Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy (8 page)

Instead I said quietly, “So what was she like?”

“Oh…that’s hard to say. She was my sister. I liked her, obviously. I can find you a picture sometime. There’ll be one in the drawers here somewhere. It’s where I put
all her things. I suppose I should sort through it all one day, but there’s always so much to do….” He leaned back against the window, silhouetted against the light, pushing the seeds
slowly around his palm. “She was tall, dark-haired, strong-willed, I guess. There’s once or twice I’ve seen you out of the corner of my eye, Luce, and I almost thought…But
you’re nothing like her really. She was a gentle person. Very kind.”

“Okay, you
are
hurting my arm now, Lucy,” George said.

“Sorry.” I pried my hand free.

“My mistake,” Lockwood said. “It came out wrong. What I was trying to say was—”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked you about her in the first place….It must be difficult to talk about this. We understand. We won’t ask you
anything more.”

“So, this pot,” George said, “tell me about it. How
did
it keep the ghost trapped? Pottery on its own wouldn’t have done the job. There must’ve been some
kind of iron lining—or silver, I suppose. Or did they have some other technique, which—ow!” I’d kicked him. “What was
that
for?”

“For not shutting up.”

He blinked at me over his spectacles. “Why? It’s interesting.”

“We’re talking about his sister! Not the bloody pot!”

George jerked a thumb at Lockwood. “He says it’s ancient history.”

“Yes, but he’s clearly lying. Look at this place! Look at this room and what’s in it! This is
so
right now.”

“Yes, but he’s let us in, Luce. He wants to talk about it. I say that includes the pot.”

“Oh, come on! This isn’t one of your stupid experiments, George. This is his family. Don’t you have any empathy at all?”

“I’ve got more empathy than you! For a start I can see the bleeding obvious, which is that Lockwood
wants
us to discuss it. After years of emotional constipation, he’s
ready to share things with us—”

“Maybe he does, but he’s also completely brittle and hypersensitive, so if—”

“Hey, I’m still standing here,” Lockwood said. “I didn’t go out, or anything.” Silence fell; George and I broke off and looked at him. “And the truth
is,” he went on, “you’re
both
right
. I do want to talk about it—as George says. But I also don’t find it very easy, so Lucy’s spot-on
too.” He sighed. “Yes, George, I believe the pot had a layer of iron on the inside. But it cracked, okay? And maybe that’s enough for now.”

“Lockwood,” I said. I looked toward the bed. “One thing. Does she—?”

“No.”

“She’s never—?”

“No.”

“But the glow—”

“She’s never come back.” Lockwood tipped the lavender seeds into one of the vases on the sill and wiped his long, slim hands. “In the early days, you know, I almost hoped
she would. I’d come up here, when I was in the house, thinking I might see her standing at the window. I’d wait a long time, looking into the light, expecting to see her shape, or hear
her voice….” He smiled at me ruefully. “But there was never anything.”

He glanced over at the bed, his eyes still penned in behind the blank black glasses. “Anyway, that was early on. It wasn’t healthy, my just hanging out in here. And after a while,
when I’d had rather more experience with death-glows and what goes with them, I began to dread her return as well as want it. I couldn’t bear to think how she might appear to me. So
then I stopped coming in here much, and I set up the lavender to…to discourage surprises.”

“Iron would be stronger,” George said. He was like that, George; cutting, in his bespectacled way, to the nub of the issue quicker than everyone else. “I don’t see any
iron here—apart from on the door.”

I looked at Lockwood; his shoulders had gone tight, and for a moment I wondered whether he was going to get angry. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “But that’s
too much like dealing with an ordinary Visitor—and she’s
not
that, George, she’s
not
ordinary. She’s my sister. Even if she does come back, I
couldn’t use iron on her.”

Neither of us said anything.

“The funny thing is, she
loved
the smell of lavender,” Lockwood said, in a lighter voice. “You know that scrubby bush of it around the side of the house, out by the
trash bins? When I was a kid she used to sit with me and make lavender garlands for our hair.”

I looked at the vases with their plumes of faded purple. So they
were
a defense—but a welcome, too.

