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Chapter Text

2016 - London (Present day)

The LNER train from Newcastle rolled into King's Cross an hour and forty-five minutes late, hindered first by some drunk wanker in coach five and then a signal failure outside Grantham. By the time they were allowed to disembark—curtsey of Lucy's travel companion, uncommonly useful in his cranky sense of entitlement—it was already past curfew. For a moment, in that haze of travel fatigue and gnawing worry, Lucy had the feeling of walking into the hollowed-out insides of a breached whale. Red-brick flesh. Iron ribs arching high above.

The few passengers scattered across the floor like thrown marbles. At the end of the crowd, Lucy and her company held back. She stretched. As she did so a band across her wrist tightened. The chain of her handcuff pulled taut. On the other end of those slender iron links stood a young man with a pale moustache and the expensive clothes of a pure-breed knob-head. Sir Rupert Gale. He looked a tad rumpled compared to when Lucy was delivered to him by the Northumbria Police. On the train he'd been downing wine from miniature bottles at an alarming rate and now a yeasty and sour breath was clashing with his overly sweet cologne. His golden rapier had been hanging loose on the aisle side the whole trip, baring its naked blade at any passenger who happened to pass by on the way to the loo. Lucy hated him. That anger was a steadying force. You had to lean into it.

The two soldiers from the Spirit Corps who had accompanied them looked less intimidating this late in the day. One of them, a boy her age, rubbed sleep from red-rimmed eyes. The other—a year or so younger, but burly and tall with it—was scratching at his armpit. It was an unfortunate gesture in that he already had something of the baboon about him.

"God," Sir Rupert exclaimed. "Can you believe those imbeciles suggested we stay in the train all night. I have a perfectly nice eiderdown duvet waiting for me." He checked his watch. "I blame you for this, you know," he yanked at the chain, sending a painful twang through Lucy's sore wrist. "We should have been here hours ago. Only plebs and simpletons take the last train. Case in point—" He glared at a well-padded Geordie woman who'd gotten her trolley stuck against a bench. A cluster of affronted London doves were cooing disapprovingly at her.

"Where are you taking me now?" Lucy asked, a swirl of anxiety overcoming her pledge to stay silent.

"I'm handing you over to your handler. He's late, of course. I'll have to write him up." By the smile that stretched Cheshire cat-like beneath Sir Rupert's whiskers, Lucy didn't think he minded that at all. There was another yank at her chain. "You, little pup, will be staying in the Ministry dorms. He'll take you there tonight to be processed. Not to worry—it shouldn't take long," He looked down at the pitiful collection of bags that held all of Lucy's worldly possessions. It wasn't much to show for seventeen years on this ghost-cursed rock. A small suitcase with one stuck wheel and another that wobbled drunkenly, a lumpy rucksack on her back, and a duffel bag with a band of duct tape on a jaunty angle across the side.

"Ah, and here's the man of the hour."

Lucy followed Gale's eyes down the station building, to the slim figure running lithely towards them.

It was a boy. Well, a man, maybe, if you were generous. Perhaps a year older than Lucy, tall and slender in a goddamned suit of all things. He had a long, pale face, a rapier at his side. It seemed a practical blade so apparently the golden nonsense Sir Gale flaunted wasn't a London thing. His coat flared dramatically as he ran, careless locks of dark hair flopping across his brow.

Because of the suit and the two or three years that had passed, it took Lucy a moment to realise she recognised him. She saw comprehension hit the boy at much the same time. He was startled, briefly, then that infuriating smile blossomed across his stupid face. He laughed. It was a proper laugh, only Lucy wasn't sure if it was at her expense or a joke between the two of them.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "It's you! George will be positively chuffed! He always did say you'd end up getting conscripted one day." Right. On her expense then. Fair enough. Lucy's mood soured like milk left out in the sun. The boy kept smiling. Long fingers came up to comb through those unruly locks. He had very dark and glittering eyes. "It's Ms. Carlyle, isn't it?"

"Surprised you remember. You must have met hundreds of kids."

"Well, not quite hundreds, I wouldn't think," he said. "Let me spare you the embarrassment of trying to remember my name. Anthony J. Lockwood." He came forward to press her hand, only to be taken aback by the iron handcuff around her wrist. He followed the chain to Sir Rupert. "Surely this isn't necessary Gale?"

"I'd say it is. She's a bolter. Gave me the slip in Newcastle."

"Can't really hold that against her. I'd do the same." The smile turned sharp. Lucy had the oddest feeling that the two young men were one unfortunate insult from rapiers at dawn. Then the moment released. Sir Rupert yawned, unhooked the other handcuff from his belt and tossed it to Lockwood together with the key.

"Well, she's your problem now Lockwood. Good luck."

Mr. Lockwood didn't turn back to Lucy until Sir Rupert was halfway down the station building. They stared at each other. His smile, ever-present, wavered. Hers never appeared at all. All of a sudden it was a little bit awkward. They were attached to each other by Lucy's leash, him holding it, her locked into it. She gave it a pointed look and he hurried up to unlock it, finally freeing her wrist.

"God he locked it tight, didn't he? What did he think—that you're some kind of escape artist or something?"

He was holding her hands, turning them around so he could examine the angry red ring the handcuff had left behind. On her other arm there was a patch of white bandage, protected by plastic. He frowned at that too. Lucy pulled them back and stretched the jumper sleeves down so only the tips of her fingers showed.

"It's fine."

"Right, well. George and Holly are on their way. We'd almost given up on the train coming in tonight. You remember them, don't you? George Cubbins? Holly Munro?"

"The rude one and the prim one. Yeah, I remember."

"Excellent." He beamed at her again. "I'll think this will turn out very well, Ms. Carlyle. I was all set on having some kind of knucklehead relic dealer on my hands so this is a marvellous surprise." He paused. "For me, I mean. I'm sure this is all very confusing and scary for you."

"I'm not scared."

"No, no. Of course not. I didn't mean that, exactly... Only that it's—a new experience, I suppose. For both of us."

She glared at him. The tips of his ears had pinked.

Lockwood took her bags, nodding at the two Spirit Corps soldiers to follow them. Their steps multiplied in the cavernous space.

George and Holly met them halfway. They hadn't changed much the past years. George's face was still soft and blank, his hair in need of a good trim. His civilian clothes—it was the first time Lucy had seen him in them—were decidedly teenage boy coded. A tee washed thin and pale, a puffy orange parka, jeans with holes in unfortunate places, dirty, unlaced trainers. Holly, in comparison, was so neat it was insufferable. Who the hell wore pinafore dresses in this day and age? Her tie-neck blouse must be proper silk and all—she didn't look like a polyester sort of girl.

George's only reaction to seeing Lucy was to take off his glasses and start rubbing them on a corner of his tee.

"Holly, George," Lockwood said. "You remember Lucy Carlyle, don't you? From that recruitment trip up north a few years back?"

"Well, well, well." George put the glasses back. "This is a surprise."

"I'd say it is." Holly smiled prettily. "We're so glad to see you, Ms. Carlyle. Lockwood has been so nervous all day. We didn't have a clue who he'd been assigned! He only found out earlier today that he was even supposed to supervise a conscript. You could have been the worst sort of brute for all we knew."

Lucy forced a tense smile. "So you're all in the Ministry now? That's interesting."

"Not quite," George said. "Holly here is working in administration, but I'm in a sort of advanced research program. Technically I'm somewhere halfway between the Corps, the Ministry and London Uni. Lockwood is the only one who's a proper agent really."

Lucy looked to Lockwood again. "So, who are you related to then?"

"I'm... What?"

"You're what—a year older than me? And they have you playing Ministry supervisor?"

"Ah... Er, well, I always performed rather well of course—"

"His uncle is a peer of the Lords," George interrupted him.

Lucy snorted. "How grand. Should I call you Sir Lockwood?"

"God, no! Lockwood will do just fine. I'm not uncle Ted's heir or anything of the sort—"

"Just his special ward." George said. Lucy thought there might be a teasing glimmer in his eyes, but it was hard to tell. He wasn't the sort of person who smiled, she remembered that much.

