The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(112)
And it was a beautiful morning to be healing in. Outside, in the garden, the tree was dark and heavy with apples. The rings of burnt grass below the steps and near the basement door were almost lost in the general greenness. Soon I would pick the apples – I would make time for that this year – and reseed the lawns. We would repaint the windows and repair our basement office. We would build new straw dummies and hang them in the rapier practice room. We would restock our shelves with books and curios. New artefacts would be found to replace the ones torn from the walls, and new furniture would be bought. We had received a generous stipend from Inspector Barnes for just such a purpose. Above all, we would decide how Lockwood & Co. should begin again.
It was a time of beginnings, and a time of endings.
‘How is our friend today, Luce?’ George asked suddenly. I’d moved the skull away from the centre of the table, but it was still sitting by my plate. It was very charred and blackened, and there was a large crack running up from one eye socket almost to its crown. I could see why Holly objected to its presence, but I didn’t care.
‘Silent.’
‘No change, then?’
No, there hadn’t been any change. This was the way it had been since the day of the explosion, since I’d pulled it from the mangled remains of the jar amid the steaming debris of the seventh floor. I’d wrapped it up and taken it home, and kept it with me ever since, just in case. But nothing had happened. Whenever I put my fingers on it, I got no psychic charge. The bone was dry and cold.
‘Nope, he’s still quiet,’ I said.
Lockwood glanced at the others. ‘Well, that was a pretty big explosion, Luce,’ he said. ‘Like the ones DEPRAC let off in the Hall of Pillars. All those ghosts are gone too.’
‘I know. But that’s because their Sources were completely destroyed. Here’s his Source,’ I said. ‘I saved it. That explosion wouldn’t destroy his spirit, would it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘It wouldn’t. I’m sure it wouldn’t.’ I thought of the fireball swallowing up the ghost.
‘It might disrupt his connection with the skull,’ Kipps said.
‘No. That doesn’t make sense. I guess it’s true he won’t come back in daylight. He’s not protected from the sun by the silver-glass now that he’s out of the jar. But at night time … he should come back.’
That’s what I kept telling myself, but I didn’t actually believe my theory. It had been a week now and he hadn’t returned.
‘Could be he’s just … gone, Luce,’ Holly said. She smiled at me. ‘You freed him from the jar. He helped you in return. Maybe that has encouraged him to do what he should have done a century ago – which is move on.’
She was probably right. We ate our breakfast.
After a while Kipps put down his fork. ‘Talking of Sources and moving on,’ he said, ‘there’s something that’s been bothering me. I know they buried Penelope’s body in the mausoleum, in a special silver casket and all that, but what about Marissa’s real remains? From what you and Lucy said, Lockwood, her spirit was still linked to it in some way. If the nice body died, wouldn’t she just nip back in there? And if it’s hanging around in some DEPRAC mortuary …’
Lockwood smiled. ‘Don’t worry. It isn’t. This is something I’ve been meaning to tell you. When they opened up the crypt yesterday, Barnes and his team took the opportunity of tidying up Marissa’s old body too. You remember how shrunken it was, Luce? They were able to tuck it away in her original coffin, alongside the bones of our old pal, the doctor. They’ll be nice and snug in there together. I rather think his ghost will be quite pleased.’ Lockwood paused; he took another piece of toast. ‘If Marissa’s spirit is stuck there, I’m not sure she’ll enjoy the arrangement quite as much.’
The sun shone in on us; we finished our meal and sat back happily in our chairs.
‘OK,’ Lockwood said. ‘There’s one bit of important business to attend to today. Yesterday Barnes gave me those official DEPRAC papers, which we all need to sign. You know, they’re the ones where we promise not to make public statements about what we saw at Fittes House, about the Other Side – all the secret stuff, basically.’
‘I don’t like having to sign that,’ I said.
‘I know you don’t, Luce. None of us are particularly comfortable about it. But we know why we have to. If people knew that the Problem was probably caused by the first psychical detection agents, if they discovered that the heads of many top companies were complicit in what Marissa was doing, there’d be anarchy. Society would fall apart. And to what end? It still wouldn’t have solved the Problem.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s about being honest. DEPRAC needs to come clean.’
‘First they’ve got to fix things. Don’t forget that Barnes has to keep his side of the bargain with us too. He’s agreed that the spirit-gate at Fittes House will not be destroyed. From now on DEPRAC will work to clear up the mess left by Marissa. That means removing whatever … obstructions have been placed on the Other Side.’
‘The silver fences,’ Holly said.
‘The fences, yes, and whatever else they’ve been doing to disrupt the onward passage of the dead. The trouble is, we don’t yet really understand how their operation worked, or how far they went to gather the spirits’ essence. We don’t even know whether there are any other gates. It seems probable, as the Problem’s spread so far across the country.’