Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy (40 page)

Gradually, throughout the rest of the day, things fell into place. For most of us, at least.

Lockwood and Kipps went off together to speak to the newspapers; Holly and I went back to Portland Row. We did the usual cleaning-selves-up, showery-type things that you do after a job, and I
went so far as to lend her one of George’s towels. We were sitting in the kitchen with the kettle on when George himself entered, whistling. I hadn’t had a chance to look at him
properly that morning, but he seemed even more disheveled and weatherworn than earlier. He dropped into the seat opposite with a weary but jaunty air.

“What happened?” I said. “I don’t remember that black eye.”

He dumped his bag down on the floor. “Only just been given it, as it happens,” he said. “Flo and I found your room of skeletons, Luce—and
boy
, is it fascinating.
I’ve been taking all sorts of measurements and notes down there. I’d still be doing it, in fact, but I hadn’t been at it more than an hour when a gang of Rotwell agents showed up
along the tunnel and started cordoning everything off. They told me to get lost. Of course,
I
told them to get knotted. We shared some stirring words, during which I made a few telling
points about their behavior, not to mention their clothes sense, facial asymmetry, and parentage.” He chuckled. “I was quite eloquent, actually, so much so that one of them tried to
brain me with a femur he’d picked up off the pile of bones. So I lobbed a lumbar vertebra at him, and then Flo got going with the muck prong she keeps under her petticoats, and after that
things got quite exciting for a while before we were finally escorted off the premises. But it doesn’t matter. I had time to draw a little diagram of the room before I went. I’ll show
you later. Right now, I need a bath to cleanse my sweaty bits.” He peered over the top of his glasses. “Speaking of which, isn’t that my towel, Holly, you’re wearing
’round your hair…?”

It turned out later that the Rotwell operatives, working officially under DEPRAC command, had introduced a team of crack agents with the latest salt-guns, the ones connected to canisters of
compressed spray strapped onto their backs. They spent three days cleansing the vaults of the King’s Prison and clearing out the mass of skeletons. I’d hoped the remains could be
treated with respect and given a proper burial, but that wasn’t how DEPRAC worked. The bones were taken to the Clerkenwell furnaces and burned without further ceremony.

Careful observations were made in Aickmere Brothers for several weeks afterward, but no Visitors were seen there again.

As for the wider effects on the district of Chelsea, Lockwood’s claim that we had scotched the outbreak was put to the test the very next night. As darkness fell, agency teams tentatively
entered the Containment Zone as usual, with Penelope Fittes, Steve Rotwell, and a group of top DEPRAC psychics observing from the watchtower on Sloane Square. A light drizzle hung in the air. The
agents walked along the King’s Road and dispersed into the surrounding streets. Time passed while the dignitaries drank tea beneath their umbrellas and looked at copies of George’s
maps, which Lockwood, who was present, had given them. In due course the agents returned and made their report. Ghostly activity had not ceased, but it seemed markedly less frenzied than on
previous nights. Several Visitors that had previously been observed were no longer there; others seemed pale shadows of their former selves, slower and less formidable, and far easier to corral
with iron and salt-bombs. In short, it was the first noticeable improvement in Chelsea for several months, and the agents were hopeful that it was the start of the turning of the tide.

Lockwood hung around long enough to receive congratulations from Ms. Fittes, give Mr. Rotwell a cordial bow, and wink at Inspector Barnes. Then he departed. Before he was out of earshot, he
could hear Barnes once again becoming the focus of incessant questions.

One way and another, in fact, things were looking good for Lockwood & Co. And I would certainly have shared the general happy exhaustion—would have been more than satisfied with the
endless phone calls, and the flurry of reporters now knocking on our doors—if I hadn’t still been haunted. Not by an
actual
ghost, but by the memory of one. Its face remained
before me. Its words echoed in my ears. When I sat with the others, and still more when I lay on my own in the quiet of my room, I could not escape the vision of the other Lockwood. I could not rid
myself of the hollow boy.

CHELSEA OUTBREAK ENDS!

M
ASS TOMB DISCOVERED UNDER FAMED DEPARTMENT STORE
T
RIUMPH FOR COMBINED AGENCY TEAM
F
IRST INTERVIEW WITH
A. J. L
OCKWOOD AND
Q. F. K
IPPS INSIDE

And after it all ended, did we return to our old ways of doing things? Were we ever quite the same? Did we go back to going on missions together, just Lockwood, George, and
I—simple missions, like dodging ectoplasmic tentacles in attics—before heading home for tea?

There was a feast arranged at Portland Row one afternoon, a few days after events in Chelsea had come to their conclusion. Holly had done most of the organizing, so bowls of olives, salads,
whole-wheat ciabatta bread, and plates of interestingly limp cold cuts were very much in evidence. Fortunately, at the last minute George made an emergency run to the shops, returning with a supply
of cheap sausage rolls, fizzy drinks, and smoky bacon-flavored chips; also a chocolate fudge cake of surpassing size, which he hoisted proudly into the center of the kitchen table.

