Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy (23 page)

She glanced at us, nodded, and continued making fast work with the plastic fork. We drew as close as was comfortable, watching her shovel the yellow globules into her mouth.
“Cubbins,” she said, “Carlyle.”

“Flo.”

“Where’s Locky?” The fork paused. “Off with his new girl, is he?”

I blinked. “No…” I said. “She doesn’t come out on cases. She’s not even an agent, really. More of a secretary and housecleaner than anything.” I scowled at
Flo. “How d’you even know about her?”

She scraped unconcernedly at the corner of the tray. “Didn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s been eighteen months since he hired you. That’s about standard. I figured he’d have prob’ly moved on to the next one.”

“Actually,” George said, stepping between us and nudging my hand away from my rapier hilt, “Lockwood’s busy working on the outbreak. He’s sent us to ask you
something.”

“A question or a favor? Either way, what’s in it for me?” Bright teeth gleamed.

“Aha.” George ferreted in a dark corner of his coat. “I have licorice! Lovely tasty licorice…Or maybe I don’t…’S’funny, I must’ve eaten it.”
He gave a shrug. “I’ll have to owe you.”

Flo rolled her eyes. “Classy. Lockwood does this sort of thing
so
much better than you. So what do you want? News from the underworld?” She chewed ruminatively.
“It’s the usual round of backstabbings and unexplained disappearances. The Winkman family’s in business again, they say. With old Julius in jail, it’s been left to his wife,
Adelaide, to get the black market side up and running. Though it’s young Leopold who everyone
really
fears. Worse than his old man, they say.”

I was still scowling at Flo. I remembered Winkman Junior as a smaller, squatter version of his father, gazing at us when we gave evidence in the dock. “Come off it,” I said.
“He’s only about twelve.”

“Doesn’t stop
you
from gadding about like you own London, does it? Better keep your wits about you, Carlyle. The Winkmans are lying low, but it was
you
who put
Julius away. They’ll want hideous, grisly revenge….So”—she tossed the tray aside and clapped her hands together briskly—“I make that one bag of licorice you owe me,
Cubbins.”

“No problem,” George said. “I’ve made a note. Only that’s not strictly what we’re after this time, Flo. It’s the Chelsea outbreak. You work the shores
along there. A couple of blocks inland, all hell’s breaking loose. But what’s it like by the river? Are you seeing more activity?”

Flo got up off the post where she was perched, stretched carelessly, lifted up the mud-crusted base of her coat, and set about scratching something in the recesses within. “Oh,
yeah—there’s been a definite upsurge. ’Ticularly on the southwest side. The streets are thick with them there. I’ve stood at Chelsea Wharf, seen three Shades and a Gray Haze
with one sweep of the eyes. ’Course, you never get ’em within fifty yards of Old Mother Thames. Just too much running water, ain’t it?”

George nodded automatically, then with more enthusiasm. He was staring at his map. “Yes…yes, that’s true. Thanks, Flo, you’ve been enormously helpful already. Listen, can you
keep an eye on the river edge for me? Particularly that southwest side. I’d like to know if it continues to have the most Visitors. Any patterns you see, let me know. There’ll be
licorice by the ton in return, obviously.”

“Okay.” Flo finished scratching, adjusted herself, and picked up her burlap sack. With one quick motion, she slung it over her shoulder. “Well, got to fly. Tide’s low
tonight. There’s a rotted hulk off Wandle Keys that needs pilfering. I’ll see you.” In a few steps she’d vanished in the river mist. “Hey, Carlyle,” her voice
drifted back. “Don’t worry about Locky. He must like you really. It’s been eighteen months, and you’re still alive.”

I stared after her. “What does that even mean?”

But Flo had gone. George and I were alone.

“I wouldn’t pay any attention,” he said. “She just likes to annoy you.”

“I guess.”

“Likes to play with your emotions, like a cat batting at a helpless mouse.”

“Oh, thanks. That makes me feel just dandy.” I looked across at him. “How come she doesn’t ever give
you
a hard time?”

