Lucy:
…
"So, George, did you get any further in your research?" I asked over breakfast.
George studied Kate carefully. She gave nothing away. It was like watching two mountains facing off against each other.
"No," he finally replied. "I'm afraid my resources have run out. Since I don't have the necessary permits."
He didn't take his eyes off Kate for a moment. He didn't even blink.
"I assume you're talking about library permits." Kate pursed her lips. "Bobby has them. If you want, I can ask him for the things you need."
George narrowed his eyes at her. "The things I need are hard to find. I have a process."
"And yet none of the steps in it involves a shower," Quill commented, leaning over the table to grab the marmalade.
George swatted Quill's hand with a spoon. He and Lockwood did one of those things where they had an entire conversation without speaking and barely looking at each other. It barely took the blink of an eye. Others might not even have noticed the communication unless they had seen the two working closely for years. Which I had.
"I mean no offence," Lockwood started carefully, "but I really don't want to bring more people in on this than absolutely necessary."
Kate made a bemused smile and looked around at us. "It's just Bobby."
Quill sat next to her, biting his lip, intensely studying the raw-bones I'd drawn on the thinking cloth. He didn't say anything.
"The more people who know, the more in danger we all are. Especially you," Lockwood pointed out to her.
She crossed her arms with a frown.
"He's not wrong, Kate. I know he wouldn't betray us on purpose, but how long do you honestly think he would last in an interrogation by Gale?" Quill asked her quietly. "It's safer for both of you."
Kate sighed and leaned back in her chair.
"I just already feel guilty about lying about us," she told Quill. "He got so angry with me that we had apparently kept this big secret from him."
Quill scoffed. "So that's why I haven't heard from him."
"He only just started talking to me again," she lamented.
Lockwood made a small wince and looked at Kate. "I'll have to be honest uh - Kate and say that I think it's great that you're here for breakfast. Truly. But I'd rather like to keep the scheming separate. The less you know, the less danger we're in."
Kate pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow at him.
"Lockwood –" Holly protested weakly but was cut off by him.
"I mean it seriously, Holly. It's a dangerous game we're playing. We can't let the wrong people know our moves,"
"Seriously, Lockwood? 'wrong people'?" I blurted.
Lockwood gave a sheepish smile and raised his hands placatingly towards Kate. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I just think you're in a vulnerable pos –"
Kate cut him off by raising her hand. She looked at her plate while tapping her finger on the table. When she looked up, it was with a face of cool detachment. She smiled at Lockwood, but it didn't reach her eyes.
"It's fine. I need to go soon anyways. You can plot then."
I saw Lockwood swallow hard and Kate's mouth curled in a small smirk.
Slowly, conversation started to flow again. Kate calmly finished two donuts, a plate of waffles, and a scone, and washed it down, slowly drinking a cup of tea.
Never once did her stare stray from Lockwood who shrunk in his seat. With every little squirm, cough, swallow and pull at his collar, Kates smirk grew. By the end, his face was pink, and he sat, staring at his plate.
Quill looked highly amused.
"Well, it's been nice," Kate stood and smiled widely, "but now I need to go. I need to get home and get changed before work."
I remembered something. "Wait, you can take one of my suitcases! Someone's probably watching outside and with what Holly said, we can pretend that you're leaving to go home!"
I hurried upstairs and grabbed one of the cases and emptied it on my bed. Then I grabbed the skull and ran down to follow Kate out.
Goodbyes were said, I dropped the jar off on the counter and walked Kate out. The taxi Holly had called for her was already there. I hugged her, both for show and because I wanted to.
"Thank you for helping us on the case. We really couldn't have done it without you."
She smiled and took my hands. "Any time, Lucy. And thank you for having me for breakfast. I have to admit that I had fun." She winked and went down to the taxi with a small skip. I stayed and waved until the taxi was gone before going back in. I thought it was a nice touch.