"Well," Holly clapped her hands together. "Let's get Lucy settled in at the dorm. You must be exhausted, you poor thing."

All in all, Lucy felt her introduction to London could have gone worse. The pit of worry and grief that taken root inside her made her feel a little unsteady. Although that could just be the train ride, come to think of it. The ground seemed to sway beneath her feet. It was a bit mortifying, obviously, meeting the three of them under such circumstances, but that was okay. Outside, London was as quiet as it ever got. The only cars on the roads were white Nightcabs. Along the road, red, two-story busses had been parked for curfew, windows black and dead. A runnel of water by the roadside gurgled merrily. A few Spirit Corps soldiers had gathered around a lavender brazier, their crisp uniforms and slim rapiers communicating safety and calm to all. Lucy lowered her eyes at their probing looks, watching her shadow stretch and shrink as they passed beneath a ghostlight's quiet vigil.

***

No two countries had responded to the Problem—the epidemic of ghosts that had started in Britain half a century ago and spread in various degrees to much of the world—in exactly the same way. In France it was battled by independents, supervised by a central state organ, while Germany had settled on a number of highly trained elite soldiers. In the states it was a rather pricy, private affair with barely any regulation at all. Not all countries were evenly afflicted by the Problem, so it was only natural that the response differed. Britain, first to fall, was the most thoroughly infected. Some places—poor ones, distant ones, isolated ones—still barely had a single stirring of the supernatural.

In Britain, the response to the Problem was officially a state affair. The Queen's Ministry of Psychical Defence had grown with impressive speed out of the House of Lords, and immediately taken control of the situation. While Talent was most reliable in the young, it was generally expected that in the rare cases where it lasted into your twenties, it would fade very slowly or not at all. The Ministry agents were such adults. As the years went by, the agents had been propped up by an ever growing number of support staff—politicians, lawyers, administrators and the like—to combat the Problem and to enforce the draconian set of laws that had been spun around it. In fact, the support staff rather quickly made up the bulk of the Ministry. Some even held that it was not the Visitors, but rather things like Unauthorized Paranormal Engagement or Civilian Source Handling that was the true Problem in Britain. Conveniently no elusive Talent was needed to combat that.

Much of the legwork was not done by the Ministry, but by the youth soldiers of the National Psychical Defence Corps—Spirit Corps, in everyday parlance. This was a voluntary service open to anyone between the age of thirteen and nineteen. While a youth served, their housing, livelihood and schooling was transferred to the Corps. They were the Ministry's dogs, unimpeachable symbols of Authority and Truth. They were also, irritatingly, teenagers.

Together, they guided the people of Britain, safely, securely, through the Problem—like a flock of sheep hemmed into an enclosure for their own protection. There were no wolves inside the enclosure. The Ministry was very clear about that. And if a sheep was found—bloody with teeth marks all over the fluffy wool—then surely it was ever the fault of the sheep, and never of the Ministry.

Chapter Text

2004 - Wooler, Northumberland

Six days after Edith's husband died, Mr. Jacobs came to the Carlyle residence.

He was the last of a long line of unwelcome visitors. They'd poke and prod, and feel so very lucky, and so very kind, and pat themselves on the back for their great service to poor Mrs. Carlyle in her time of need. The bloody cheek of it all! Mrs. Little from next door had been by with plastic containers of mushy food, and Tilda Walters from the chippy—as loud and irritating as ever with a neckline halfway to her navel—flitting around the harassed mid-century bungalow with a duster and a smile full of crooked teeth.

Edith cared even less for the guests whose very job it was to toddle behind tragedy. Wooler's undertaker was a jovial, red-nosed fellow who kept misplacing his papers and reaching into the biscuit tin at an alarming rate. He formed a wretchedly unfunny double act with the town's morose and perpetually drunk Anglican priest. Lord how they went on, the two of them—whip-lashing between life-affirming platitudes and gloomy tales of doom. Even so, Edith would take them over the evaluator the Ministry of Psychical Defence any day. A pale and harried southerner of all bloody things! She'd been sent up from the Hexham office. One of those idiots who relocated to the countryside in search of clean air or some such bollocks. She'd been ticking off the boxes and filling out the forms while complaining, incessantly, about the length of the journey and the state of the roads. Wooler was just on the border between the Hexham and Newcastle branches. She'd been particularly peeved about the assignment landing on her desk. In the evening she'd gone out with a bubble-gum chewing teen from the Spirit Corps and come back assuring everyone that Mr. Carlyle was not a walker. Then they left.

Mr. Carlyle's friends from down the pub or his work at North-Eastern Rails had come over too—humbling themselves and sipping tea like little old ladies. In an anxious, roundabout way they'd been the ones to tell Edith that something new stirred down by the tracks. Something, that almost certainly wasn't the ghost of the late Mr. Carlyle—the Ministry be praised—it's just that the  timing was a little bit unfortunate.

In all of this palaver Mr. Jacobs was straggler. Once all the other morons had come and gone, he came knocking on the door. He was a tall, rangy man, very thin and dressed in an old fashioned suit that hung off his shoulders. He always looked like he was prematurely apologising. Edith would have found this annoying, had it not been Mr. Jacobs. Everyone in Wooler knew who he was and what he did. Edith put out her gran's good china.

"Did you ever serve in the Corps Mrs. Carlyle?" Mr Jacobs was sitting at Mr. Carlyle's old seat at the far end of the table, backlit by bright morning light. He'd drawn his shoulders up to protect his neck from the draught. All the windows in the Carlyle's home were single-glazed and poorly insulated, condensation misting the view to the little garden and the fields beyond. In the winter the bungalow was freezing cold and if it was a particularly harsh one the pipes all froze over. Even now, in spring, the temperature was less than pleasant. Edith rarely felt self-aware of the state of the house, which was cluttered but clean, but having such an important man visiting cast it in a poor light. Beyond the window the hawthorn had grown very wild.

"Ay, I did at that," she replied. "Me dad thought it would be good for me schooling."

"And was it?"

She shrugged a little. "Got meself knocked up, didn't I?"

"Ah, well. They're blessing the wee ones, or so I've heard. Must be a comfort to you in this time of hardships."

Edith thought best not to elaborate on that. What was there to say? She had seven girls. Only the youngest, Lucy, was at home, though Edith didn't know where she'd gone off to.

She opened the blue tin that had been given centre place on the table. "How'd you like one of them Danish Butter Cookies, Mr. Jacobs? Me eldest got them from the Lidl in Alnwick."

"Thank you kindly Mrs. Carlyle."

Mr. Jacobs looked at it for a long time before choosing a single biscuit from the selection. He held it in his long fingers and dunked it three times into the tea before putting the whole thing in his mouth.

 "It's a bad business this, Mrs. Carlyle," Mr. Jacobs was saying. "A bad business indeed. Tell me, has the Ministry evaluator been round to secure the place of the accident and the like?"

"Ay, they salted and ironed and that. Took his body to the furnaces in Newcastle. All the bits of it, so they say." Edith sipped her tea.

"Er—All the bits?"

"The tosser fell on the tracks, didn't he? Off his rocker of course—bloody useless lout of a man."

"Ah, I see. I suppose that's ticked off in their books then." Mr. Jacobs' smile was as thin and worn as the man himself. "Wooler is still completely free of Visitor activity, and how very lucky we are for it. Maybe there is an echo or two, a fart in the wind. Nothing a little lavender can't fix. Do you mind if I smoke?"

Edith hesitated. She only ever smoked beneath the kitchen fan and would throw a fit if anyone lit a fag in her living room, guest or no. "Not at all. I think I'll have one meself actually."

Silence took over as they both did things with cigarettes and lighters. Soon two thin threads of smoke curled lazily towards the ceiling where they were unmade by the draught.

"I'd rather we get to the point if you don't mind, Mr. Jacobs," Edith said. "We all know what work you do for the town."

"Ay, I'm a private investigator, Mrs. Carlyle."