“Anyway, lavender’s good stuff,” George said. “Flo Bones swears by it.”

“Flo just swears in general,” I said.

We all laughed, but it wasn’t really a room for laughter. Nor for tears, oddly, or for anger, or for any emotion other than a sort of solemnity. It was a place of absence; we were in the
presence of something that had left. It was like coming to a valley where someone had once shouted, loud and joyously, and the echo of that shout had resounded between the hills and lasted a long
time. But now it had vanished, and you stood on the same spot, and it was not the same.

We didn’t go back to the room. It was a private place, and George and I left it alone. After that first seismic revelation, Lockwood didn’t bring up the subject of
his sister again, nor did he hunt out the photograph he had promised. He rarely mentioned his parents, either, though he did let slip that they had left him 35 Portland Row in their wills.
So—somehow, somewhere—they had died, too. But they and Jessica stayed in shadow, and the questions hovering around the silent bedroom largely remained.

I tried not to let it worry me, and instead be satisfied with what I had learned. Certainly I felt closer to Lockwood now. My knowledge of his past was a privilege. It made me feel warm and
special at times like this, speeding with him in the back of the taxi through the London dark. Who knew—perhaps one night, when we were working alone together, he might open up and tell me
more?

The cab braked suddenly; both Lockwood and I jerked forward in our seats. In front of us, moving figures filled the street.

The driver cursed. “Sorry, Mr. Lockwood. Way’s blocked. There are agents everywhere.”

“Not a problem.” Lockwood was already reaching for the door. “This is exactly what I want.” Before I could react, almost before the car had stopped, he was out and
halfway across the road.

O
ur route to Whitechapel had taken us via the center of the city. We were in Trafalgar Square. As I got out of the taxi, I saw that a crowd had
gathered below Nelson’s Column, lit by the sputtering white light of many ghost-lamps. They were ordinary citizens, a rare sight after dark. Some carried signs; others were taking turns to
make speeches from a makeshift platform. I could not hear what was being said. A ring of police and DEPRAC officers surrounded them at some distance; farther out still, and spilling out into the
street, stood a large mass of psychic investigation agents, presumably there to protect the assembly. They wore the brightly colored jackets that most agencies use. Silver Fittes ones; the burgundy
splendors of the Rotwell agency; the canary yellow of Tamworth; Grimble’s green pea-soupers: all these and many more were present and correct. A DEPRAC tea van had parked on one side and was
doling out hot drinks; and many other cars and taxis waited close by.

Lockwood made a beeline straight across the square. I hurried after him.

I don’t know what the collective noun for a group of psychic investigation agents is, but it ought to be a
posture
or a
preen
. Knots of operatives stood in color-coded
groups, eyeing their hated rivals, talking loudly and uttering barks of raucous laughter. The smallest agents—kids of seven or eight—stood drinking tea and making faces at one another.
Older ones swaggered to and fro, exchanging insulting gestures under the noses of their supervisors, who pretended not to notice. Chests swelled, swords glinted in the lamp-light. The air crackled
with condescension and hostility.

Lockwood and I passed through the throng to where a familiar figure stood, gloomily regarding the scene. As usual, Inspector Montagu Barnes wore a rumpled trench coat, an indifferent suit, and a
bowler hat of dark brown suede. Unusually, he was holding a Styrofoam cup of steaming orange soup. He had a weathered, lived-in face, and a graying mustache the approximate size and length of a
dead hamster. Barnes worked for DEPRAC, the Department of Psychic Research and Control—the government bureau that monitored the activities of agencies and, on occasions such as this,
commandeered them for the common good. He wouldn’t have won any prizes for grace or geniality, but he was shrewd and efficient, and not noticeably corrupt. That didn’t mean he enjoyed
our company.

Beside him stood a smallish man resplendently decked out in the plush livery of the Fittes Agency. His boots shone, his skintight trousers gleamed. An expensive rapier swung from a jeweled belt
strap at his side; his silver jacket was soft as tiger’s pelt, and perfectly matched by exquisite kidskin gloves. All very swish; impressive, even. Unfortunately, the body within the uniform
belonged to Quill Kipps, so the overall effect was like watching a plague rat lick a bowl of caviar. Yes, the classy element was there, but it wasn’t what you focused on.

