The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(86)

I felt a swelling of pity for the hapless figures, and with this came a sudden urge to get closer to the glimmering doorway. I knew it would have been fatal to do so – in moments I would have been surrounded by the dead – but I found myself stepping slowly forward. Quill and Holly did the same.

‘Wait!’ With a great effort of will Lockwood had turned his head aside. He gave a cry of dismay. ‘Look behind us,’ he cried.

The urgency in his voice broke the spell. We turned. Some way off down the street we’d come from, a figure in a broad-brimmed hat was limping slowly through the mists. He was close enough for us to see his white face, the long white fingers poking out beneath his sleeves.

‘That can’t be the same bloke we saw before,’ Kipps said. ‘That was ages ago. He can’t be following us.’

‘I’m not going to hang around and ask him,’ Lockwood gasped. ‘Come on!’

Forcing ourselves into action, we hurried off again, and soon the square, its contents and the limping figure were left behind. Onwards we went, as fast as we could; onwards through the city of the dead, the smoke from our capes curling persistently behind us. Now we entered the region of Soho, where the roads were narrower and the buildings pressed close on either side. Once, far off, we saw another doorway in the air; it too had a silver fence and a company of dead around it. I was glad that our route lay in a different direction. I didn’t want to repeat the tug I’d felt when I looked into the strange glimmering void. It was the tug you get on a crumbling cliff edge, when you’re tempted to step close, lean over and look down.

Kipps took the lead again, bustling ahead, his boots sending up tiny clouds of frost. His energy remained high, but the rest of us were flagging.

‘You’re in good shape, Quill,’ I whispered when we caught up with him.

Kipps nodded. ‘I feel OK. Must be the effect of this coat or something.’

‘How’s the side? Not giving you any trouble?’

He gave a shrug; he was staring up the next street, eyes bright, eager to be gone. ‘It did hurt a bit at first, but it’s calmed down now. Don’t notice it at all.’

At that moment George stumbled and almost fell. He was the weakest of us, but I too could feel my strength seeping out of me under that black sky. There was no prospect of struggling on. Lockwood gave the order for a short rest.

We took shelter inside the shell of some kind of shop, where the empty front window gave us a good view up and down the road. Everyone slumped to the floor, gasping, wheezing. Our heads were lowered, our legs drawn up beneath our smoking cloaks.

Lockwood came to sit beside me. ‘You all right, Lucy?’

We stared at each other from under our ice-bound hoods.

‘I’m feeling it now,’ I said. ‘It’s getting hard.’

His lips had a dusting of frost; his voice was halting. ‘We’re doing very well. We’re almost at Trafalgar Square. The Strand’s just beyond.’

‘I don’t know that we’re going to make it, Lockwood.’

‘We’ll make it.’

I wanted to believe him. But the cold and the weariness were taking their toll. A great weight lay on my heart. I just shook my head. ‘I don’t know …’

‘Lucy,’ Lockwood said. ‘Look at me.’

I did so. His eyes were as warm and dark as ever. He said, ‘I’ll tell you something to cheer you up. I’ll tell you a story. You remember I told you once how Kipps and I first fell foul of one another? At the DEPRAC fencing competition when I was young? I beat Kipps and went on to the final, where I lost to someone with a far better grasp of swordplay than me.’ He looked at me. ‘Remember I told you that?’

‘Yeah, I remember,’ I said dully. ‘Though you never told me who it was who beat you.’

‘I’ll tell you now: Flo.’

‘What?’ The sheer surprise cut through the numbness in my brain. When I jerked my head up, bits of ice fell off my hood. ‘What? You’re kidding.’

‘Flo,’ Lockwood said again. ‘She was very good.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘We’re talking the same Flo Bones here? Wellington boots, puffa jacket, parts of whose anatomy on which the sun has never shone? That Flo Bones? No! Don’t you dare raise that frozen eyebrow at me!’

‘Well, you just seem to know more about her than I do, that’s all,’ Lockwood said, smiling gently. ‘Anyway, none of that was the case back then. Not a welly to be seen. I think I could have beaten a girl in wellies, Luce. Come on.’

‘Forget the wellies! I want an explanation. I’ve known Flo for years, and you’ve never told me about this!’

‘Well, she was a different person then. She wasn’t really Flo Bones, that’s the point. She was Florence Bonnard of the Sinclair and Soanes Agency. A young agent, very promising indeed.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘She could swing a mean rapier, that’s for sure. She gave me a good thrashing.’

I tried to reconcile the two images in my head – the Flo I knew, who squatted under storm drains, poking the mud with sticks – and this other one. No good. The difference was too great. ‘I’ve never even heard of Sinclair and Soanes,’ I said.

‘That’s because it doesn’t exist now. It was a tiny agency. A two-person band, really, run by Susan Sinclair and Harry Soanes. Flo Bonnard was their apprentice. One night the three of them got surprised by two Limbless in a chapel on Dulwich Heath. Both Sinclair and Soanes were killed instantly and very horribly. Flo grabbed an iron cross off the altar and wedged herself behind it in a corner of the room. She spent the night there, beside the bodies of her companions, fending off repeated attacks by the Visitors. You know what Limbless are like. A quick glance at them gives anyone the creeps. A whole night of it, alone … Well,’ Lockwood said, ‘Flo survived. But it changed her.’