She huffed out a cloud of smoke, watching it rise and die. "We both know it's all bollocks, no matter how the Ministry says it," she said. "Me own wee lass has seen more ghosts in her five years than I did in all me youth. It's getting worse by the year and the Ministry does sod all to stop it. I'm not one for beating around the bush, Mr. Jacobs, and I think you and I are cut of the same cloth. We're practical folks up here. Isn't that why you've come?"

Mr. Jacobs had turned as she spoke and was casting his sharp eyes around the room. As Edith paused for a response he turned back to her. "Quite right," he said. "I've come to offer my services to you, Mrs. Carlyle. Am I correct to think you might look kindly on an—ah, additional investigation, so to speak—into the passing of your dear departed?"

"Ay," Edith hesitated. "Ay—I might, at that. For me peace of mind if nothing else. The boys from his work collected us an envelope, so I have some spare."

Mr. Jacobs retrieved a piece of paper from somewhere inside his suit and started making calculations on it. Edith watched the jagged scrawl of his numbers, pressed so hard into the page it would leave impressions in the wax cloth below. At last he circled a number on the paper and pushed it across the table.

"Oh. So much?"

"It's not bangers and mash down the pub, Mrs. Carlyle." Maybe this was the reason for Jacobs' apologetic expression. He certainly employed at full force now—hang-dog eyes and all. "What you have to understand is that these jobs are not without risk for me and my team. It's not just the Visitors, but the Ministry too. None of this is strictly... above the board, so to speak."

"If there are no ghosts around here, as the Ministry will have it, I cannot see how it can be illegal." Edith felt her face twist into sour defiance.

Mr Jacobs paused, seemingly weighing his words before he continued. "I served as well, Mrs Carlyle, just like you did. I spent my young years in the Spirit Corps in Newcastle. Maybe you've heard how I managed to impress the toffs enough to go on to the Ministry? All the way to London, would you believe it, before they decided this northern runt was more trouble than he was worth. I know how they work Mrs. Carlyle, and I know well the risks I take. You cannot fight power with logic and expect to win. You cannot argue with it. The best you can hope for is that they don't notice, or better yet—that they choose not to look at all." He rubbed his chin, eyes once again wandering around the room. "Say, Mrs. Carlyle," he continued in a different tone. Lighter, more wheedling. Edith didn't trust it. "Is that there the little lass who sees ghosts?"

Edith sighed out another puff of smoke. So there she was, the little menace. Listening in as usual. She had ears big as saucers that one. "Beg your pardon Mr. Jacobs, she's a meddlesome little thing. Lucy! Stop your prying and get over here." Lucy stood from behind the sofa. To her mother's chagrin she had one of her horrid drawings in her hand.

On ordinary days Edith would be at work during the day. Lucy was five so on ordinary days she would be in infant school, only her fretful teacher had claimed she had a fever and turned her away at the door. More likely than not the harpy of a woman was just anxious around tragedy—she was dreadfully superstitious. Edith looked at her youngest with a sceptical eye. Lucy had dressed herself in skirt and leggings, mismatched woolly socks and a holey jumper that she was a little too fond of. Her hair had been recently sheared by one of her older sisters, no doubt worn down by the daily screaming match of trying to brush and braid it. Lucy wasn't a pretty child—not like her Sarah who had the look of an angel—but one took notice of her. She was strong and sturdy, with large, somehow unsettling eyes, a too big nose and a wide, down-turned mouth she got from her old mam. She looked back at the adults with a steady gaze.

"Ah well, hello there. Lucy is it?" Mr. Jacobs said.

"Lucy Joan Carlyle. " Lucy seemed to consider it a somewhat inadequate an answer, because she added. "I'm five." It was, after all, about the only identifying thing about her, save that she was the youngest of seven, liked to draw, and was a little too familiar with the many hauntings that certainly didn't exist in Wooler.

"And what is it you got there Lucy Joan Carlyle?"

Lucy came up with her painting and Edith had to suppress an impulse to rip it from her hand and throw it away. Her second youngest, Mary, liked to draw little stick figures holding hands, houses and trees and a triangular sun radiating bright, yellow lines in the corner. Edith wouldn't have minded one of those. Unfortunately, Lucy tended towards the macabre. She was a peculiar child. On the square of paper that now took up room on the table there was some sort of purple apparition. Tentacles were sprawling across half the page, a wobbly blue line and, on the other side, a open-mouthed girl with crosses for eyes.

"Children and their imaginations," Edith laughed a little. "Let's put that nasty thing away shall we?"

"No, no," Mr. Jacobs stopped her. He was looking at Lucy and barely paying Edith any attention. "What is it you have drawn Lucy? Will you tell me?"

"Sarah said," Lucy started her rambling recollection. "Me sister, Sarah, she said—when she was little, she snuck out, and this lady was dead on the grass. She had her arms and legs out like she was making a snow angel, only there wasn't snow? Sarah said she got a hiding for it because she wasn't allowed out... The ghost cries something awful at night. She wants to get over the creek, but Mary says she can't get over water. That's her... her ghost, and that's her..." She hesitated a little. "I make crosses for eyes because Sarah said you're supposed to make crosses for eyes for dead people."

"Well then, isn't that a lovely story. Well done." Jacob folded the picture and slipped it into a  pocket in the lining of his jacket. Then he turned his attention back to Edith. "I do think I might have a proposition for you, Mrs. Carlyle," he continued. "Given Lucy's alleged Talent I wouldn't mind taking the little lady with me on this investigation."

"Her? You want to bring her along?"

"I like to evaluate all our young Talents. It's good to know what we have to work with locally, so to speak. It won't be paid job since she'd a bit too young, but you'd be given a discount."

When Edith remained sceptical, he added. "I could be persuaded to give a quite substantial discount..."

"Just to bring that one along? So she can wail your ear off about every little shade?"

"That's the profession. It would just be this job for now, Mrs. Carlyle. I'm not proposing to adopt her."

Suspicion hardened Edith's features as she looked between Lucy and Jacobs—the young girl and this tall, melancholy man. Something uncomfortable crawled through her insides. She wrung her hands, red and rough from washing laundry six days a week at the town's two hotels. The moment was drawn out, the clink of a spoon against a tea cup and Mr. Jacobs' slurping the only sounds filling the space. There were so many things that could go wrong in this world. It was a hard one, that's for certain. For little girls more than most. But then again, Edith always thought to would be better for her girls to know what they were getting into. You didn't do children any favours by coddling them.

"How... Er, how big a discount are we talking about then?" She said at last.

She couldn't look at Lucy. Instead she stared at the adjusted number that Mr. Jacobs was penning on the paper. She pressed her lips tight. Eventually she gave one, sharp nod.

"That's very generous, Mr. Jacobs, very generous. I trust... I do trust you're an honourable man." She nodded. "Ay, very well. I'll accept." She reached her arm across the table and Mr. Jacobs pressed it in a firm shake, his hairy fingers sallow against her red ones. Even now he looked apologetic. Edith was still not looking at her youngest daughter.

She gave Lucy free access to the Danish Butter Cookies after Mr. Jacobs had left. Maybe it was her way of apologising, though such things had never come naturally to her and she would deny it of you asked. Perhaps she felt a little sore about her decisions. It was, after all, the day she sold her youngest daughter into service for a crook; an illegal, black market ghost hunter who had a reputation for using his protégés as little better than cannon fodder.

***

Lucy remembered bits and pieces from that first case, though they got muddled up with later days and other trips. The strong smell of Mr. Jacob's car for example—tobacco and something a little like the train yard—and the glove compartment with the broken hatch. She was too short to see out, so instead she was looking at an assortment of oddly shaped containers, packs of gum and loose sweeties, papers and notebooks and a tatty book she couldn't see the cover off, a pair of binoculars, cigarette packs and what Jacobs told her was an adrenaline shot.

"Cost me an arm and a leg that one," he rolled down the window and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

They picked up an older boy outside the community youth centre in Wooler. He sat in the front seat and craned his neck around to peer at Lucy. He was perhaps nine or ten, with wild brown curls and dimpled cheeks, and presented himself as Arlington Dawks. She'd been sceptical of the name. His family, she would learn much later, had a small sheep farm outside Wooler and were well known eccentrics with all manner of unusual ideas. As parents they took a rather hands-off approach. Arlington called them both by their first names.

