Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow (26 page)

“So I’ll cause a diversion,” Lockwood said, “that’ll distract everyone by the table. When they’re busy, you just walk straight past and into the room. Then you’ll have to be back out again with the skull in the blink of an eye.”

Now if it had been
me
making that suggestion, and I’d been putting it to Ted Daley or Tina Lane or one of the other lame-duck agents I’d worked with in my freelance career, there’d have followed a long series of questions as they tried to weasel their way out of doing anything remotely dangerous. But it was
Lockwood
making the suggestion, and me listening, and though my veins fizzed at the danger
he
was putting himself in, I didn’t waste time or effort. I only nodded. If Lockwood saw a way, I went with it. He trusted me. I trusted him. That’s how we stayed alive.

“Great,” he said. “Two minutes—and I’ll meet you back here. Then we stroll to the ladder and get out. Ready? Okay. Three, two, one—go.”

No sooner said than done. I set off, keeping to the curve of the wall. I slipped past the first few men in the line in front of me, ignoring their exclamations of annoyance. At every point I expected someone to pull me back. I drew nearer to the table, to where the Winkmans sat, surrounded by the men in black. And now I saw that there were two other men farther on, standing guard at a little arch, beneath the flashing neon light. At any moment I’d be spotted, and the enemy would descend on me….

There was a sudden cry behind me, a heavy blow, a roar of rage. Everyone at the table looked up. I could hear the sounds of repeated punches, rude insults, the shouting of the crowd. It was an almighty clamor. All eyes were on it. The men beside the archway left their posts and ran past me without a glance. Lockwood’s diversion was successfully under way.

Lockwood…My heart hammered against my chest. I was desperate to turn around, see what he was doing, but that wasn’t part of the plan. Without a backward glance I walked quickly past the table to the arch, and stepped through it into a small room.

W
hatever the skull’s complaints, I didn’t think the chamber had ever been a ladies’ room. It was far too spacious. It was a simple tiled recess, once probably used for railway supplies, and now a storeroom of a different kind. In its center, a long trestle table had been erected; on that table, and in neat piles on the floor to either side, sat silver-glass boxes and jars of varying size, and each one of those containers was full. I glimpsed bones, lumps of ragged cloth, pieces of jewelry, the usual bric-a-brac that makes up supernatural Sources. But there were powerful ones among them; I could feel the psychic buzzing even through the glass.

Very
powerful, some of them. There, in a silver-glass box halfway up one pile, I spied the Ealing Cannibal’s tooth collection.

And there, propped precariously at the end of the table, a certain familiar ghost-jar.

The ichor that surrounded the skull was thick and syrupy, but tiny pulses of green throbbed in its center, and the ghost’s voice echoed in my mind.

“At last! Am I glad to see you! Right, stab this guy quickly, and let’s be going.”

I didn’t answer. I needed to concentrate. I was not the only person in the room.

Behind the table, sitting on a plastic folding chair, was a man. A small man in a black suit with a dull blue tie. Those aspects I could instantly attest to. The rest was curiously vague; even as I looked at him, the details were slipping from my mind. He had nondescript brown hair, slicked back away from a bland, slightly shapeless face; he also had an expression of mild concentration; the tip of his tongue protruded from the side of his mouth. He had a cigarette in one hand, and with the other he was making notes on a piece of paper with a pen. But distinguishing features that would pick him out in a crowd? None.

Something about this overt and almost aggressive ordinariness made me assume that he was not the person I was looking for. He was a bookkeeper, an underling—certainly not the mysterious collector for whom the Winkmans toiled. But another part of my mind was jolted to sudden alertness. I felt as though I had seen him before.

Even as I made this connection, the skull’s voice came again.
“Beware this man,”
it said.
“He doesn’t look like much, but he’s dangerous. Oh, great—I see you forgot your sword.”

The little man looked up and saw me standing in the doorway. “Who are you, please? You are not welcome here.”