Kipps was red-haired, scrawny, and pathetically self-satisfied. For a variety of reasons, possibly connected to the fact that we often said this to his face, he had long disliked us here at
Lockwood & Co. As a team leader for Fittes’s London Division, and one of the youngest adult supervisors in that agency, he had regularly worked with Barnes at DEPRAC; in fact, he was
reading to him from a three-ring binder as we approached.

“…forty-eight Type One sightings last night in the Chelsea containment zone,” he said. “And, if you take the reports as gospel, a possible
seventeen
Type Twos.
That’s a staggering concentration.”

“And how many deaths so far?” Barnes asked.

“Eight, including the three tramps. As before, the Sensitives report dangerous emanations, but the origin is not yet clear.”

“Okay, once this demonstration is over, we’ll head down to Chelsea. I’ll want the agents split across the four sectors with the Sensitives organized into supporting bands
that—Oh,
gawd
.” Barnes had noticed our arrival. “Hold on a minute, Kipps.”

“Evening, Inspector.” Lockwood wore his widest smile. “Kipps.”

“
They
aren’t on the list, are they?” Kipps said. “Want me to run them off?”

Barnes shook his head; he took a sip of soup. “Lockwood, Miss Carlyle…To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Since he spoke with all the joy of a man giving a speech at his mother’s funeral, “pleasure” was evidently a relative thing for Barnes. It wasn’t that he
hated
us—we’d helped him out too often for that—but sometimes mild irritation went a long way.

“Just passing by,” Lockwood said. “Thought we’d say hello. Looks like you have quite the gathering here. Most of the agencies in London are represented.” His smile
broadened. “Just wondering if you’d forgotten our invitations.”

Barnes regarded us. The steam from his cup curled around his mustache fronds like mist in a Chinese bamboo forest. He took another sip. “No.”

“Good soup, is it?” Lockwood asked, after a pause. “What sort?”

“Tomato.” Barnes gazed into his cup. “Why? What’s wrong with it? Not quality enough for you?”

“No, it looks very nice….Particularly the bit on the end of your mustache. May I ask why DEPRAC hasn’t included Lockwood and Co. in the whole Chelsea operation? If this
outbreak’s so dreadful, surely you could do with our assistance?”

“Don’t think so.” Barnes glared across at the crowd gathered beneath the Column. “It may be a national crisis, but we’re not
that
desperate. Look around
you. We’ve got plenty of talent here. Quality agents.”

I looked. Some of the operatives standing close were familiar to me, kids with reputations. Others, less so. At the base of the steps, a group of pale girls in mustard jackets had been marshaled
by an immensely fat man. By his dangling jowls, rolling belly, and self-importantly clenched buttocks, I recognized Mr. Adam Bunchurch, proprietor of that undistinguished agency.

Lockwood frowned. “I see the
quantity
. Quality, not so much.” He leaned in, spoke softly. “Bunchurch? I mean,
come on
.”

Barnes stirred his soup with a plastic spoon. “I don’t deny your talents, Mr. Lockwood. If nothing else, those pearly teeth of yours could light our way in the darkest alleys. But
how many of you
are
there in your company? Still three? Exactly. And one of those is George Cubbins. Skilled as you and Ms. Carlyle undoubtedly are, three more agents simply won’t
make any difference.” He tapped his spoon on the edge of the cup and handed it to Kipps. “This Chelsea case is huge,” he said. “It covers a massive area. Shades, Specters,
Wraiths, and Lurkers—more and more of ’em appearing, and no sign of the central cause. Hundreds of buildings are under surveillance, whole streets being evacuated….The public
aren’t happy about it—that’s why they’re holding this protest here tonight. We need numbers for this, and people who’ll do what they’re told. Sorry, but
that’s two excellent reasons to leave you out.” He took a decisive sip of soup and cursed. “Ow! Hot!”