Lucy didn't remember arriving at the train station, but she could recall walking across the tracks. She had to lift her little legs high to step over the rails. At some point Jacobs told her and the older boy to go under the platform to have a look. They were there when a train passed by, shaking the ground so that she fell on her bottom. She'd felt as if the platform above was pressing down on her, a great weight making it difficult to breathe. She remembered particularly how Arlington drew her attention to a pale, hairy digit in the dirt. It lay tucked close to the foundation, filthy and bloodless like some nasty maggot come out with the rain. She supposed it might be her father's finger. For years she'd have nightmares about it crawling in her bed, all thick and pale and horrible.

It was only just getting dark when they crawled out from beneath the platform. Lucy saw a blue, wispy shape on the other side of the tracks and pointed it out to the others.

"That there's an old friend," Jacobs said. "Not your dad, don't you worry about that. No one's paid us to get rid of it yet so there she stays. Not much point in putting up a fuss since it can't get past the tracks."

Lucy remembered the Shade whispering to her, and the way that old sorrow tugged at something deep inside her. It was like it was looking for a thread to unravel the tangle of Lucy's mind, drawing it out bit by bit until there was nothing left of her but a hollow skull. She'd not been able to make out the words.

When she came home her mam had undressed her and put her in the bath, scrubbing her all over. Normally it was Lucy herself or sometimes her sisters who got her cleaned up. Mam said she reeked. Her attention was meddling and strange, and it made Lucy feel like she'd done something wrong. Then, just like that, it was over and mam had been back to her usual distant self.

***

In the end Lucy didn't formally start working for Jacobs until she was eight. By then she knew his flock by sight and all their names. They were a close knit group and treated by the other children with equal parts deference and disdain. Unlike most children in the town they had a bit of money, but interestingly none of them came from money. They were all from leaky, draughty council houses, or farms one bad storm from turning into driftwood.

The oldest had seven years on Lucy—a quiet, steadfast boy called Hank O'Connell. Next in line was the cavalier thirteen year old she knew as Arlington, and two years younger than him a slim blonde named Stephanie Miller. Paul Bell and Alfie-Joe Dunham were both ten, but the one closest to Lucy in age was Norrie White—a lively red-head a class above her at Wooler First School.

Because they were not, by definition, agents, they had a different title. They were known around Wooler as Jacobs' Angels.

Chapter Text

2016 - London

Patience didn't come naturally to Anthony Lockwood. If he had to he'd keep knocking his head against a problem, irritable and restless, until something gave. His mind had always revolted against inactivity. It was a marvel then that he'd conditioned himself so well in the art of waiting. Waiting for Visitors. Waiting for George to finish up his endless research. Or, as was currently the case, waiting for Lucy Carlyle to tell him her story.

They'd arrived late at the dorm where she'd be living for the foreseeable future. It was in the same complex he'd lived in when he was in the Spirit Corps, but in a part of it he'd never visited. They'd used to refer to it as the annex—a yellow brick building thrown up in the 90:s which compared poorly to the Edwardian grandeur of the rest of the compound. It sat chunky and plain in a corner, with bars rather than discreet iron grilles across the windows to protect against otherworldly dangers. The only way in and out of the building went past a manned checkpoint, but the doors in the annex weren't locked. There was no need. By definition anyone who had to be locked in simply wasn't a conscript. They would be sent off to the mines instead, where prisoners provided cheap and conveniently un-unionised labour in service to the war on Visitors.

George had called it a night, so it was just Lockwood, Holly and Lucy Carlyle waiting in the reception, while the annex's night watchman busied himself by making phone calls to the necessary people. Holly was looking alert and unruffled as ever but Lockwood was full of an itchy excitement that made it difficult to stand still. He glanced at Ms Carlyle. She was slightly above average in height and sturdily built with generous hips, strong shoulders, and hair in a practical bob. She stood with her arms folded and her fists closed. Her eyes were hard and intense, her mouth turned down.

Lockwood had not asked Lucy tell him her story. Asking often prompted reciprocation, and that he was less fond of. Instead he stood here wondering how she ended up like this, a convicted criminal, and whether she'd actually done it, if her Talent was still strong and if any of her old friends were still around. Questions piled up like rubbish on the shores of the Thames. He suppressed a sigh. In a way, his ward being this rather interesting girl was a delight, but he could tell the situation could easily get complicated. His job was to rehabilitate Lucy for the Ministry, so that she could go on to have a nice, lawful life. Surely that was in both their interests? Ms Carlyle wanted to be free—you didn't need to be a brilliant judge of character to figure that one out, though Lockwood rather thought he was—and he wanted to advance in the Ministry hierarchy. The higher he climbed, the bigger an impact he could make against the Problem. Both these things required this assignment to be a success.

Lockwood could probably get access to Lucy's background from her files if he put in a request and waited for it to slog its way through the Ministry bureaucracy. More bloody waiting. Unfortunately conscript files made for dreadfully dull reading and were often vague on specifics. Why Lucy was here wasn't very interesting to the organisation, only that she was. Asking George to look into the court documents and local news reports might be more fruitful, but that felt intrusive instead. No, Lockwood would just have to wait for Lucy to talk. She was on the defensive now, unwilling to give an inch in case it cost her a foot. He'd have to go carefully. His brow twitched.

Lockwood was interrupted in his musings by two people arriving at the door. A middle-aged man, harried and rumpled with an impressively bushy moustache which seemed to grow bigger as the hair beneath his bowler hat thinned. The woman with him was tall and thin with the creased, worn look of an aged beauty who'd spent too many years living off nothing but cigarettes and sunlight. Her nails were terrifying turquoise claws decorated with rhinestones.

"Inspector Barnes," Lockwood greeted them with a wide smile. "Mrs Stein. Pardon the hour."

"Not to be helped, Mr Lockwood," the inspector said. "And here we have Ms Carlyle, I presume?" He reached out a hand to press Lucy's limp one. "Inspector Barnes. My job here is to supervise the supervisors, so to speak. Elephants all the way down." It was hard to tell beneath the moustache, but Lockwood thought he might be trying on a smile. It was a little distressing to watch. "Mrs Stein here is one of our juridical staff. I'm not sure how much you have been told about what to expect?"

"I'm to work off my sentence," Lucy shrugged. "A shovel doesn't need to know why it's digging me mam used to say."

"Well, perhaps, but you're hardly a shovel," Barnes gave a little grunt of indeterminable meaning. "Just so we're on the same page then, Ms Carlyle. While you're here as an alternative to incarceration, conscripts are not a prisoners in the normal sense. You might want to think of yourself as a minor in the Ministry's care, with all the limits to freedom and citizenship privileges which that entails. This will last until you're considered rehabilitated by a review board. The goal is not to punish, you understand, but rather to successfully integrate you into society."

Barnes voice had taken on a sardonic tint at that last part. He paused to give Lucy an opportunity to reply, but she just looked at him with mild interest.

"That all said," he continued. "There's one thing in particular I like to instil in new conscripts, Ms Carlyle. I know you'll have already considered running away—no, no don't deny it." Lucy hadn't opened her mouth, but her brow lifted a little. "After all, there are no bars. Why wouldn't you give it a try? Well, let me give you a reason. With the status of the Ministry as Britain's defence against the Problem, abandoning your service here would be considered high treason. You'd be lucky if a lifetime in the mines is all you're subjected to then. Do you understand me, Ms Carlyle?"

Lucy looked a lot calmer than Lockwood was feeling. Her predicament and his responsibility was becoming terrifyingly clear to him, and it made his heart pound like a overzealous stone knocker in his chest.

"Perfectly, inspector," Lucy said. She huffed. "They left that high treason bit out in Newcastle."

"Well, obviously we'd prefer for you to be motivated by a will to better yourself, but when you've been around for as long as I have you get practical about these things. In my experience motivational pep-talks don't work nearly as well as a helpful warning or two. Easier to make the right decisions that way, wouldn't you say Ms Carlyle?" Barnes was trying for a smile again. "Now, having said that, it's not as bad as it sounds. If you behave well, you will find yourself gradually less restricted. For now, you will work as a Sensitive assisting Mr Lockwood. You will live here, at Last Hope."

