Jonathan Stroud - The Creeping Shadow

He turned away from me and began packing up his sandwiches. My fellow agents, with evil glances in my direction, wearily did as they were told. I was otherwise ignored. I picked up the silver-glass box.

“Skull,” I said.

“What?”

“You had a point about that plant pot.”

“There you are, see? Didn’t I say?”

Without further words, I tucked the mummified head under my arm and left the house. I was tired, I was angry, but I didn’t choose to show it. Arguments with supervisors were nothing new; I had them almost nightly. It was just how things were, part of the deal of my new freelance life.

From the start I’d done things properly. I’d gotten myself a card, nicely laminated, with a classy silver-gray border. Here’s what I handed out to all my employers, and why they all wanted me, even if I did annoy them.

LUCY CARLYLE

Consultant Psychic Investigation Agent

Flat 4, 15 Tooting Mews, London

Psychic Surveys and Visitor Removal

Aural phenomena a speciality

I could have gone for a swanky logo, with crossed rapiers or skewered ghosts or something, but I preferred to keep it simple. Just being a consultant was enough to get me noticed, because that meant I was independent. There weren’t many psychic investigation agents working solo in London, on account of most of us ending up dead.

As a freelancer, I could hire myself out to any agency that wanted my services, and let me tell you, during the course of the Black Winter, a lot of them had wanted those services bad . My special sensitivity—Listening was my particular Talent (and between you and me, I was better at it than any agent I’d ever heard of, except perhaps one)—gave almost any group an additional edge. An extra bonus for them was that I knew how to survive. I knew when to Listen and look, I knew when to use my rapier, and I knew when to get out. That’s what it always boiled down to, in the end. Three options, and simple common sense. It’s how you stayed alive.

In short, I was very good at what I did. Of course I was. I’d learned my trade with the best.

And I wasn’t with them anymore.

The Black Winter had been a decent time to start a business. Right now, in late March, there were signs of seasonal respite. The weather was improving, the days were lengthening, pretty spring flowers were showing their heads beside crusted flecks of ancient snow, and you were marginally less likely to be fatally ghost-touched when venturing out for an evening pint of milk. We hoped the ordeal was easing for a time.

Over the previous few months of seemingly endless nights, however, the Problem—the epidemic of ghosts that had long beset our country—had intensified considerably. No single cluster of hauntings as bad as the infamous Chelsea Outbreak had taken place, but the winter had been unrelenting. Every agency had been sorely stretched, and many agents, young and younger, had fallen in the line of duty and been buried in the iron tombs behind Horse Guards Parade.

Nevertheless, the difficulties of the season had enabled some companies to thrive. One of these was Lockwood & Co., the smallest psychic detection agency in London. Up until the beginning of the winter, I’d worked for them. It had just been me; Anthony Lockwood, who ran the show; and George Cubbins, who researched stuff. We’d lived in a house in Portland Row, Marylebone. Oh, there’d been another employee as well. Her name was Holly Munro; she was new, a kind of assistant to the rest of us. She sort of counted, too, I guess, but it was George and Lockwood who had meant the most to me. Meant so much, in fact, that in the end I’d been forced to turn my back on them, and go a different way.

Four months earlier, you see, a ghost had shown me a glimpse of one possible future. It was a future in which my actions would lead directly to Lockwood’s death. The ghost itself was malignant, and I had no reason to trust it, except for one thing: it echoed my own intuitions. Time and again, Lockwood had risked his life to save mine, the line between success and disaster growing finer and less definite on each occasion. Coupled with that, even as my psychic Talents had grown strong, my ability to master those Talents had become frayed. Several times during cases I had lost control of my emotions—and this had dangerously strengthened the ghosts that we were fighting. A series of near catastrophes had ended with me unleashing the power of a Poltergeist; in the ensuing battle, Lockwood (and others) had nearly died. I knew in my heart that it would take only one more mistake and the ghost’s prediction would become a reality. Since that was something I could never bear, it stood to reason that I had to avoid it. Hence I’d left the company. That had been my decision, and I knew I was right.

I knew it.

And now, assuming you didn’t count a talking skull, it was justme.

As far as I could judge from reading the papers, my departure from Lockwood & Co. had coincided with a period of great activity for my former colleagues. In particular, their success in locating the Source of the Chelsea Outbreak—a room of skeletons buried deep beneath the Aickmere Brothers department store—had earned them the publicity that their leader had long desired. They were rarely off the front page, with photos of Lockwood particularly in evidence. There he was, with George, standing among the broken masonry of the Mortlake Tomb; there he was, alone, posing beneath the blackened outline that was the only remnant of the St. Albans Ghoul. And there he was, finally, in perhaps my least favorite image of the sequence, receiving the coveted Agency of the Month award at the Times offices in London, with the slim and elegant figure of Holly Munro standing picturesquely beside him.

So they’d done well, and I was happy for them. But I’d thrived, too. My part in the Aickmere’s department store case had not gone unnoticed, and no sooner had I rented a room and placed a small ad in the Agencies page in the Times than I began to acquire customers of my own. To my surprise, from the first, most were other companies. I worked with the Grimble Agency on the Melrose Place Murders, and with Atkins and Armstrong on the Phantom Cat of Cromwell Square. Even the mighty Rotwell Agency had used me several times; and whatever Farnaby might say, I knew that they’d turn to me again.

Yes, I was flourishing.

I was succeeding on my own.

And did I mind being on my own? Not really. For the most part, I got along fine.

I kept busy. No one could say I didn’t get out much, or didn’t meet all corners of the community; it was just a pity that most of them were dead. In the past week, for instance, I’d seen a ghost child on a swing; a skeleton bride sitting in a church; a bus conductor floating past without his bus; two squashed workmen; a phantom dog being led up Putney High Street by a vast black shadow; a headless librarian; a suitcase containing three nimbuses, two Glimmers, and a Wisp; a wandering severed hand; and a semi-naked neighbor.

That last one had been alive, by the way. I kind of wish he hadn’t been.

Yeah, the nights were always frantic, packed with incident. It was the days that sometimes felt a little hollow. Particularly at dawn, after just finishing a case, when I walked back through the empty streets, bruised and weary, with the weight of the solitary hours ahead pulling at my insides. I couldn’t even rely on the skull in the jar for a chat; he often dematerialized during the day. That was when I really missed the company of others, those moments when I was quietly heading home.

Not that, on this particular night, I was going home. Not yet. Thanks to Mr. Farnaby’s sour vindictiveness, I had another place to visit first. I was taking a Source in a silver-glass box to one of the most terrible locations in London, and it wasn’t even a haunted house.