The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(102)

‘Oh, come,’ Marissa said. ‘It looks odd, I grant you, but the benefits greatly outweigh the drawbacks. Besides, what alternative was there? My own body was worn out years ago – you see it in the cabinet behind you. Finally I lay near death, surviving only by pure will. The doctor who tended to me was a fool. He would have had me coffined up and buried! But my spirit raged for life. Instead of accepting death, it jumped across to a living vessel, my dear grand-daughter, Penelope, who at that time was still a girl. I had to wait a few years while the body grew – and in that time I was forced to let my daughter, Margaret, run my company.’ The face twisted unpleasantly. ‘Margaret was weak in mind and body – she was not a good ambassador for my organization. Fortunately I was soon able to … remove her and retake control.’

‘Marissa …’ the spirit said. The golden coils stirred in warning.

The woman nodded. ‘Ezekiel grows impatient. He wishes to finish you. What else is there to say? You can die with full understanding. I have told you all.’

‘Not quite,’ the skull said. ‘There’s just one point, Lucy. If Marissa doesn’t need her horrid old body any more, why does she keep it in here?’

That was something I’d been wondering too. It gave me my final, desperate idea. The golden spirit was moving in to kill me. One of its coils of light bent like a tentacle, flowed in my direction. I ducked away from it and, as I did so, reached out behind me into the cabinet. I caught hold of the stand that supported the twisted, blackened corpse and wrenched it free, pulling the whole thing outwards. It toppled from the cabinet, fell across me, striking the floor hard. One of the legs fell off. Marissa gave a cry of pain and rage; she sprang down to clasp the body, and the golden coil of light jerked back to give her room.

Me? I picked up the ghost-jar and ran at full tilt towards the lift.

I didn’t get far.

Air exploded out across the penthouse suite. Sofas and coffee tables shifted, papers and magazines were blown skywards. The jar and I were sent tumbling head over heels across the carpet.

I wrenched myself up again. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that the body was already back inside the cabinet. Floating papers drifted to the floor. Two figures were coming towards me through them: a radiant spirit and a woman in a dark-green dress.

The spirit waved a hand. The mirrors on the wall behind me cracked and shattered. The glass didn’t fall. The fragments rotated outwards. They shook like they were trying to pull themselves free. Great jagged shards broke clear and shot towards me like horizontal hail.

‘Oh, not this again.’ I sprinted for cover. ‘I hate this Poltergeist stuff!’

Glass ripped the air around me. I threw myself over the top of the nearest sofa and fell to the floor behind it. Here I lay, pressed between it and the wall, as the rain of glass sliced into the cushions on the other side. The point of one especially long fragment jabbed right through the sofa back just above my ear. The barrage ended. Shards dropped onto the carpet. I could hear Marissa’s heels crunching through them.

The jar had spilled out of my hands and was lying horizontally next to me, the ghost’s face gazing into mine. It would be a lie to say it looked any nicer than usual, though the grimace it wore was possibly an attempt at a smile.

‘You know this is the time, Lucy,’ it said.

I stared at it. ‘I can think of something.’

‘You really can’t. In thirty seconds you’re going to die.’

I bent low, squinted under the sofa: yep, there were Marissa’s high-heeled shoes crossing the glass-strewn carpet with Ezekiel’s radiance shimmering alongside. Little twists of ice formed on the carpet where the spirit passed. Gold tentacles were feeling their way towards where I hid. No respite.

‘The hammer’s in your belt,’ the skull said. ‘Use it.’

There was blood on my face, and just above my hip. So the glass had struck me. My side felt odd: cold and not my own. I grinned. ‘I was waiting for a real emergency.’

‘OK, fine, and while you’re waiting, why not die here behind an ugly sofa, alongside all the dust balls and earwigs and coins people have lost. You want that?’

‘No.’

The first tentacles were probing under the sofa, radiant and bitterly cold.

‘You want that old hag to win?’

‘No.’

‘Do you trust me?’ the skull said.

I looked at it. I didn’t see the hideous, gurning face. I thought of the sardonic, spiky-haired youth standing on the Other Side.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sort of.’

‘Then break the bloody glass.’

I scrabbled at my belt, felt for the little hammer. My fingers were wet with blood, and the handle slipped through them. I caught hold and drew it out.

Already it was almost too late.

The sofa moved in front of me. Slowly at first, then with sudden violence, a psychic force swept it aside. I was left exposed, my back against the wall, with the ghost-jar in my lap and the hammer in my hand.

My enemies approached.

In some ways it was hard to know which of them was living and which was dead. They were very close together. Marissa Fittes’ dark dress shimmered with other-light that extended from the figure at her side. Her face was ghastly with it. Her outline was wreathed in tendrils of gold light, making it curiously insubstantial. By contrast the ghost beside her, radiant and smiling, seemed almost solid, fizzing with energy.