"Last Hope?!" She did sound a little horrified then, Lucy Carlyle. 

"We always used to just call it the annex," Lockwood added helpfully.

***

The room which had been assigned to Lucy was narrow and simply furnished. A bed, a small desk with a wobbly chair, a wall shelf, a wardrobe and a washbasin. It was a squeeze to get everyone in. From the barred window you could see the roof of the kitchen below and the windowless brick wall of the next building. If you angled your face up, a sliver of city-bright night clouds were just visible above the eaves. The room smelled strongly of the same cleaner they'd used in the dorms of the Spirit Corps, and Lockwood was struck by a powerful but elusive feeling of nostalgia.

Before they were done for the night, Barnes and Mrs Stein had to go through Lucy's belongings. Lockwood shuffled discreetly closer until Holly's tug at his sleeve stopped him. Well, no need to look too closely at the mostly dark and well worn clothes that had been rolled up and stuffed into the suitcase and duffel bag. The imminent danger of seeing something personal, like his ward's knickers or other nebulous girl things, felt uncomfortably invasive.

Mrs Stein opened bottles of shampoo and shower gel and gave them a sniff, clearly expecting the girl to have smuggled in all manner of unsavoury things. She wrinkled her nose, but put them back without further comment. Then they turned their attention to the far more interesting rucksack.

Lockwood leaned in to get a better look, trying to be nonchalant about it. If Holly's disapproving shove to his side was anything to go by, he wasn't very successful.

Pens and pencils. A sketch book. Mrs Stein riffled through it too quickly for Lockwood to get a good look no matter how he craned his neck. There was a crime novel which looked like it might have belonged to a library at some point. A pair of binoculars. Note books. A tatty copy of Birds of Britain.

Inspector Barnes took a good look at the notebooks, flipping through the pages. Ms Carlyle shifted from one foot to the other, arms still folded tight across her midriff.

"Good bird watching around your parts?" the inspector said.

"Alright yeah." She shrugged. "Better than here, maybe."

"Ah, but you haven't seen our pigeons." Lucy Carlyle and Barnes both looked at Lockwood for a moment with blank faces. He cleared his throat. "Of course we have other birds too—I mean, if you're interested in ornithology? A friend of mine might be able to take us out on the Thames, if you like."

"Mr Lockwood," Barnes said. "May I remind you that you're Ms Carlyle's handler and supervisor, not her scout leader?" He turned back to the girl. "Any personal favourites among our feathered friends, Ms Carlyle?"

"Got us a Black-winged stilt once." She glanced at Lockwood. He wasn't entirely sure if that was an actual bird or if he was being cleverly insulted.

"Can't say I get those by my bird feeder." Inspector Barnes closed the notebook and put it back among her things. Mrs Stein stood ready to hand him a thick envelope, which Lockwood was surprised to realise was full of pound bills.

"It's my savings," Ms Carlyle hurried to say. "Its nothing illegal—I got them honest."

"In our experience allowing conscripts to keep possession of large amounts of money is... inadvisable," Mrs Stein had a very high, flat voice. "Your kind have a penchant for all manner of bad habits."

"Mr Lockwood will keep them for you," Inspector Barnes handed Lockwood the envelope of money. "If, for some reason, you need to make a purchase, it will go through him. He is not to touch them otherwise—is that clear, Mr Lockwood?"

"It's insulting that you would even suggest such a thing Inspector."

Inspector Barnes grunted noncommittally. He turned back to the last of the things from the rucksack. A bottle of off-the-shelf lavender water. The remnants of a meal-deal. An envelope full of photos that Lockwood wished he'd spent more time on.

"Pockets Ms Carlyle," Mrs Stein said, and the girl obliged.

A packet of gum. Coins. Keys. Lucy Carlyle spent some time looking at these, as if she'd forgotten they were still there. Must be her old house keys. That made something ache inside Lockwood, sudden and sharp.

This assignment was well above what Lockwood had expected as the youngest Ministry agent, newly recruited and barely out of training. He'd been looking forward to this day. Looking at Lucy now, it was painfully obvious how little that feeling applied to her. Lockwood felt this difference open up between them, and it wasn't comfortable at all. He caught his reflection in the window, tall and pale, looming above her. How did he seem to her? All of a sudden that was the question he wanted to ask above all else. Could she trust him? Should she trust him? Subconsciously he'd considered the two of them as a team, standing separate from Mrs Stein and the inspector. But in reality, Lockwood played for the other team. They all did. Lucy Carlyle was on her own. He wanted to reach for her, to tell her it would be okay—but the gap seemed to wide, the chasm between them too deep.

At last Lucy let go of a polished river stone which Lockwood realised she must have been holding in her hand all this time. Some mad impulse made him reach for it, feeling it's weight in his palm, the stone warmed by her body heat. Her eyes snapped up to his.

"Can I keep that, or are you afraid I'll clobber someone with it?" she said.

Mrs Stein responded before Lockwood could. "It's within acceptable parameters," she said. "We're done here for today. Inspector?"

"Indeed. Get some sleep Ms Carlyle, you'll need it. Goodnight."

Lockwood replaced the polished stone on the table. He looked around, feeling unsure of himself. The room was a mess. Lucy's bags had been thoroughly disembowel and their guts were spilled all over it. Holly must have had the same thought, because she started to fold up the clothes.

"Leave it," Lucy snapped. "I want to be on my own now if you don't mind."

"Of course. We'll leave you to settle in." Holly grabbed Lockwood's arm. He felt a little stunned. Reluctant to leave it like this, but clearly not welcome to linger.

"This will be good, Ms Carlyle," he said. "I understand it might be difficult, but you really should think of this as a second chance."

"What, to get it right? Because I got it so wrong before? What the fuck do you know..."

It wasn't a question so Lockwood didn't have to answer. He was glad for it. Sometimes he thought there was nothing quite as unbearable as ignorance.

***

They were gone, at last. Lucy was on her own. She thought there was nothing quite as insufferable as kindness. Mrs Stein's disdain she could deal with. She knew how to fight and she knew how to defend herself. The inspector's blunt honesty was positively refreshing. It was the softness that was dangerous, the bloody empathy. She'd been surprised at her own rage when Mr Lockwood had picked up her stone. Not because it was important, really, but because it was hers, and she had so little left. Now she put that same stone down on the windowsill, but the room was too glum to catch the colours in it. It just looked like a glossy grey lump.

She looked out the window, wondering if there were any ghosts around here or if the Ministry kept their own back yard clear at least. Of course, no ghosts never really meant no ghosts, did it? Just, no bad ones. None you had to worry yourself with—not as long as you kept to the paths. The great big lie that hid in the Ministry's officially sanctioned Truth was that they were in control of the situation. Back home, their agents had come by for their scheduled inspections or when some neighbour popped their clogs and made it everyone's problem. If a manifestation was too big to ignore they'd try to contain it or, failing that, section it off. Officially that was supposed to include all type twos and manifestations in residential lots. Unofficially it was just the Visitors that made people nervous enough to put up a fuss about it.

In Wooler, Jacobs had established himself as the trusty, home grown alternative to the Ministry agents. A locally sourced bastard, if you like. She supposed there was some comfort in the fact that he was the crook you knew. As long as you paid him, he'd do the job without judgement or overreach. Or rather, his squad of young angels would. They'd had so much disdain for the Ministry and the naive, snot-nosed twats in the Spirit Corps. Unlike them, Jacobs' Angels' eyes had been wide open. They'd not been scared of their own shadow like other civilians, nor were they blinded by the honeyed tongues of politicians like their contemporaries in the Corps. They wore their own clothes to cases and got paid for their damn work.

Lucy imagined her old gang in the room with her now. Paul's mocking laugh, Norrie's eyes full of pity, Stephanie's callous practicality. You should have run faster. Quite apart from the state on Britain, there seemed to be an awful lot of ghosts inside of Lucy. Good ones. Bad ones. Noisy fuckers the lot of them.

