I stumbled at last into the foyer. A row of neat receptionists, each one more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than the next, regarded me with identical bland smiles.
I closed my mouth, adjusted my skirt, pushed back my hair, and dabbed ineffectually at a sweaty temple with a sleeve. “Good morning. I’m—”
The nearest receptionist spoke. “Good morning, Ms. Carlyle. If you would like to go through, your associates are already waiting in the main hall. Ms. Fittes will meet you presently.”
I took a deep breath. “Thank you. I know the way.”
Across the foyer I went, past the iron bust of the skull’s old confidante, Marissa Fittes. Past the oak doors, the gilded paintings, my boots tapping on cold marble. Then into the conference hall, where tall windows looked out over the snarled traffic of the Strand, and daylight glinted on the glass pillars of the Fittes collection. There they were, safe behind silver-glass: nine legendary psychic objects from the first days of the agency. The tiny Frank Street coffin; Gödel’s metal arm; the bones of Long Hugh Hennratty; the Clapham Butcher Boy’s terrible serrated knife….At night, trapped ghosts moved colorfully within the pillars; now everything was monochrome and still.
Three people stood beside the column dedicated to the Cumberland Place haunting, studying the bloody nightgown it contained. And now my heart really began to hammer, and my nerves started to fail me. I felt far worse than I had during the pursuit of Emma Marchment’s ghost two nights before.
Whatever dangerous assignment Penelope Fittes was proposing, this was the part I dreaded. My first meeting with my ex-colleagues: Lockwood, George, and Holly Munro.
I confected what I hoped was a relaxed and confident smile. I walked toward them as they turned.
Lockwood, of course, I’d seen already. But this was different. The previous day, he’d been a guest in my house, asking for my help; he’d been at least as uncomfortable as me. Now I was the outsider, and he was back in his accustomed position as leader of the company. The awkwardness was suddenly all on my side. Still, he looked relaxed as I approached; and I was grateful for it. He gave me a welcoming grin. “And here she is! Lucy—it’s good to see you.”
He wore his slim, dark suit; his hair was swept back and, I thought, subtly gelled. He was making more of an effort than usual. I hadn’t seen that attention to detail before.
For me? No. Penelope Fittes was far more likely.
“Hi, Lockwood,” I said. With that, I turned to George.
Four months had passed since I’d set eyes on him: George Cubbins, Lockwood’s second in command—amateur scientist, researcher extraordinaire, and committed casual dresser. That morning, like most mornings that I remembered, he was doing things with a stained T-shirt and saggy pair of faded jeans that defied both taste and gravity. As I could have predicted, he hadn’t made the slightest effort to scrub up. In the elegant confines of Fittes House he stood out like a wart on a wedding day, a thistle in a salad bowl. Some things hadn’t changed.
But others had, which startled me. George seemed thinner and, I thought, more careworn. He looked older, too, with harder lines around the eyes. How had this happened in only four months? It was true that agents saw a lot of things, and saw them often. We used up our youth pretty fast sometimes. But I’d never thought George would be prey to that. Seeing it gave me a sharp pang.
“Hello, George,” I said.
“Hello, Lucy.” As he said it, I watched his face. I wasn’t waiting for a grin. You didn’t get those with George. His face was similar in shape, color, and texture to a cold milk pudding; and it had the same range of expressions, too. But if you looked closely, you’d see clues to his mood—a twitch of the mouth, perhaps; or his eyes, deep beneath the surface of his spectacles, shining when he was happy or excited. If he pushed his glasses up his nose in a jaunty manner, that was a good sign, too.
But did we have any of that today? No.
He was pretty upset about it, Lockwood had said.
“Nice to see you,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
“Hasn’t it?” said George.
“Funnily enough, we were just saying how nice it would be to see you, Luce,” Lockwood said, clapping George on the shoulder. “Weren’t we, George?”
“Yes,” said George. “We were.”
“Yes, and Holly was looking forward to hearing all about your freelance work,” Lockwood went on. “Who you’ve been working with, how you got along with them. You even did something with the Rotwell group, didn’t you, Luce? I hope you’ll tell us about it later.”
With that he did a kind of wave of the arm that led my gaze to Holly.
And there she was. Charming Holly, as pretty and perfect as ever. She hadn’t changed much during these last few months; she hadn’t suddenly become saggy or bedraggled or noticeably flawed or anything. In fact, because of the importance of the meeting, she’d dolled herself up even more than usual. She wore the kind of dress you need to be poured into; the sort I would have ripped as soon as I tried wriggling it over my shoulders. It was a dress that would have gotten stuck halfway down my midriff, with my arms trapped and my head covered, and left me bouncing blindly off the walls for hours, half naked, trying to struggle free. That sort of dress. For completists, who want the details, it was blue.
Unlike with George and Lockwood, where the four months seemed to have lasted a lifetime, it didn’t feel as if I’d been away from Holly very long at all. Partly this was because I saw her photos in the papers so much. Also because throughout the winter there’d been a sort of Holly-shaped hole in my brain, into which I used to throw dark thoughts. I probably spent too much time there, like a moody Inuk fishing at an ice hole, sitting on the edge, staring in.
“Hello, Holly,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going so well, Lucy. It’s lovely to see you again.”
“Yeah. You, too. You look good.”
“So do you. Freelancing obviously suits you. I’d love to hear all about how you’ve been getting on. I’ve heard great things. I think you’re doing so well.”
Once upon a time it would have annoyed me, the record number of fibs crammed into that single scrap of dialogue. I was sure Holly had about the same amount of interest in my freelance work as she had in my choice of toothpaste (less, actually—given the way her perfect teeth gleamed so brightly every time she smiled). And everything else was a lie, too, since I clearly didn’t look good at all. As always happens when I’m running for a meeting, I only started properly sweating once I’d arrived and was with others. Right now I felt hot, flushed, and disordered, both inside and out.
But, to be honest, it wasn’t my place to get cross with Holly anymore, so I decided to take her niceties at face value.
“Great,” I said. “Thanks. I wish I’d gotten more dolled up, though. I didn’t think to wear a dress.”
“You could try wearing that one,” George said, tapping the pillar, where the gory nightgown worn by the Cumberland Place heiress on the night of her brutal murder dangled on its metal frame.
Lockwood laughed. Holly laughed. Taking my cue, I laughed, too. George didn’t utter so much as a titter. I searched his face for clues. Nothing.