The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(49)

‘Visit the Other Side?’

‘Right. Rotwell knew the theory, but he was having problems with the technique. On the one hand he was struggling to make a secret gate big enough – we know he created one under the Aickmere Brothers department store a year or so back, and by using it started the Chelsea outbreak. After that he built one out in the countryside, which immediately caused the ghostly infestation of the local village. Sadly for him, we put an end to both experiments.’

‘We’re annoying that way,’ Lockwood said, grinning.

‘Yes, and the armour his bloke used to protect himself on the Other Side – that was pretty hopeless too,’ George said. ‘Just compare it to the spirit-capes you and Lucy wore. You were far lighter on your feet. And those capes were mostly made of feathers. It’s safe to say that Rotwell was playing catch-up, but I’ll tell you someone who isn’t.’

‘Marissa?’

‘Precisely. She’s got some other system, and I think she’s been quietly using it for years and years without anybody noticing. She does it somewhere that’s nice and private, but also in the middle of things – and the epidemic’s been rippling outwards from it all this time.’ George took off his glasses with an air of finality. ‘No prizes for guessing where I think she’s doing it. You’re going there tonight.’

‘Fittes House,’ Lockwood said. ‘Right by Trafalgar Square, the centre of London.’

‘I would say so.’

‘But why?’ Holly cried. ‘That’s what nobody’s been able to explain to me! Why take the risk? Why stir up the ghosts? If they know the terrible consequences, why do they keep on doing it?’

‘Whatever she’s up to,’ George said, ‘it’s working. She’s rich, she’s powerful, and sixty years after starting out, she’s still here.’

I got up to refill the kettle. Standing at the sink, I felt an impulsive desire to check that the garden was empty, that no one was listening to us. I peeped through the blinds at our overgrown lawn, at the houses opposite, at the old apple tree by the wall. I had a sudden image of little Lockwood seeing his dead parents standing beneath it, many years before. There was nothing out there now, just long grass and a few rotten apples in the shadows of its boughs. The garden was quiet. No one was near.

‘A moment ago, George,’ Lockwood said when our mugs were full again, ‘you said that Marissa might have always found it easier to visit the Other Side than Tom Rotwell. Why do you say that?’

‘She’s a Listener,’ George said. ‘One of the two best there are.’ He looked at me.

I frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t go waltzing off to the Other Side.’

‘No. Though you have been there. Thing is, I’ve been puzzling over what advantage Marissa might have had, and again, the answer’s obvious. She talks to spirits. We know what that means: it brings you closer to them. After all, who, out of all of us, is closest to ghosts? Whose conversations with the skull gave us our most important clue?’

Lockwood, Holly and Kipps slowly turned their heads to look at me – not accusingly exactly, but with thoughtful contemplation. It was deeply irritating. Even worse, the face in the jar was winking at me and nuzzling up against the glass in a decidedly over-familiar way.

‘It’s like I’ve always told you, Lucy,’ the skull said, ‘you and me, we’re a team. Hell, we’re more than that. We’re an item. Everybody knows it.’

‘We are not,’ I growled.

‘Are so.’

‘In your dreams.’ I glared at the others. ‘Don’t ask me what it just said. It’s not relevant to anything.’

George adjusted his glasses. ‘Case in point. Marissa talks to ghosts in much the same way as you do. Only maybe in her case it’s not just lovers’ tiffs. Who knows what secrets they’ve given her, what mysteries of life and death.’

I shook my head. ‘If so, she was lucky. This skull wouldn’t know a mystery of life and death if it walked up and sat on it.’

‘Hey, I give you plenty of good stuff! You just don’t have the wit to understand it.’

‘Oh, be quiet.’

Lockwood had been watching the skull in silence for some time; now he stirred. ‘I’m glad our friend’s feeling lively today,’ he said. ‘I’d like to ask him something.’ He regarded the jar. ‘So, Skull, you’ve often told us how you talked to Marissa, all those years ago …’

The face rolled its eyes. ‘Yes, yes, I chatted with her once. I’ve said so enough times, haven’t I?’

I passed on the essentials. ‘It says it did.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘Just to be clear, you both spoke? It was a full conversation?’

‘That’s right, bub. Like this one, only more interesting.’

‘Yes, it was a full conversation.’

‘So how come Marissa didn’t keep you?’ Lockwood asked.

The face in the jar gave a start. ‘What?’

‘It says, “What?”’ I said.

‘As in it didn’t hear me? Or didn’t understand?’

‘More like it was peeved. You definitely hit a nerve there, Lockwood.’