Well, they were gone now and Lucy was still around. She scratched at the patch of bandage on her arm, then gently peeled off one of the edges. The Ministry logo stood out in angry black lines against the pallor of  her skin, edges puckered and red. The unique identification code below started with an F. They'd told her that was the classification for conscripts. Spirit Corps wore their number on a silver tag around their neck, and she assumed the same was true for Ministry agents. People like her weren't given the same grace. If she ran, the mark would tell on her. High treason. Fucking wankers. She pressed the patch back in place and pulled down the sleeve of her jumper. Out of sight.

She lay down on the hard bed and put her hands over her face. Where is Lucy? In her mind's eye her little niece shrieked happily, grabbing at her fingers, trying to pry them away. No one looked at her when she opened her hands. The ceiling had a crack running towards the corner. It was all painted white, grey in the dark. Somewhere in the distance a death bell tolled.

Inhale. Exhale. It could be worse, couldn't it? Lockwood seemed... nice. She felt that if she had been someone else, if she had been Stephanie, she could have danced around Anthony Lockwood until he was just where she wanted him. Steph had known how to manipulate people if she had to. She'd used to call Lucy guileless, but Lucy felt like she was made of nothing but secrets now. If you picked them away, one by one, there would be nothing left of her. Wasn't that a fun thought?

Norrie had always used to say that Lucy was a survivor, that they all were. The secret when you were fighting ghosts was that you had to want to live. You had to want it so much that the ghosts could never touch you. When Lucy looked inside her that will was still there, a stubborn, bright core, still shining strong. She was the talented seventh daughter of a tough woman and absolute cunt of a mother. The youngest of Jacob's Angels. The last one standing.

Eventually Lucy fell into a fretful sleep. She dreamed she was on a train that never stopped. It went on and on, past her stop, past Wooler, past London, into a thick, soupy fog. When she turned to her side Anthony Lockwood was there, with his stupid smile—looking like he didn't have a care in the world.

Chapter Text

2016 - London

Lucy was late up the next morning—or rather, about the normal hour for operatives. The annex's diner was still serving a late breakfast. It was a cheaply furnished room with an air of hospital cafeteria about it. A scattering of Lucy's fellow conscripts were yawning over bowls of the sort of sugary cereal that promised exhausted parents 30% fibre and picky kids about the same amount of marshmallows. The youngest conscript looked not much older than eleven, the oldest a haggard woman in the corner with a sallow, careworn face that was hard to pin an age to. Mostly they seemed to be about Lucy's age, give or take a few years. If she were to calculate some average from the group, it would be a slightly pathetic seventeen year old hunkered so low over their breakfast they nearly dipped the fringe in the cereal water. She wasn't sure where Lockwood had gotten off expecting some old brute in her place. Perhaps it had been less about her being a conscript and more about her being from the north—in which case she was required to be deeply insulted on behalf of her people. It was the principle of the thing.

Lucy was painfully aware of the eyes she drew as she shuffled up to the buffet table. The calculating looks assessing her made the smallest choices seem laden with meaning, as if her digging into the big jar of strawberry jam said things about her personality and worth. Fluorescent tubes were casting the buffet in a sharp spotlight and Lucy with it. It wasn't exactly high tea at the Ritz, or whatever Londoners did on a Sunday morning. The aforementioned cereals came in several varieties, all of them with jolly mascots grinning at her like they had secreted the meaning of life within. The loaves of sliced bread were slightly squashed in their plastic bags. There were knives and spoons and, confusingly, a single fork, sticking slapdash out of the many jars. Lucy plopped a few slices of bread into the toaster, hesitating over the messy big packs of marmite, chocolate spread and jam before settling on just butter. Or, she quickly amended, lightly salted Danpack spreadable.

She had scouted out a comfortable corner table on the way up, but before Lucy could retreat to it, a girl stood up and waved her over. She was perhaps a year or two younger than Lucy, and as such something of an unknown entity. Lucy had been the youngest Carlyle sister and the youngest of Jacobs' Angels.

There was another girl at the table who seemed about the same age, but her hair was hanging in listless drapes around her face so it was hard to tell. Lucy slumped into one of the free chairs with a loud scraping sound that drew looks laden with a sort of listless disdain.

"I'm Becks." The hailing girl had a cow's nest of blonde curls and a flat, unassuming face. "This here's Ana. She's shy. You're the new one?"

"Lucy," Lucy said.

"Uh-huh. So what did you do to end up here?" Becks bit into a dry-looking roll. When Lucy hadn't answered by the time she swallowed she continued talking. "The unholy trinity—" she held up three fingers and counted on them. "Bad enough, Talented enough and harmless enough. I was a canary for a relic dealer called Booths. The sap got life in some mine up by the iron works, I ended up here. Too bad a crime to get off, too young to be dangerous but bloody useful. Ana," she leaned her head to her friend. "Discovered one of her gran's heirlooms was haunted and tried to flog it to pay the rent. All guts no smarts, our Ana. And you—?"

Both girls were looking at Lucy expectantly.

"I was in a Night Watch, back home." Lucy decided to tell them the official story behind her conscription—the carefully constructed fib she had been convicted for, rather than the dangerous truth. They didn't need to know about Jacobs. No one did.

Night Watch was one of the few civilian professions for people with Talent. With the Ministry's zoning protocols, there were a lot of areas in the country that were just haunted enough to not be suitable to live in, but not so much that they couldn't be used for offices and the like. The most common of these were Code Yellow locations—no access during curfew. Night Watches were mostly made up of youths who for some reason couldn't or wouldn't move away from home or simply wasn't keen on fighting, and sometimes older folks who didn't measure up to the exacting Ministry standards. They'd patrol streets or businesses and sometimes Code Yellow locations that had the locals particularly antsy. Officially this was a protection against thieves or relic dealers, not ghosts. However, it was generally expected that they at least kept an eye out. As long as they didn't actually try to fight the bastards, the Ministry let it slide. 

"About... seven months ago," Lucy continued. "We were hired to patrol this old mill. The owner was taking the old machines apart to sell the iron and was scared about black market dealers nicking his stuff. We were mucking about, just being stupid, but we must have disturbed something." She swallowed, the real memories of that night crowding in like uninvited party guests. "There was a Visitor."

"Casualties?" Ana asked. Her voice was very weak, but her eyes, now Lucy could see them between the drapes of hair, had the desperate intensity of a trapped animal.

"My friends." A lump of sorrow constricted Lucy's throat. "My friends didn't make it—but I climbed out a window, so..." She shrugged.

"That would do it." Becks nodded sagely. She stared at her near empty bowl for a while before lifting it to her lips and slurping up the dregs of sugary cereal water. She put it down with a loud clatter.

Lucy looked around the room at the strangers at the other tables. The sullenly quiet boys who sat with their shoulders hunched and caps low over their eyes. The youngest conscripts, small and wary in a tight cluster. The two tired young men reading the paper. The couple desperately smushing their mouths together in a corner, restless hands—well, Lucy quickly averted her eyes from that. She let her eyes rest for a bit on the older woman, wondering what her story in particular could be.

She must have let some of her interest show, because Becky craned her beck around and huffed. "That's Mad Mole," she said. "I'd stay clear of her. She's in her thirties."

"She looks older."

"Hard life, ain't it? Story is, she used to be an unauthorized agent. When the Ministry clamped down on their little hobby outfit they sent the leader to hang and the rest of them to the mines. Only reason she ended up here is she snitched on them."

"She's real good though," Ana said softly.

"Yeah but completely off her rocker! I wouldn't trust her. I bet she still snitches, and they just keep her here to weed out the bad eggs. She's been here for fifteen years at least."

"You'd think she'd bee rehabilitated by now," Lucy murmured.

Ana and Becks stared at her.

"Rehabilitated?"

"It's what we're here for, isn't it?"

The two girls exchanged a look. "I mean, it's what they say to people." Becks spoke carefully. "If you ask me, we're here because we're bloody useful. As long as that's true—why the fuck would they let any of us go?"