When I came back in the kitchen, Lockwood was still sitting in his chair, with his arms crossed. He blew out his cheeks before standing up. He shook himself, almost like a dog and then he was back to his normal animated self.
He smiled brightly as if he hadn't just spent the last forty-five minutes sitting in his chair like a child that had been scolded. "Right then. George. What do you have and what are you missing?"
Holly shook her head but didn't say anything.
George hurried to his room and returned with a small stack of papers. Holly drew the blinds and Lockwood shut the door to the hall. I opened the lever on the jar.
"Oh. Joy. You brought me down for a lecture."
George cleared his throat dramatically and Quill rolled his eyes.
"Just get on with it, Cubbins. Melt my brain."
Lockwood made a small cough. "What Quill means is; please, amaze us."
The skull snorted in derision.
George narrowed his eyes at Quill. "First of all, take a look at this guy."
He slammed a piece of paper with a copy of a photo, taken from a newspaper. I squinted at the grainy image.
It was a man, getting out of a car. Half his face was in shadow, but the lines, the eyebrows, and the long grey hair were clear.
"That's the ghost from the mausoleum," I breathed.
The others leaned in.
"Who is he?" Lockwood asked.
"That would be a certain Dr Neil Clarke. He was Marissa Fittes' personal doctor. He was the one who saw her in her final days, the one who signed the death certificate and confirmed cause of death to the media. According to him, she died from a 'wasting disease that affected all the organs of her body, which had all the aspects of premature old age'. She stayed at Fittes House, didn't go to the hospital. Only Dr Clarke and Dr Clarke alone had access to her at the end. After her death, he fades from the records."
Holly scoffed. "Not surprising as he was lying in her tomb," she murmured.
"But Marissa didn't die. And the one person who knew it was silenced immediately afterwards," Lockwood concluded.
"No wonder he's so livid," I said.
George nodded. "So that's our friend in the tomb. The next issue is how Marissa reappears as Penelope. We agree that that's what happened, right?"
The skull made a disgruntled sound. "You ought to by now! I've been telling you long enough!"
"You're a compulsive liar," I said. "Not you, George, the skull."
George waved it off.
"Actually, I haven't quite figured out the transformation process yet, but I have an interesting lead, which we'll get to in a moment. But what we know is that after Marissa's supposed death, her daughter Margaret takes over the agency."
Quill nodded and George continued.
"She wasn't really suited for the job, she was quiet and reserved, but was head of Fittes for just three years before she died."
Holly frowned. "How did she die?"
George shrugged. "I haven't been able to find any proper death certificate."
"The rumour around Fittes is that she killed herself." Quill supplied.
"In the end, it doesn't matter all that much," George waved him off, "because then 'Penelope' pops up. Now, she appears to be a real person – I've found birth certificates, hospital records and everything, but it doesn't match what the skull's telling us. It must be forged.
I huffed. "But how did she do it? How did she make herself look like that?"
George looked around us with the air of a magician about to reveal that he had our card.
We waited patiently. Even Quill, even though he looked unimpressed with the theatrics.
He took another photocopy out of his pile of paper. "I found and article in an old Kent newspaper, from sixty years ago when Marissa and Tom Rotwell were just starting out as a team. Back then, almost nobody believed in ghosts if you can believe it so the two were considered complete eccentrics. The Problem hadn't begun to spread yet, so the journalist makes a lot of jokes at their expense."
He cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "Marissa Fittes is a slim, bony girl with short, cropped hair and an attitude of unusual intensity. In clipped confident tones she tells me of their strange supernatural experiences "the dead are among us," she says, "and they bring with them wisdom and secrets of the past." She ignores my scepticism and tells me she has already written a monograph on the substance of spirits, which she terms "ectoplasm". "It is the immortal stuff that is inside all of us," she says. "Understanding it will bring great benefits to humanity. Perhaps, if we can exploit its transformative power, it will give us control over life and death." At present, she admits regretfully, her ideas fall on stony ground. Having been unable to find a magazine that would accept her piece, she has had it printed at her own expense."
