’t think I’ve ever fully understood them. You were frightened of unleashing your Talents on us, was that it? Well, you seem to have them sufficiently under control now that you’re doing great things with most of the other agencies in London.” He shook his head. “Anyway, hear me out. I’m not asking you to join us again, obviously. I’d never do that. It’s just a temporary arrangement. It would be no different from you teaming up with Bunchurch, or Tendy, or whoever else you’ve been with these last few weeks. Just business, that’s all.”