Holly and George had had a running argument about that table, Holly insisting that our Thinking Cloth, with its mural of scribbles, notes, and grotesque cartoons, looked like the wall of a
public lavatory, and would put her off her hummus dips. She wanted it discarded for the occasion and replaced with a crisp white alternative. George refused. Ever since breakfast, he had been
working on a diagram on one corner of the cloth, and he didn’t want it moved. In the end, through sheer bespectacled stubbornness, he got his way.

By midafternoon, the kitchen was ready. Every surface groaned with delicacies; the kettle was on; Holly had thrown all the wrappers away. The skull in the jar, which had been making atrocious
pop-eyed faces at Holly whenever she turned toward it, causing her to spill two bowls of cashew nuts and one of taramasalata, had been removed upstairs in disgrace. Now in came Lockwood, fresh from
numerous phone calls in the office, and we all sat down to dine.

He was in good form that day, Lockwood, vibrant with positive energies. I remember him sitting at the head of the table, creating a towering sandwich stuffed with sausage rolls and smoky bacon
chips (much to Holly’s horror—to appease her, he balanced a minuscule leaf of parsley on the top) as he spoke about the potential new clients the agency now had. Like the rest of us,
his recent injuries were still in evidence—the cut on his forehead, his grazed cheek, his bruises, the weariness stamped beneath his eyes—yet somehow all they did was serve to highlight
his vigor and vitality.

George was happy too, making last-minute tweaks to the complicated diagram on the cloth before him, while at the same time demolishing plateloads of miniature Scotch eggs. He made a spirited
early play to sample the chocolate fudge cake, too, but Lockwood decreed that this should be left to the end.

As for Holly, she was back in her smooth and flawless groove once more, smiling benignly at the goings-on while remaining slightly detached from it all. At George’s behest, she unbent
enough to try a single small Scotch egg; mainly, though, she stuck to sparkling spring water and a walnut, raisin, and goat cheese salad. In a funny sort of way I was pleased she kept her standards
up. It was somehow reassuring.

Me? Yes, I was there. I ate and drank and joined in with the others, though inwardly I was far away. After a while we looked (again) at the day’s newspapers, which Holly had left folded
beside Lockwood’s plate.

“Every time I see this coverage,” Lockwood said, “I can’t believe our luck. When you combine this with what happened on the Strand, we’ve dominated the papers for
more than a week.”

Holly nodded. “The phone’s been ringing nonstop,” she said. “Everyone wants Lockwood and Co. You’re going to have to make some decisions about expanding.”

“I need some advice about that.” Lockwood took a spear of cucumber and stuck it thoughtfully in the dip. “Actually, I’m seeing Penelope Fittes next week. She wants me to
come in for an informal breakfast meeting. More of a thanks for the carnival thing than anything, I suppose, but still…I could ask her.” He grinned. “Did you read the bit where she
called us a ‘top agency’?”

“And what about Inspector Barnes’s quote?” George added. “What was it again? ‘A group of talented young agents that I’m proud to oversee.’ Can you
believe his nerve?”

Lockwood crunched the cucumber. “As always, Barnes follows his own agenda.”

“He’s not the only one.” George gave the paper a prod. “I’m not sure I approve of Kipps getting equal billing with you here.”

“Oh, that’s just to keep him sweet. To be honest, we
do
owe him for supporting us, and it’s paid off for him now. Did you hear he’s been promoted? Section leader
or something, wasn’t it, Luce? You’re the one who told me.”

“Yeah, Fittes Division Leader,” I said.

“That’s it. Awarded by Penelope Fittes herself. Still, that didn’t prevent Kipps from having a massive fight with me about the way we handled the Room of Bones at the end. He
was furious that the Rotwell team got there before anyone from his agency.”

“Well,
you
didn’t tell them to go in, did you?” George said.

“No. I don’t know who did, actually. I suppose it must have been Barnes….” All at once, Lockwood fixed me with his dark eyes. “Are you all right, Lucy?” he
asked.

“Yes! Yes….” He’d startled me; I’d been drifting. Just for a moment the living Lockwood, sitting at the table, cutting himself a piece of Holly’s trendy
delicatessen cheese, had been lost, hidden beneath the gory, white-faced apparition of the underground room….

I blinked the mirage away. It was fake! I
knew
it was. I
knew
it was a lie. I’d seen Lockwood himself slice the Fetch in two just as cleanly as he did that cheese.

But try as I might, I couldn’t shake my mind clear.

I show you the future. This is your doing.

“Have a piece of Parma ham, Lucy,” Holly said. “Lockwood likes it. It’ll really put the blood back in your cheeks.”

“Er, yeah, sure—thanks.”

Holly and me? We’d adopted a mutual policy of careful toleration. Over the last few days, for want of anything better, we’d kind of muddled by. Don’t get me wrong—we
still riled each other. Her new habit of sweeping up crumbs around my plate
while I was eating
, for example—that got my goat. Meanwhile, she was less than thrilled by my
(justifiable) habit of rolling my eyes and gasping aloud whenever she did something especially finicky, precious, or controlling. But things didn’t threaten to ignite the way they once had.
Perhaps it was because we’d already said everything there was to say, that awful night at Aickmere’s. Or perhaps it was simply because we no longer had the energy to be furious
anymore.