Quill scoffed and leaned back in his chair. "'The transformative power of ectoplasm'? Sounds like nonsense to me."
Lockwood frowned. "There's nothing about any of this in her published writing, is there? Not that I can remember."
George shook his head. "No, and that's what makes it interesting and why I want to track it down. It's taken me months, but this morning at a remote library, I found a reference to Occult Theories by an anonymous writer. It was privately printed in Kent about the correct time and only three copies are known to exist. One at the Black Library at Fittes House, one was bought by our friends at the Orpheus Society and one went to the Spiritualist Museum in Greenwich."
Quill leaned forward "Where, exactly was it printed? Through which company?"
George took off his glasses and rubbed them in his shirt. "I didn't take it down."
Quill rolled his eyes. "I remember something about us having an office in Kent that shut down in the seventies. I don't think we print privately in general, but maybe I could check our archives to see if I can find it?" he offered. "It would be a lot safer than going somewhere out of bounds."
George narrowed his eyes at him.
"Hell, you can even come with, if you want," Quill offered.
George took a deep breath. "No, it's fine. But if you don't find it within two days, I'm going to Greenwich."
Quill rolled his eyes and took an apple. "Whatever."
"This is important," George continued, "We might solve some real mysteries with this."
Lockwood beamed. "This is great. If we can piece it all together, we can go to Barnes. Or the newspapers. Make everything public. We just need some concrete proof."
"I think I've cracked the wider issue too. The Problem." He looked at us over his glasses. "It all goes back to forbidden acts more than fifty years ago."
"Good god, Cubbins. Just get on with it. Either that or somebody pass me a pillow." Quill complained.
George pushed his glasses up. "Well, if that's how it is, I'll keep it short. Marissa and Tom Rotwell started the Problem. The end."
Lockwood coughed a little but plastered a grin on his face. "Now, George, I'm sure Quill didn't mean to sound so wearily contemptuous of all your hard work, did you, Quill?" he bit out.
Quill smirked. "No, no, that was completely coincidental."
"See, George, continue," Lockwood smiled.
George rolled his eyes. "Fine. Now, they're first heard of sixty years back but back then no one took them seriously. A few years later, they did."
"Because the Problem had begun to spread." Holly interjected.
"Exactly, and they were the only ones fighting it. Slowly, their methods gained recognition, all the things agencies use today – salt, iron, and the like. That's where it started."
I nodded. "They had some famous cases in the beginning too. The Mud Lane Phantom, the Highgate Terror –"
"Precisely, but there's another way of reading the data. I went to work, mapping out all the cases they had and where they worked, and the odd thing is that it seems as it wherever those two go, ghosts seem to follow, not the other way around." George told us excitedly.
Holly cocked her head. "You think they did something to stir the ghosts up?" She took a small sip of her green tea.
George nodded confidently. "And we all know what really makes them go crazy."
I looked at Lockwood whose knuckles had gone white.
"You think they were visiting the Other Side." I whispered.
George nodded. "I think Marissa had an easier time with it though, but I'll get back to that. So, we know they were a team for four or five years after which they suddenly split up. No one knows why. Immediately after, Marissa starts her own agency. Rotwell follows a few months after and they've been rivals ever since."
"Until now," Lockwood added. "Now 'Penelope' or Marissa is in charge of both."
"Exactly. Anyway, we met Tom Rotwell's grandson a few months ago. Remember the things he was using? The Sources, the armour – it must've taken years to prepare but it still felt off. Clumsy in a way like someone trying to copy something but doing it the hard way. Like trying to recreate a lovely dish without knowing the ingredients."
"Trust you to make anything about eating," Quill murmured and took a bite off his apple.
I threw half a biscuit at him and watched it bounce off his nose. He glared at me with crumbs on his entire face, but it wasn't too severe.