George scratched the tip of his nose. “Doesn’t she? I’ve never thought about it.”

L
ockwood returned from his Chelsea excursion early the following morning, having spent the hours of darkness walking its streets silently and
alone. He seemed both energized and baffled by the experience, which had served to back up what we’d seen from the viewing platform and heard from Inspector Barnes.

“The whole area’s awash with psychic activity,” he said. “Not just Visitors, though there
are
plenty of those. It’s the whole atmosphere of the place, like
everything’s been disturbed. All the usual sensations we look for are there, drifting like invisible clouds along the streets. Chill, miasma, malaise, and creeping fear—you can feel
them rolling at you down the alleys, or stealing out of the houses as you pass. They engulf you—it’s all you can do to draw your rapier. You stand in the road, heart pounding, wheeling
around, waiting for the attack—and then they’re gone. I’m not surprised there have been so many casualties among the agents trying to make sense of this. It’s enough to
drive anyone mad.”

He had seen a number of spirits at a distance—in upstairs windows, in gardens, and the backyards of shops. The streets were mostly clear, peppered instead with jumpy groups of agents, who
seemed randomly dispersed. Halfway down the King’s Road he had helped steer an Atkins and Armstrong team out of a Gibbering Mist; later, a conversation with a Tendy supervisor leading four
shivering operatives across a little park had led him to Sydney Street, the supposed center of the disturbance. It had seemed neither better nor worse than anywhere else.

“They’re digging up all the graveyards,” he said, “and sowing salt on the ground. Rotwell teams are bringing out equipment I’ve never seen before: guns firing
salt-and-lavender sprays. It’s not doing a bit of good. Frankly, I don’t see us making a difference unless we come up with something new.”

“That’s up to me,” George said. “And I’ve got a theory. But I’m going to need some time.”

He was given it. From then on George undertook no new cases, but instead slipped seamlessly into research mode. Over the next few days we scarcely saw him. I glimpsed him once or twice slipping
away from Portland Row at dawn, backpack bulging with papers, the documents he’d gotten from Kipps clamped under his arm. He haunted the Archives and the libraries of southwest London,
returning only as night fell. He went back to speak to Flo Bones. In the evenings he sat alone in the kitchen, scribbling obscure notes on the margins of the Thinking Cloth. He said little about
what he was doing, but he had that old spark back in his eye, glittering behind his glasses like a firefly buzzing in a jar. That showed me he was on to something.

While he labored, the rest of us drew back from Chelsea. Lockwood visited it once or twice more, but achieved little, and soon returned to ordinary cases. This was what I was doing too. We
didn’t, however, work on anything together. With her usual cool efficiency, Holly Munro divided things equally between us, juggling our clients and our time.

Holly had been hired to give us respite and enable us to work more easily as a team. It was a strange thing, but we now seemed busier—and more isolated from each other—than ever
before. Somehow Lockwood and I never went in the same direction, or even went out at the same moment. We got up at different hours. When we met at home, our smiling assistant was generally there
too. Since the Bloody Footprints debacle, he and I had rarely been alone. And Lockwood seemed happy enough for it to continue that way.

I didn’t think he was still angry. I’d somehow have preferred it if he
had
been. He just appeared to have removed himself from me, cloaked himself in the old detachment that
had never really gone away. He was always scrupulously polite; he answered my questions, made bland inquiries into how I was getting on. Otherwise he ignored me. His head wound healed; only the
faintest scar showed on his forehead, just below the hairline. Like everything else about him, he wore it well; but I knew it to be a sign of my incompetence and failure, and the sight of it
pierced my heart.

I couldn’t help feeling annoyance, too. Yes, I had brought him—and the others—into danger; I’d messed up, I couldn’t deny it. That didn’t excuse the way
he’d locked himself away, as if behind iron barricades, and utterly shut me out.

This was how it had always been with Lockwood, of course. Silence was his default response. He’d probably been like this ever since Jessica died.