It was a precise, finicky, almost waspish sort of voice, and now I
knew
I was right. It was familiar to me. A voice that dealt in figures and paperwork and bureaucratic details, as well as the qualities of the strange, unpleasant psychic relics on the tabletop before him. A voice that kept tabs on things, that reported on them to others…

“Who are you?” the man asked again.

I’d met him. Not so long ago.

“Fiddler, sir,” I said, giving a small salute. “Jane Fiddler. Mrs. Winkman sent me. There’s been a mistake with one of the items. That manky skull in the jar. We should have brought you a different skull, sir. This one’s a dud.”

“Dud?” The little man frowned over at the jar, then down at his jottings. “It’s in an official containment vessel. Old, too; it’s the style of jar used by the Fittes Agency years ago. They didn’t often make mistakes.”

“Did with this one, sir. The thing’s got almost no psychic force. Old bit of junk that needs burning, Mrs. Winkman says. She’s sent for the good skull now; it’ll be along in a minute. I’m to take the useless one away. She sends her apologies.” I made a sort of tentative saunter toward the skull.

“Apologies? From Adelaide Winkman?” The man rested his cigarette carefully in an ashtray and folded his hands over his neat little belly. “That doesn’t sound like her.”

“The mix-up’s caused all sorts of problems. Can you hear that racket?” I swiveled a thumb toward the door, where loud thumps and shouts could still be heard. Anxiety for Lockwood welled inside me, but I kept my voice calm. “Some of the boys out there are getting very worked up.”

The man sniffed. “How tiresome. You people really are revolting.” With an irritated gesture he picked up the piece of paper before him. It was attached to a plastic clipboard—and, with sudden startling clarity, I realized who he was.

Five nights ago, in the foyer of the insurance company. I’d looked down from the balcony, battered and bruised from my encounter with the ghost of Emma Marchment; I’d seen the Rotwell group, with Mr. Farnaby, my stupid supervisor, reclining in his chair. And at Farnaby’s shoulder, supervising the supervisor, clipboard in his hand…

The man from the Rotwell Institute, the soft-spoken, anonymous Mr. Johnson.

I reached the table, stretched out casually for the ghost-jar. “I know. We
are
appalling, aren’t we? Sorry. Well, Adelaide will be along in a minute to explain.”

“My mother will be along to explain what?”

And with that, my outstretched hand curled up like a scalded spider and retreated from the jar. Slowly, stiffly, I looked back toward the arch.

It would be a lie to say the doorway was blocked by a menacing shadow.
Half
of it was, but only the lower portion, because while he was pretty broad (and broader still thanks to the ridiculous shoulder pads on his expensive fur coat) Leopold Winkman wasn’t very tall. He had the bulky but diminished physique of a wrestler who’d been hit by a grand piano falling from a height, and the wide brim of his hat and loud checks on his designer suit only made him look more horizontal still. He was in his mid-teens, his face dumpling-soft and malleable, with a toad-like mouth strongly reminiscent of his father, the imprisoned Julius Winkman. Despite his soft and dandified appearance, his character was reminiscent of Julius, too. In the London underworld, Leopold had a reputation for precocious ruthlessness. His eyes were bullet-hard and blue.

I didn’t say anything. We stood staring at each other.

Behind me, I heard Mr. Johnson’s bland tones. “She wants the skull in the jar.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Like your ma ordered. She
did
tell you, right? Go and ask her.”

I didn’t expect him to buy it; it was a hopeless situation. But while his brain worked, I ran my eyes over the tabletop next to me. I figured I had about five seconds.

“My ma?” Leopold Winkman said. “She wouldn’t have asked a grubby little punk like you to—” His face changed; grew suddenly slack. Whether it was the limitations of my disguise, or because he remembered who had owned the skull, or simply because of the way I’d looked at him, clear-eyed and contemptuous, he finally got it. “Wait…” He took a slow step back. “Wait,
I
know who you are. Lucy Carlyle!”

“Don’t worry.”
It was the skull’s whisper.
“You can take him, big girl like you.”

Leopold flung back his coat, revealing a pistol at his belt.