George rolled his eyes. "My point is that what Rotwell was trying to do was pathetic. We know he did it in Chelsea and later at Aldbury Castle, but all that clumsiness? He was still in a test-phase. But if he was just in a test-phase, then who was been stirring ghosts up for the past sixty years?"
"Marissa," Lockwood gasped.
"Ding-ding-ding, right in one. And I bet she's doing it somewhere nice and private. Somewhere she won't be disturbed. Somewhere that no-one would think to look. A mysterious building where many parts are off-limits…" he trailed off, looking at Quill.
"No way… The Strand? Just in the middle of everything?" Quill exclaimed.
"That's where the entire problem is emanating from."
Quill rubbed his face.
"But why?" Holly asked, shaking her head. "That's what I don't understand. Why do they keep doing it? Why take the risk? And with the terrible consequences. All the people who have died because of this."
George's eyes hardened. "Whatever she's up to, it's obviously working. Sixty years after starting out, she's still here, she's rich and easily the most powerful person in Britain."
I went to refill the kettle and kicked the bottom of the cabinet. It wasn't fair. All the people that woman had hurt. I slammed the kettle down on the stove, sloshing water all over the place.
"George, you said something earlier about Marissa having it easier on the Other Side. What did you mean by that?" Lockwood asked.
I leaned against the counter, looking at the others.
"She's a Listener. One of the two most powerful there are."
He looked up at me with a small smirk.
I scoffed. "And what's that supposed to mean? I don't go waltzing around on the Other Side," I protested.
"Well…" the skull trailed off.
"That was one time!"
"I was thinking about it and it's so obvious. Marissa talks to spirits. It brings her closer to them. Just like you. After all, out of all of us, who is closest to ghosts? Whose conversations with the skull gave us the most important clue?"
The others turned their heads and looked at me. Like they were studying me or seeing me in a different light.
The skull was having fun with nuzzling up against the jar.
"It's like I've always told you, Lucy. You and I are a team. No, we're more than that, we're an item. Practically soulmates. Everybody knows it,"
"We are not." I growled.
"Are so. In fact, I bet that by the end of this, you'll run away with me."
My face fell a bit, but I thought I recovered quickly enough. "In your dreams," I glared at it, but the eyes in the plasm narrowed at me.
"Don't ask me what it said, it's not relevant."
George grabbed another biscuit. "See – Marissa talks to ghosts much like you do, except maybe they have more than just lovers' tiffs. Who knows what sort of things they might have told her? It could be all sorts of secrets about life and death,"
I snorted. "Then she was lucky. This one doesn't know any sort of secrets."
Lockwood who had been studying the skull for a while suddenly spoke. "What I'd like to know, skull. Is that if you had an entire conversation with Marissa Fittes, then why didn't she keep you?"
"What?" the skull started.
I cocked my head. "That's actually a really good question."
"You see, I've read her memoirs and re-read them recently and she just goes on and on and on about Type Threes and how rare and powerful they are, but if they're really so rare, how come you wound up in the basement collecting dust?" Lockwood asked, leaning forward so his face was right up against the glass.
The plasm formed a face that scowled at Lockwood before it changed into a little smirk.
"Tell pretty boy this," it told me "I'll say that she didn't seem surprised at my being able to speak. At my robust language, yes. At some of my choicer suggestions about what she could do with herself also. But me actually speaking? That was old news to her. No shock and awe there."
I repeated it to the others. Without calling Lockwood a pretty boy.
"So, she had been talking to another Type Three."
"Maybe, maybe not, but I can't imagine her finding a better conversationalist than –" I shut off the valve numbly.
The skull frowned at me.
"Maybe the book we're looking for will shed some light on it." George said and looked at Quill.
Lockwood nodded. "Another little thing I have to bring to the table, is this."
He pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket and put it on the table.
Holly snatched it up. "Orange juice – no bits, Choco Leibniz, milk, tomatoes, donuts – this is certainly fascinating, Lockwood, but how is it relevant?"
Lockwood's cheeks pinked and he rummaged a bit more about in his trouser pocket.
