George was slumped on the sofa beside a giant pile of crumpled ironing, sweat pants akimbo, reading a comic. “It is a shame they don’t talk more about the actual case,” he said. “The way the Changer created its own little cluster of other ghosts was fascinating. It’s how the Problem spreads, some say—strong Visitors causing violent deaths, which lead to secondary hauntings. I would have loved to study it in more detail.”
That was how George always was, once the panic of a case died down. He was curious about it: he wanted to understand why and how it happened. Me, it was the emotional impact of each adventure that I couldn’t quite shake off.
“I just felt sorry for all those poor ghost-touched men,” I said. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor below the sofa. Officially, I was sorting the mail; unofficially, I’d been having a gentle doze, having been up till three on a Lurker case the night before. “I could feel their sadness,” I went on. “And even that Changer…yes, it was terrifying, but it was unhappy, too. I could feel its pain. And if I’d had more time to try to connect with it properly—”
“It would have killed you stone dead.” From the depths of his chair Lockwood gave me a look. “Your Talent’s amazing, Luce, but the only ghost you should communicate with is the skull, because it’s locked up in its jar….And to be honest, I’m not even sure that’s safe.”
“Oh, the skull’s okay,” I said. “It helped me with my Lurker case last night. Gave me a fix on the Source, so I could dig it up. We were quite close to Chelsea, where we were. What about you two? Either of you hear the sirens?”
Lockwood nodded. “Another three people killed. DEPRAC is completely clueless, as usual. They were evacuating a couple of streets, I think.”
“Way more than that,” George said. “The outbreak stretches a good square mile along the King’s Road. More ghosts every night, in greater concentration than ever before, and no one knows why.” He adjusted his glasses. “It’s weird. Until recently, Chelsea was pretty quiet, everything peaceful—then, all at once, things go into haunting overdrive. It’s like an infection spreading. But here’s what I want to know—how do you actually fire ghosts up? How do you infect the dead?”
There was no answer to this, and I didn’t try to provide one. Lockwood just groaned; he’d been chasing a Specter through Hackney marshes until the early hours and was in no mood for George’s ponderings. “All I care about,” he said, “is how Chelsea’s hogging our publicity. You do know that Kipps’s team is working on it? He’s on page one today, giving some stupid quote or other. Page one! That’s where we should be! We need to take part in something big like that. I should speak to Barnes, maybe, see if he wants us to help out. Trouble is, we’re already so overworked….”
Yes, we were….It was November, as I’ve mentioned, at the beginning of what would become known as the “Black Winter,” the deadliest period yet in the history of the Problem. The epidemic of hauntings that had beset the nation for more than fifty years had reached new levels of intensity, and the terrifying outbreak in the district of Chelsea was just the tip of the iceberg. All psychic investigation agencies were stretched to the breaking point. Lockwood & Co. was no exception. “Overworked” didn’t really cover it.
We lived, the three of us, in a four-story property in Portland Row, London, which was the headquarters of our agency. Lockwood himself owned the house. It had once belonged to his parents, and their collection of oriental wards and ghost-chasers still lined the walls of many rooms. Lockwood had converted the basement into an office, with desks, iron stores, and a rapier practice room. At the rear, a reinforced glass door led out into the garden, complete with a little lawn and apple trees, where we’d sometimes lounge in summer. On the upper floors were bedrooms; the ground floor contained the kitchen, the library, and the living room, where Lockwood interviewed our clients. It was here that we spent most time.
For several months, though, time had been in extremely short supply. This was partly due to our own success. In July our investigation at Kensal Green Cemetery had ended with the so-called “Battle in the Graveyard,” featuring a fight between agents and a group of violent black-marketeers. Along with our encounter with the horrific Rat-Ghost of Hampstead, it had aroused a lot of interest in the press, and this interest continued during the trial of the chief marketeer, a man named Julius Winkman. Lockwood, George, and I had all testified against him; by the time Winkman was sent down for a stiff stretch in Wandsworth Prison, it was the middle of September, and our period of free publicity had lasted nearly two months. During this time, our phone had seldom stopped ringing.
It was true that most wealthy clients preferred to stick with the large agencies, which had swankier equipment and bigger reputations. Most of our business came from poorer districts like Whitechapel, where clients didn’t pay so well. But jobs were jobs, and Lockwood didn’t like to turn any of them down. This meant that free evenings were few and far between.
“Anything going on tonight, George?” Lockwood said suddenly. He’d thrown a weary arm over his face, and I’d assumed he was asleep. “Please say no.”
George said nothing, just raised three fingers.
“Three?” Lockwood uttered a long and hollow groan. “What are they?”
“Woman in a veil on Nelson Street, Whitechapel; a haunted apartment in a housing project, and a Shade spotted behind some public restrooms. The usual glamorous stuff.”
“We’ll have to split up again,” Lockwood said. “Dibs on the veiled woman.”
George grunted. “Dibs on the Shade.”
“What?” My head jerked up. The dibs rule was second only to the biscuit rule in terms of importance. It always held firm. “So I get the housing project? Brilliant. I bet the elevators will be out, and everything.”
“You’re fit enough to manage a few stairs, Luce,” Lockwood murmured.
“What if it’s twenty-one floors? What if there’s a Raw-bones at the top, and I’m too out of breath to deal with it? Wait, what if the elevator is working, but the ghost’s hidden inside? You remember what happened to that girl from the Sebright Agency when she got stuck in that haunted elevator at Canary Wharf? They only found her shoes!”
“Stop burbling,” Lockwood said. “You’re tired. We all are. You know it’ll be fine.”
We all subsided again. I leaned my head back against the sofa cushions. Rivulets of water laced the library window like veins of blood.
Okay, not really like veins of blood. I was tired…like Lockwood said.
Lockwood…Through half-closed eyes, I watched him now, trapping him tight between my lashes. I looked at his long legs, loosely crossed over the side of the chair; at the bare feet, at the slim contours of his body half-concealed beneath the rumpled shirt. His face was mostly covered by his arm, but you could see the line of his jaw and the expressive lips, relaxed and slightly parted. His dark hair spilled softly over the white sleeve.
How did he manage to look like that after five hours’ sleep, lying curled and crumpled in the chair? Being half-dressed never did me any favors; with George, it practically came with a health warning. Yet Lockwood managed to carry it off perfectly. It was pleasantly warm in the room. My eyelashes squeezed a little tighter. I put my hand to my silver necklace, turning it slowly between my fingers….
“We need a new agent,” Lockwood said.
I opened my eyes wide. Behind me, I heard George put his comic down. “What?”