***

"Colham House." Inspector Barnes slapped down a folder on the desk in front of Mr Lockwood. Lucy was sitting further back and served a view of her supervisor's neck. Dark curls brushed against the suit collar when he straightened up from what must have been a rather cursory look. She cold tell he was doing that excessive smiling thing again by the longsuffering expression on Barnes' face alone. "It's a Code Yellow office building in Hackney," Barnes continued. "Currently undergoing evaluation for housing redevelopment."

"I see."

"All the Visitors in our records are type one—possibly Blitz victims—but obviously the change in usage means a more thorough inventory is required. That is where you and Ms Carlyle comes in. It's assessment only. Given your current circumstances, any premature engagement will be particularly frowned upon." By the way the inspector glared at Lockwood she assumed premature engagement was a real risk. "You have permission to involve three youths from the Corps if needed. Levels two to three only."

"Oh, no that's fine. I'm sure Ms Carlyle's and my own Talents will be plenty for this job."

"Are you? Well, I suppose we'll see about that. Try not to get your ward killed, Mr Lockwood."

"I take it that is frowned upon too?"

"I certainly wouldn't be pleased. And read the documents this time—we don't need you turning up at the wrong house again."

"In my defence, it was only that once—"

"And, do not dress up."

"—also, I did find a wraith in the boiler room... Sorry, dress up?"

"Costuming is hardly Ministry policy, Mr Lockwood."

"Of course. I don't think we'll need it in this case anyway." He snatched up the folder and bounced to his feet. He was vigorous, Lucy had to give him that. She stood at a more sedate pace and moseyed after him into the corridor.

Lockwood beamed at her when she arrived. "Finally in a uniform then Ms Carlyle? Suits you."

The housemistress hadn't let Lucy leave the annex before dressing in the olive green overalls of the Ministry conscripts. They only came in unisex sizes, which meant they were made for men in spite of most of the conscripts seemingly being young women. In order to accommodate her hips she'd had to go with a larger size, so it was bulky across her shoulders and too long in the legs and arms. Lockwood was still in a narrow suit and tie. She was fairly sure he had them tailored to fit like that, which seemed insane to her. Lucy was a great believer in comfort. Back in her angel days she usually wore a jumper and either thick leggings and a short skirt or sturdy and comfortable trousers to jobs. If you couldn't easily climb a tree or wriggle through a moderately thorny hedge without getting stuck, she didn't consider it suitable work wear. Lockwood's clothes did not seem at all suitable. Her overalls, meanwhile, had other issues.

"It's completely impractical," she replied to Lockwood's grin with her best glare. "I don't know what they were thinking, unless they're trying to kill us off. What if it catches fire? Or I get ectoplasm stains and need to get it off quickly? Or get stuck? It'll be a nightmare to wriggle out of, won't it?" She pulled angrily at the offending piece of clothing. "Also, I have to get half naked just to pee."

The tips of Lockwood's ears had turned a little red. "Er, I hadn't thought about that. I'll see what I can do, Ms Carlyle. I certainly don't want to needlessly endanger—or, um, inconvenience—you." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, I suppose we should read this." He made a face at the thick folder. "There could be important stuff in it."

Moments went past, then some idea caught Lockwood and enthusiasm flared in his face once again. He snapped the folder shut. "Oh, I have just the thing! Come on, Ms Carlyle, with me."

***

Being Anthony Lockwood's ward was the sort of thing that required you to just hang on. He led Lucy down a busy street, pedestrians jostling her as she struggled to keep up with his great strides. It was a very bright day. Cars crawled by on the wide street, horns honking, drivers cursing behind the wheels. The size of the buildings in this part of London was disorienting. Steel and glass reflected the world back on itself like a multifaceted mirror. Lockwood noticed her gawking and slowed to walk beside her.

"There was a bit of a building frenzy here in the last century." He looked vaguely apologetic. "I think they hoped people would feel safer without all that old history everywhere. Only, there was a general lack of funds and the building sites ended up riddled with accidents and other... strange occurrences. It wasn't long until they had their own menagerie of ghosts." He shrugged. "Some of the most high profile hauntings in London has been on this very street. The High-rise Howler. The Bloody Banker of Westhall&Peakes. There was even a nasty cluster case from an accident where several people were crushed by a skywalk collapsing... Ah, it's in here."

Lucy hesitated by a set of glass doors. Lockwood looked back at her, confused at her reaction.

"Oh," he laughed a little. "The cluster case wasn't in here. No, I don't think this Mullet's ever had a Visitor. Too many suppressants. This is our destination. Come on—oh, and mind the step."

Mullet's didn't have any locations up north, but there was a Satchel's in Newcastle and several similar shops all around the country. They specialised in ghost protections, both for civilians and for operatives. The items on offer in the main room ranged from silver jewellery and pendants you could hang for extra protection, all the way up to iron inlays for buildings and decorative contraptions with endlessly running water. Mullet's, like the smaller stores Lucy was used to, smelled strongly of lavender with an undercurrent of iron and oil. The scale was bigger but it was all very familiar. In spite of herself a feeling of excitement filled Lucy. The part of the store that catered to operatives wasn't open to regular folks, but you could press your face to large glass windows and peer inside. Lucy was resisting the impulse to do just that when Lockwood retrieved an ID card.

They were let into the restricted room.

The rapiers were what caught Lucy's attention first. They came in so many variants. Some looked decidedly more fancy than others, with elaborate, decorative hilts and ever larger numbers on the little notes next to them.

"36% 0.08 sc?" Lucy read.

"Silver coating. Most of them just have the tip coated. The thicker the coating, the longer it will hold before needing maintenance. Ah, that's a Spanish blade." Lockwood retrieved it and gave it a few whips before hanging it back in place. He was an elegant fencer—very light on his feet, powerful in his movements and graceful with it. "You can't have one I'm afraid," he said. "Anything weapons grade you need special permits for, and it's not like you were ever in the Corps. No flares either, but salt bombs and iron filings should be fine. Here is what I wanted to show you."

He retrieved a work belt from a section of wearables and handed it to her. "We could get one from the Ministry of course. They provide a standardised selection of everything an operative might need."

"Then how does this place exist?"

"It's the whole standardised selection bit that causes a bit of a problem. They have a policy to buy British, for one thing, and to be honest they can be a bit cheap... That's all well and good when it comes to simple flares, but no one wants a rapier with Made in Hull stamped on the blade if they can avoid it. " Here grinned at her. "Come on, try the belt on."

Lucy snapped the work place in place and Lockwood adjusted some buckles.

"How does that feel?"

"Good, I think..." Lucy looked for the prize tag and tried not to wince when she found it. She hastily started to unbuckle it. "Look, I know you saw that big wad of money, but I can't go around spending it on frivolous stuff like—"

"No, no, you misunderstand me! Call it a welcome gift. And an apology for those dreadful overalls—I will see what I can do about them, but for now, this will have to do. You should at least have something that fits well." He smiled. "If you don't like this one we can try some of the others?"

Lucy twisted around, awkwardly doing some skips and lunges. The belt stayed in place and didn't get in the way. It was a really nice work belt. "No, it feels good."

"Excellent. My ex-girlfriend had a similar build to you," Lockwood explained. "She was always complaining about the standard belts. This was the one she used. I figured it would fit you too."

Well, if her posh jailor was willing to Pretty Woman her with some fancy work gear, Lucy wasn't about to complain. Lockwood bought salt bombs and canisters for iron filings and slotted them into place on her belt. To her surprise he also got some seals for her, in particular a very fine and light silver net. It was quite possibly the most expensive thing Lucy had ever held in her hand. If she thought for one moment that money could do fuck all to fix her problems, she might have "lost it" on a case and tried flogging it on the black market. As it was, she was just glad for the extra protection it provided. In all her years with Jacobs, she'd never been outfitted half this well. She thanked Lockwood a little awkwardly and got a beaming smile in return.

Lockwood deflated a bit when they left Mullet's, once again pulling out the folder from some mysterious pocket in his coat. He gave Lucy a hopeful look, like a puppy begging for a treat.