"Aha! Here!" he held another small piece of paper up, victoriously.
Quill sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "Just get on with it, Tony."
"Right. So, I saw Barnes at the fair yesterday –"
"I didn't see him," I frowned.
"Well, he was there, and he slipped this into my hand."
He unfolded the note and put it on the table. "He wants to meet tomorrow at eight. That's the address."
"What is it about?" George asked.
Lockwood shook his head. "Don't know. It was all done rather discreetly. I don't think he wants anyone to know." He looked around at each of us. "Do we have any cases?" he asked Holly.
She winced. We have two. Both at seven, but I can call the clients and re-schedule for nine. Then we'll still have an excuse to go out if we're stopped.
Lockwood nodded. "We'll make it work. You probably shouldn't go, Quill."
Quill shrugged. "I wasn't planning on it. I trust you don't need a nanny. Besides, I'll be busy at the archives." He saluted George with his mug and George gave him a nod back. I wrote that down as progress between the two.
After breakfast and after Quill left, I went in the basement.
I started unpacking our things from yesterday's case, putting everything right. I was about to put the chains away when a throat cleared. I dropped the chains with a bang onto the metal shelf.
"Sorry." Lockwood smiled sheepishly.
I sighed heavily. I hoped he wasn't there for a repeat performance or another argument.
"About yesterday," he started. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry."
I lifted an eyebrow, a bit confused.
"Kissing you, I mean." He winced. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have – I just wanted to see if uh –" he cut himself off and pressed his lips into a hard line.
He rubbed his face and sighed, evidently having a hard time finding the words.
He took a deep breath. "It was very good –"
I couldn't help the laugh that escaped, and he looked accusingly at me.
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I'm standing here, trying to be serious, Lucy."
"I'm sorry, it just reminded me of something." I smiled at him.
"Like what?"
"Well, someone once told me that a kiss between two people should bloody well be more than good,"
I crossed my arms and looked at the floor after seeing his confused expression.
"I uh – I don't know what to say to that. I just didn't want you to be angry with me."
I sighed heavily. "I'm not angry. I just have a hard time figuring things out and you really aren't making things any easier for me. Honestly, I don't get any of you. I mean, odds are that someone better will come along, and you'll want them instead. What's the point?"
He scoffed. "I'm having an awfully hard time imagining that happening anytime soon. You're one of a kind, Lucy."
I sat down, hugging myself. "What does that even mean?"
He smiled and sat down next to me. "I thought you knew that by now."
Something inside me snapped. "What exactly am I supposed to know? I know that you think I'm a good agent, but for how long? How long do I have left? Two years? Three at the most? When I lose my talent – that's it. I'm nothing."
I felt my eyes getting warm and tears gathering.
He sat down next to me, wide-eyed. "Is that – is that really what you think of yourself? What you think I think of you?"
"What else am I supposed to believe, Lockwood? This is all new to me! I've never had anyone care about me before!" I wrinkled my nose. "I mean if not before, then why now? I don't know! The one thing I do know, is that I'm a damn good agent and that's all you've ever seemed to care about. But that's temporary! What about after? All I have is my Talent! Without it I'll be worthless!"
I swiped furiously at the tears, trying to pull myself together. It was embarrassing.
He frowned and bit his lip. Then he got up and paced. After a few rounds, he reached out towards me.
"Come with me."
I made a small scoff. I was crying and then he just does that.
He rolled his eyes slightly and gave me a gentle smile. "I want to show you something."
I got up without taking his hand and he chuckled a bit.
He went upstairs and into the hall, putting on his coat. "Are we going somewhere?" I asked.
"We're going for a walk. Bring your rapier, just in case."
I shrugged and put my jacket on. I closed the Velcro strap on my rapier and followed him out the door.
We walked in silence for a bit before Lockwood interrupted it.
"Have I ever told you that I like the way you walk?"
I giggled wetly. "What? That is so random."
