Jonathan Stroud - Lockwood & Co. Book Three - The Hollow Boy

“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.

Our 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.