Disclaimer: Do I need to? Johnathan Stroud wouldn't write a Fanfiction about his own book, he can write an actual book and shove it into his series. I think. So, anything remotely good: Johnathan's, not mine.
A/N: Hi! This is my first Lockwood and Co story, and my second Fanfiction, so don't be harsh in your reviews. Please. I have cookies! (::) The cookie rule shall be broken in this Fanfiction numerous times. I am breaking it as I write. Yeah... So, on with it! *Dramatic flourish*
Oh! Also, please R&R! And tell me if the PoV is all wrong and the characters are acting weirdly or what not. Way to ruin the dramaticness, but I was way too melodramatic. Sorry...
I woke up, feeling like I was going to puke. I could still see the bones of the Raw-bones we uncovered in our last case, mouldy, covered in spiders webs and grim looking, with bits of flesh dangling off. A new body, but of course only George was the only one truly interested in it.
Most agents would just add the bones to the long list of things that they didn't need to see, but naturally, I had to be the one to have the image imprinted to the back of my eye lids.
'Just great. Great,' I mutter under my breath. George raises an eyebrow at me, from across the table, and before I could tell him to shut up, he speaks.
"Pardon?" I glare at him. He was going to make a great speech about talking to yourself now. Wasn't he, "You know Lucy, the first sign of madness is-" I cut him off.
"Living with George? Because it seems to me that you are the one who got nude with a ghost, George." Lockwood smiles at George's expression.
"Nicely phrased Lucy," he says, looking at me kindly. I try not to smile to broadly back, as George had got it into his fat head that me and Lockwood would make a great couple. George snorts, in a way that said: Why do I put up with this every day?
Still smiling slightly, Lockwood asks whether there are any new cases to look forward to. George shakes his head,
"No. That lady, Eileen Smithers, has heard a strange, unholy ululation that starts at around two, and stops at around four, and it comes from-" Lockwood raises an eyebrow, and cuts George off,
"Again? I am sure we have cleared her house of 'ghosts' several times." George snorts.
"More than that, at least four times now. Come to think about it..." I cough, George stops abruptly, glares at me, and continues, "Anyway, as I was saying, there's also a strange knocking sound coming from a cupboard in an extremely 'old and haunted' house, up in Kent, so I went to the Archives, but all I found was a very old guy with some sort of disease died a couple of months after he became blind. Not very powerful, but could do with remembering the iron chains," he pointedly looks at Lockwood, "Not naming any names, of course." Lockwood sighs,
"I told you: if you hadn't gone and oiled the chains, then I wouldn't have even had to go listening to you blabbering on and blaming me for 'leaving them behind!'" I cough loudly, stopping them from giving me a headache for the next three hours, while they 'battle it out' as George calls it.
"Well," I begin, "While you argue about that, I am going to eat the pancakes if you don't mind." George stops his newly begun sentence/argument, and looks at Lockwood.
"See! Now we need a pancake rule too!" Lockwood laughs,
"We need a lot more rules according to Barnes, so I wouldn't worry about that, George. Also, you just break them all." George snorts, and says something that sounds suspiciously like,
"Ha! You can talk! Look at Lucy!" And while I busy myself eating pancakes, thinking of the poor tom cat stuck in Miss Smithers' dusty old attic and getting thoroughly annoyed at George, Lockwood excuses himself to go upstairs to have a shower.
Once I have finished stabbing each pancake, drowning them in syrup and eating them grumpily, I get up and go down to the rapier room to kill some dummies.
I dodged Joe and chop his arm off; 'Oops,' I think, but then I knock Esmeralda into my path, and she hits me onto the floor.
"Argh!" I exclaim, feeling slightly foolish, being hit in the face by a dummy. I hear George on the stairs, coming down to investigate, and I stand up quickly.
"What on earth! You've gone and killed Joe! Again!" I sigh,
"George?" he looks up, "It is a dummy." He sighs too.
"Yes, but now I have to go sew his arm back on. By hand. Urgh!" I sigh, once more, before leaving the room and heading upstairs to my room.
The man with the 'Haunted House,' was coming here in about an hour, according to George, so I decided that if the boys weren't going to set a good 1st impression, I might at least try to set a good example, so I go upstairs to change into something slightly better than my old ripped-at-the-jeans-and-about-to-die-but-I-cannot-be-bothered-to-go-and-buy-some-more-jeans jeans.
I opened my wardrobe and looked for some other jeans, or a skirt, or leggings, or something that would be suitable to wear. And I saw:
Leggings.
Leggings.
Leggings.
And a shirt.
That was it. Oh, and there was a skirt and some more leggings and two pairs of socks and a dwindling amount of underwear. Woo-hoo, let's be the one to set a good example with that wardrobe. Doesn't work, does it.
In the end, I settle for a tight black t-shirt and a cardigan, along with the classic leggings and skirt. And wait. And wait. And sit down, smooth my skirt and... Wait.
Finally, there is a knock at the door and Lockwood appears out of nowhere to answer it.
"GEORGE!" he shouts, "COME AN GREET THE GUEST!" George comes up, grumbling about the fact that it is way past lunch time and holding a needle, thread and Joe's hand, which appeared to have fallen off too.
I check the clock: 1:36. So not past lunch! We would normally have lunch at quarter to two, so George could wait another nine minutes. Hopefully he won't eat all the dohnuts which were laid out beautifully on the table along with some biscuits.
"Well, seeing as there isn't a dohnuts rule, I may as well take some," he says, and takes a dohnut and shoves it down his gob.
I sigh, and listen to the voices at the door.
It sounds like a very young man, but with a very boring voice, so I tune out and stare into space.
The man comes into the room, and me and George stand.
The man has thin, short hair, and is tall and thin. He wears a grey jacket, a grey hat, and a grey pair of trousers. The only part of him that wasn't grey was his eyes. Piercing blue, they stare through you.
The man talks about the nightly disturbances and how his grandfather died of a strange unknown illness when he was seventy, and how depressing his life was and then complained a bit more until George told his to shut up and go.
Well, he didn't put it quite like that, but the tone implied it.
Once the man had shut up and gone, Lockwood stood up.
"Luce, check through the bags again and I'll call a night cab, we have a case."