He grinned at me. "It's true. You walk with purpose. I barely have to slow down. Holly is a nightmare to walk with, have you noticed?"
I laughed. "She does take exceptionally short steps, now that you mention it."
"But somehow she always manages to be on time anyways. I don't know how she does it." He shook his head.
"So, where are we going?"
He smiled slightly but didn't look at me. "You'll see."
It wasn't far. Not even five minutes and we were there.
Where, you ask?
Marylebone Cemetery. It was one of the abandoned ones. It was a shame, really because some of these old cemeteries had actually been quite beautiful.
This one was completely surrounded by iron panels. It was covered by rust and the panels had been replaced in some places, making it look like the world's most depressing patchwork.
"Look, if you put your boot in there, there's a post you can stand on and then you should be able to reach the top of the panels."
He made a demonstration and in half a second he had elegantly swung himself over the top of the panelling.
"Think you can do that?"
I almost laughed in disbelief, but I tried anyway. The first time, I almost fell backwards and let out a rather undignified yelp. I caught Lockwood laughing behind his hand and I threw a pebble at him.
He grinned "If you can reach me, I'll help pull you up."
I just about managed to grab his hand and with a lot of scrabbling and swearing, I finally ended up, lying awkwardly on my belly on top of the stone wall that was behind the panels.
"Don't worry about it. It's just because you're shorter than me," he remarked.
I was completely fine with pretending that.
"It's easy enough to get down. The wall's crumbling a bit there. Makes for easy footholds."
"How do you know all this?" I asked and made a small squeak when I slipped in the rubble.
"I come here from time to time. It's peaceful," he said quietly.
We came down and I hadn't quite understood how high the bramble went until I had my feet on the ground again. The cemetery was completely overgrown.
"This way," he tapped my arm and nodded towards a narrow path.
I followed him and ended up going sideways. My hair snagged on the brambles and thorns scratched through my leggings. I nearly stumbled several times but slowly, the brambles receded. A few plots in front of us weren't quite so overgrown, but there were still clear signs of neglect. Ivy had taken over many of the plots. The headstones were mostly covered in algae.
Suddenly, we came to a stop and Lockwood made an awkward shrug. "This is it."
He nodded towards the two headstones we were standing next to.
They were relatively new – certainly, some of the newest in the cemetery. They were modern, polished dark granite with clean lines.
On one was written in bold letters:
CELIA LOCKWOOD
DONALD LOCKWOOD
-KNOWLEDGE SETS US FREE
The other, smaller one simply said,
JESSICA LOCKWOOD
I wanted to say something, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what to say.
"It wasn't long after my parents died that they shut down the cemetery for safety reasons so there was some controversy about putting Jessica here. Quill's mum pushed it through. You haven't met her yet, but you'll soon find out she can be quite… persuasive." He pursed his lips. "Of course, it was made easier because it's a family plot, the uh – space is already bought and paid for."
His eyes shifted a bit to the empty space on the right where there was room for one more. "It's nice, you know. Keeping the family together. I come here sometimes so I'm not left out."
I looked around at the nearby trees that were completely bark-less and sliced up with both old and new marks of abuse. Combined with the savagely chopped and hacked up brambles and ivy at the edge of the plot, I couldn't help but wonder, exactly how much time he actually spent here.
"Thank you for bringing me here," I managed to say.
He sighed and sat down on a nearby overturned headstone. "Sometimes, I find it hard to see the point. What we do, the things we see," he continued and looked at his hands. "All I've ever wanted to do was be an agent. Ever since Quill came and showed me his rapier and let me read his Fittes Manual. It seemed so cool," he made a small self-deprecating laugh.
"Then my parents died and I..." he trailed off, with his eyes fixed on their headstone.
I wrapped my arms around myself. "I don't think you've ever told me how it happened,"
He gave me a sad smile. "Come here," he said and patted the headstone he was sitting on "There's room enough."
I carefully crossed over to him and sat down. He didn't respond for a long time and I was starting to think that he was either shutting down like usual or maybe he'd just forgotten what I'd asked.
