The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(106)

A blast of psychic force swept out across the room. Lockwood and I both staggered backwards – but we weren’t the focus of the assault. One of the sofas over by the wall was plucked from the ground. The spirit gestured; the sofa whirled forwards with appalling speed, straight for where Lockwood and I were standing.

Straight for our heads. We couldn’t react; we couldn’t do anything. I closed my eyes.

And opened them.

I hadn’t been struck dead. Nothing had happened. The sofa was hanging a few feet from me, quivering, shaking in mid-air.

Over by the desk, the spirit Ezekiel gestured again; the sofa twitched, jerked towards us just a little, then sprang back, pulled by a countering force. I turned and looked …

And saw the skull’s ghost standing there.

The thin-faced youth wore a nonchalant, almost bored expression. He was inspecting the fingers of one hand, as if he’d noticed a trace of dirt beneath his nails. The other hand was, however, raised; it made a gentle pulling motion, and as it did so, the sofa jerked violently backwards through the air, away from us, away from Ezekiel’s control. The youth flicked his arm aside, and the sofa swung with it, spinning across the room to smash into the wall.

Ezekiel gave a cry of rage. ‘Foul spirit! You dare defy me?’

‘What kind of a line is that?’ the skull’s ghost said. ‘Honestly, can you imagine spending any time with him? He’s so po-faced! I mean, where’s the humour, where’s the sarcasm? Where are the gratuitous bum jokes? Eternity with him would really drag.’

Ezekiel gestured again. A filing cabinet rose from behind the desk, came whipping towards us. The youth flapped a hand irreverently; the cabinet reversed its spin, shot back past Ezekiel’s head and crashed out through the window.

The spirit was black with anger. It tried again. A storm of air raged around us – it was like the full fury of a Poltergeist – but met an answering wind from the skull that nullified it, cancelled it out.

All through this, Marissa Fittes had been as transfixed as Lockwood and me. Now she recovered herself; with a snarl of rage she stabbed at me with her rapier. The skull’s ghost pointed a finger. A spirit-wind picked Marissa off her feet and sent her flying back to strike the side of the desk. She slumped across it, moaning.

‘Ooh,’ the skull said. ‘Sore! I felt that.’

‘Lucy,’ Lockwood cried. ‘The Source!’

But I was already moving. I threw myself at Marissa’s side, wrenched the rapier out of her feeble grasp and hurled it away. Then I ripped the bracelet of jade stones from her wrist. It was freezing cold; the feel of it almost made me cry out. I fumbled in my pouch for the silver net I knew was there.

The spirit Ezekiel gave a hideous yell. Its nimbus of light died away. The radiant form shrank and hardened, became a dark and bestial shape with glowing eyes and gaping mouth that sprang at me over the desk.

But I’d already pulled the net out of its pouch and wrapped it around the bracelet. The spirit seemed to disintegrate as it came, pieces falling off like twists of burning paper, until it was just the eyes that kept on rushing – and even these grew pale, and faded into threads of smoke that were dispersed by fresh air coming through the broken window.

Ezekiel was gone.

‘I don’t know who he was,’ Lockwood said, ‘but he wasn’t healthy company. That bracelet’s one for the furnaces tomorrow, Luce.’ Limping slightly, he walked over to the wall cabinet and flung the doors open, casting light on the horrible contorted body within. He shook his head in wonder. ‘And look what a state he’s left Marissa in,’ he said. ‘In some way, her spirit’s still bound to her body. Since she’s refused to die, since she’s in some sense still alive, this … this object must be still alive too.’ He winced. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?’

He left the cabinet and came across to where I stood beside the thin, grey, cloudy apparition of the spiky-haired youth. The skull’s spirit was again affecting complete unconcern, pretending to be studying the cover of one of the fallen magazines.

Lockwood regarded the ghost. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

The skull’s spirit said nothing. After a pause Lockwood turned away and went over to Marissa, who was still lying across the desk.

I lingered by the ghost. ‘I want to thank you too,’ I said.

The youth shrugged. ‘Just a one-off,’ he said. ‘Almost an accident, really. It’s been so long since I stretched my energies … I felt like exerting myself a little, that’s all. If it also suited you, that was a coincidence.’

‘Sure.’

‘It won’t happen again.’

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I understand. So … what now?’ I looked over to where the broken ghost-jar lay on the coffee table. ‘You’re still tied to your skull, but I don’t think you have to be. Like I told you, you could break the connection, head off to the Other Side.’ The ghost said nothing. ‘Or,’ I went on, clearing my throat awkwardly, ‘if you’re not yet ready, you could stay with me a while longer.’

The dark eyes regarded me. An eyebrow was slowly, sardonically, raised. ‘What, just hang out with you? Become an associate member of Lockwood and Co.? Now that would be plain odd.’

‘I guess.’ There wasn’t much else to say.