Her younger brother was unable to stop the attack
…

A case in point: his sister. He’d told us
something
about her, but hardly enough. I still didn’t understand what had actually happened in that room. Without his testimony it
was impossible to know.

Actually—
not
impossible. It
could
be done. I had Talents that could find things out. As I walked across that landing in my anger and frustration, I often glanced at that
door.

A week passed. George worked; Holly organized; the skull made regular rude comments. Lockwood and I kept going our separate ways. Now large posters were appearing near every
Tube station advertising the coming carnival: elegant Fittes ones, with silver hue and sober font, inviting us to “Reclaim the Night”; garishly bright ones for the Rotwell Agency,
complete with a grinning cartoon lion trampling a ghost and holding a huge hot dog in its paw. Meanwhile, each day saw further demonstrations in the streets around Chelsea, clashes between
protesters and police: people injured, water cannons used. The night of the grand festivity approached in a tense and nervous atmosphere.

Lockwood had originally been reluctant to attend the carnival, as he was annoyed that we hadn’t been asked to contribute to the agency procession. To our surprise, however, we received a
special invitation. Miss Wintergarden—now luxuriating in the freedom of her ghost-free town house—was one of the VIPs accompanying the procession on the lead float. She invited us to
join her as her guests.

The prospect of such a central position was one Lockwood could not resist. On the afternoon of the great day, the four of us made our way across London to the Fittes mausoleum, which was where
the carnival would begin.

Yes, that’s right. The four of us. Holly Munro came too.

The mausoleum stood at the eastern end of the Strand, at the point where it became Fleet Street. It occupied an island in the center of the road. A church had stood there once, but it had been
bombed in the war, and the stark, gray building that housed Marissa Fittes’s remains was its replacement. It was oval-shaped, with a concrete dome. On the western side two majestic pillars
framed the entrance, which faced back in the direction of Fittes House. A triangular pediment atop the pillars was carved with the Fittes emblem: a noble unicorn. Monumental bronze doors led into
the interior, which on special days was open so that the public could see the pioneer’s simple granite tomb.

Darkness was falling now, but the carnival was a display of organized defiance, and there were many reassurances on show. Ghost-lamps hung suspended on cables above the roads. Lavender fires
burned on corners. Lamplit smoke swirled above the crowds that washed between the buildings like a restless tide.

Higher still, a giant inflatable rapier, silvered, shiny, and the length of a London bus, bobbed and buffeted against the soft, black night. The entrances to Waterloo Bridge and the Aldwych were
choked with booths and sideshows. “Shoot the ghost” stalls rubbed up against “Poltergeist rides,” in which vast mechanized arms whirled shrieking men and women into the air.
Merry-go-rounds featured cartoon phantoms, stalls sold cobweb cotton candy; sweets in the form of skulls, bones, and ectoplasm were everywhere on display. As with the midsummer fairs that normally
featured such entertainment, it was the adults who were the most eager customers. Tonight they were protected; tonight the central streets were lined with lavender and salt, turning this artery of
London into a fairyland of color that could be exploited safely. They hurried past us, men and women, old and younger, faces flushed with excitement at the transgression and the danger of it. An
air of forced hilarity hung over them. I could feel their desperate need to turn their night fears into something childlike and unthreatening.

We stood silently at a corner, hands on our sword hilts, watching the world skip by.

“The grown-ups seem happy,” Lockwood said. “Don’t you feel old, sometimes?”

“Yeah,” George said. “All the same…”

Lockwood nodded. “Yes, I could do with some ice cream, too.”

“I’ll get them,” I said. There was a stand opposite. “Holly? What do you want? A lentil and hummus wedge, or something?”

Her hair was pulled back beneath a fur-lined hat, showing her face to good advantage. She had on that coat that was ever-so-slightly like Lockwood’s, and, to my annoyance, wore a rapier,
too. “Actually, I think a soft-serve twist. It’s a special occasion.”