"It actually wasn't too far from here. Euston road. That underpass."
I blinked a little. "So, it was a car accident?"
He nodded. "A rather spectacular one. I was very young. They were making their way for Manchester for a lecture. The lecture. It was supposed to be a summary of all their findings over several years of research. Their cab was hit by a lorry. It caught fire and apparently along with the spilled fuel, it burned so powerfully it took them an hour to put it out. They had to re-lay that part the road."
"That's terrible," I gasped.
"It's alright. It happened a long time ago. I barely remember them now." He looked at their headstone.
"I remember the police coming. I could see the blinking lights from my room. There were agents there too for some reason. Fittes agents incidentally. I was looking for Quill down there, he'd just started then. Anyway, they told Jessica and our nanny, but no one told me until the next day. Pointless because I'd been eavesdropping. I'd heard it all already. Double pointless because I was the first to know. I'd seen their shades in the garden, looking at me hours before, when it happened."
"Did you know they were dead?"
He nodded. "I think I did. Deep down. It's just that everything has felt so pointless. My parents died in an accident. Then a ghost kills my sister. I was so angry. I've been angry at everyone and everything and it's been driving me for all these years. I wanted to fight and destroy as many ghosts as I possibly could before I died myself. That's it, really. That's all I wanted."
He shrugged and looked down.
I looked at him with wide eyes. "You can't mean that."
He smiled gently at me. "No. I don't. Not anymore, but that's probably why I've been focusing so much on how good an agent you are. I still haven't the foggiest about what I want to do in the future. I do know that I want you in it though," He gave me a small smile. "I just need to figure out in which capacity."
He looked at me carefully and I nodded slowly.
"We'll figure it out," I promised him.
"It's all thanks to you, you know. You've showed me that there's more to life than just ghosts. You've pushed me in the right direction. That's why it hit me so hard when you left, and when I thought that Quill might take you away from me. Suddenly everything felt pointless again." he told me while looking at his hands.
That was a daunting thought.
"So, all this with not having worth beyond your Talents is complete nonsense to me," he continued. "You mean something special to all of us. You know how nervous and jittery Holly was in the beginning and how confident she is now? You did that."
I scoffed.
"No, you did. She even told me so. You're an inspiration to her. Don't even get me started about George. You know how ornery he can be, but he would do anything for you. Have you noticed that your favourite food is somehow magically on the table after a bad case?"
I quirked a small smile. That was typically George.
"And I didn't just hire you for your looks."
"But looks were in the equation?" I asked incredulously.
"What? I like to have something nice to look at," he defended with a grin. "And I needed someone to balance out George's..." he trailed off, waving vaguely in the air, trying to find the words. "Well, George," he ended up with.
"It's quite impressive what you can do. I'm not going to lie, I really do find your work amazing, but it isn't so much what you do, that we admire and care about, it's who you are that matters the most to all of us."
It wasn't until he wiped my cheeks that I realised I was crying. He held my head gently gave me a lopsided smile before kissing my forehead.
He bumped our foreheads together a bit before jumping up and stretching.
"Well, we best get going then. The others will wonder where we are."
He clapped his hands together before reaching one out to me with a large grin.
Suddenly the Lockwood I knew was back in full force, but now I could see through him. I thought back to those months ago when Quill had advised me that if I wanted to start a relationship with Lockwood, I ought to make sure that he wasn't hiding anything from me.
And now, here we were. He had let me in. He had bared his past for me completely. There were no more secrets.
Then why was I lingering on the threshold?
…
So, this got a bit long-ish too, but I did also borrow parts of it (Thank you Jonathan Stroud).
I had a hard time writing the graveyard scene, so I hope you enjoyed it!
Thank you guys for reviewing! I really appreciate it when you do!
Regarding the questionable ways, Lockwood treated Lucy in the books - I saw it too.
Please don't forget to leave a review on the way out!