“Or possibly not,”
the skull said.

But I was already diving for the table, seizing the skull’s jar and tucking it under one arm, grabbing at another silver-glass box, and hurling it at Winkman. As I did so, I ducked. The gun went off. Glass shattered beside me; one of the boxes on the table exploded, fragments pattering against my back. The box I’d thrown cracked into Winkman’s shins, bowling him over. He dropped the gun and rolled onto his back, squealing.

“Shrimp down,”
the skull said.
“Nice.”

There was a concussion of air beside me, strong enough to move the wig across my head. From the shattered box in the center of the table rose a blue-white shape. Winkman’s bullet had freed its ghost. Mr. Johnson sensed it. He sprang off his chair, retreating to the back of the room.

I didn’t stay to see how he fared. With the ghost-jar in my arms, I leaped over Leopold and made for the arch….

Only to find it truly blocked this time—by a one-eyed relic-boy little older than me. He carried a curved knife with a serrated edge. Behind him, two of Winkman’s men were also stepping bulkily into view.

“My turn,”
the skull said.
“Lift up the jar and keep going.”

I lifted the ghost-jar. It flared with sudden green other-light—casting a vile radiance on the men ahead of me. The youth with the knife stared deep into the glass—and gave an unholy scream. He staggered back, knocking into the men behind him, sending them all careering against the wall.

The skull chuckled.
“How was that? Gave him my best face there.”

“Not bad.” I made like an eel, twisting between the sprawling bodies, hurling myself through the arch and out onto the platform, where a full-scale brawl was under way. At its heart was a slim young relic-man with hair like an evil hedgehog; he stood near the Winkmans’ table, swinging a long, black candlestick around his head and keeping the crowd at bay. Nearby, Adelaide Winkman was shouting orders and completely failing to bring the situation under control.

“This is your plan?”
the skull said.
“Interestingly fluid. What happens now?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

But Lockwood had been watching out for me. He danced forward, grasped the Winkmans’ table, and overturned it, sending a sparkling waterfall of coins crashing to the floor. In the same movement he leaped over it and came racing toward me. Behind him, Adelaide and her helpers were engulfed as a frantic tide of relic-men made efforts to reach the coins.

“The arch beyond you, Luce!” Lockwood cried. “Cross to the other platform!”

I turned—but at that moment Leopold Winkman burst out of the side room. He ducked under Lockwood’s viciously swinging candlestick, threw himself at me, and snatched at the ghost-jar under my arm. The impact knocked me over; Leopold and I tussled on the floor, kicking and punching. My wig fell off. I was conscious of Lockwood calling, of other people drawing near. All at once Leopold struck the side of my head. Lights burst in my eyes. My arm went loose; the ghost-jar was torn away.

“Lucy! Save me—”

“Skull!” My head rang with the blow. I raised it, blinking. Leopold and the jar were gone. I was lying on my back. Above me was a confusing blur of fighting forms—Lockwood, the Winkman flunkies, several relic-men. One man saw me move; he lifted a heavy stick to strike at me. Someone stuck out a dirty Wellington boot and tripped him. I glimpsed Flo’s tatted straw hat as he fell away. Then Lockwood was wrenching me to my feet, hauling me onward up the platform.

“Lucy…!”
A faint, despairing cry behind me in the crowd.

“The skull! Lockwood, I lost it—”

“I’m sorry. So sorry. But we
really
need to go.”

Lockwood’s face was bruised, his wig askew. His candlestick was gone. Together we ran toward the far end of the hall. The tunnel mouth was boarded up over here, but a connecting passage led to the southbound platform. We fled down it, pursued by a tide of noise.

“The ladder’s a no-go now,” Lockwood gasped. “It’ll have to be a tunnel.”

Fewer candles burned along the second platform, and there was no one on it. A few yards from us was the tunnel mouth, filled by another great pile of sandbags, salt, and iron. Lockwood and I jumped down onto the track, scrambled up to the top of the slope, and stared down into the blackness of the tunnel.