"You don't happen to be the sort of person who get all excited about paper work, are you?" She glared at him. He sighed. "God, I miss George sometimes. Well, let's at least get a nice cup of tea. This thing looks like absolute murder to get through."

Chapter Text

2007 - Wooler

Lucy was eight when she saw her first limbless.

The angels had been called out to a haunted root cellar in Humbleton—a place of idyllic cottages along a narrow country road and seemingly endless green fields beyond. Jacobs had selected his three senior angels for the case—Hank, Arlington and Stephanie—with Norrie and Lucy as backup.

As far as Lucy knew, the agents of the Ministry and the Spirit Corps youths were outfitted with silver-tipped rapiers, magnesium flares and salt bombs, seals of silver and iron, silver glass containers, chains and iron filings and lord knew what else. Her knowledge came mostly from television. Being eight, her personal favourite was still the Division 32 claymation show on Channel 4, but more often than not—between school ending and mam coming home—her sisters would hog the telly with the long-running soap Silvertipped Hearts. That show alone had done more to sell the nation's teenage girls on the Spirit Corps than the uplifting recruitment videos on the Beeb ever could. Young Lucy ate it all up with ravenous curiosity. It was a little disappointing then, that Jacobs' Angels were more spartanly attired. Their kit was an assortment of salt and iron filings, second-hand chains, iron-tipped sticks or hooks, and scraggly heaps of lavender. Not a poncy sword in sight.

Lucy's learning of the trade had been a haphazard affair. Jacobs would drop by Wooler First School and take his little angels on rambling drives through the green landscape, pointing out locations of old cases and talking for hours. It was like being submerged in a river of disorganized knowledge, fumbling for purchase as the currents tore at you from all sides. Other days, he would set one of the other angels to teach Lucy to make salt bombs or swing a chain. Some days they would head out into the twilight, just Lucy and Jacobs, to test her Talent on the psychically charged mural behind the chippy, or the train station wraith, or some other well known but harmless haunting in the area.

On those first cases, Lucy wasn't armed. She'd be carrying the unwieldy bags of lavender and using her Talent to scout out the Visitor. Then her job was to get out of the way.

The Humbleton potato ghost, as they came to call it, had haunted the cellar for three months, damaging the produce and threatening anyone who ventured into the dark space. Fittingly it also looked a bit like a potato. A rotten, sprouted specimen at that, large, knobbly and pale, and glistening with juices Lucy would rather not think too hard about. It was immediately apparent to the angels that the size was the problem. The size of the limbless and the size of their party, as well as the not very large root cellar they were all crammed into. Even with Jacobs hanging back by the car they were packed tight. Hank had to keep to the middle to not bonk his head against the vaulted ceiling.

"Keep back little frog," Arlington gave Lucy's shoulder a light shove as the limbless appeared. He had a loop of chain in his gloved hands, his face bright and dimpled, but with a tense crick between his brows. An impatient boy, he was always the first to step into the ghost's orbit. Lucy took a step back, clutching the bag of lavender. She couldn't stop staring at the lumbering shape. There was Ari, straight ahead, feet wide apart, chain in hands. To his left Steph, slim and brazen like a particularly tough weed, and to his right Hank, steady, calm and wary.

"Don't rush it now," Hank said. "Careful."

The limbless took a lurching step, forward and to the side. Steph shrieked and stumbled back towards a crate of potato. Chains went up and around, forcing the ghost back. It was annoyed. Lucy could feel its anger and frustration. If she had to guess, she'd say it was guarding something, though who the hell cared that deeply about potatoes she couldn't fathom.

"We need to get the source." Steph was up again, gripping a pole with an iron prong at the end. She jabbed it towards the ghost. Limbless were typically slow but hardy. Difficult to force into a retreat.

"It's on us, Norrie," Lucy turned to her friend. "We need to find it."

Norrie had an iron hook at her belt, but like Lucy she was too small to make much of a difference in a fight. Her main Talent was sight and she was gawking at the limbless. Now she nodded, frantic bobs that sent her red ponytail swinging. They each went to the side, little hands crawling over the crates and dirty floor. Lucy pressed herself behind the crates, feeling over the walls, reaching between them. Potatoes fell out and hit her back, her arms, her head. Thunk, thunk, thunk.

"This is useless!" Norrie ducked as an errant loop of chain came flying. "It's probably at the bottom of one of these stupid crates!"

"Doesn't Jacobs always say to let the ghost show us the source?"

"What, you fancy asking that thing directions?!"

Lucy shook her head. Visitors had an uncanny ability to sense when you came near their source, and they weren't pleased about it. Lucy started circling the perimeter, looking for an indication of distress, a twitch, anything at all, from the potato ghost. She needn't have been so thorough. Suddenly the ground was wood, not dirt, and the limbless snapped around with a wail of psychic agony. Funny it could be so loud when it had no mouth. It lurched towards her, but then Ari was there. His chain went in a big, whirling circle, like the swing ride on the Hexham fair. And there was Lucy, not brought down by a ghost, but by a loop of chain. It lashed across her shoulder, cracking against her back. She fell down more from shock than from the force of it. Someone called her name, but Lucy was already rolling over, frantically grabbing at the edge of the wooden hatch in the floor. Below, it was more like a crawlspace than a room. She saw something white in the dark. Her body was trembling from frayed nerves, shock and cold, teeth clattering. Pain started radiating out from where she'd been hit, her initiative quickly draining away from her.

Norrie was the one who came to her rescue. She grabbed all the dry lavender and hauled into the crawlspace. Then she lit a match and tossed it after.

They closed the hatch and ran. Hank grabbed Lucy and carried her on his back. They exploded out from the root cellar like dandelion fluff and watched, stunned, as the whole thing went up in explosive flames.

Later, they would learn that the dead man—an Irish geezer two decades gone—had been distilling poteen below the cellar. The owners had recently sold their iron tools and replaced them with cheaper alternatives, causing the Irishman to rise from his precious still. His stock had burned better than the lavender.

The worst Lucy got from the ordeal was a few bruised ribs, but Arlington felt so bad about it he came over with a large batch of his dad's home made crumpets. At least two of Lucy's sisters fell in love with him on the spot. It was like a pantomime of Silvertipped Hearts. Normally her older sisters paid little attention to her, but they wouldn't shut up about Ari's dimples and easy charm. This, Lucy thought glumly as she was recovering in her little wedge of an attic room, might be more annoying than that stupid limbless.

2016 - London

London nights were not quiet, not like home. The black cabs were replaced by white night cabs—the city and the cars an inverted negative. Lockwood had not adapted to the job by dressing more sensibly. His coat flared dramatically, his tie looked like a strangle risk and his suit was slim and expensive looking. He did have a well equipped work belt. Lucy would give him that. The cylinders were magnesium flares of course. He'd swapped rapier to one with a more elaborate handle. The cage around his hand was like a twisty silver vine. He rested his hand there, but the rapier was still slotted to his belt.

Colham House was an unassuming building, though it loomed over them where it squatted in the dark. Lucy looked up at the rows of identical windows, the discoloured blinds, the plain yellow brick facade. There was a sticker on the glass door leading to the lobby.

Code Yellow—Access Restricted during Curfew.
Violation is punishable by law.
- The Queen's Ministry of Psychical Defence

Lockwood shoved the door open. Or tried to. It was locked, so instead he just squished his shoulder into it. He gave Lucy a sheepish look, retrieved a key from an internal pocket and tried again. This time it slipped open to reveal a dark room.

The lobby had been dressed in the sort of sturdy carpet that you often saw in office buildings. It swallowed up the sound of their steps.

"We should have been her earlier," Lucy grumbled. "Scouted out the place."

"Well, we were a bit pressed for time, Ms Carlyle."

"Only because you dragged us across half London to get tea."

"Important business, tea." He grinned at her. "It shouldn't be a problem. I could deal with a few type ones in my sleep."

"Deal with them?" She stared at his slim figure, so confident and energetic. He opted not to address her comment.

"I think we'll put down a chain circle here," he said instead. "We should have an easy route for retreat, just in case."

The type one Blitz ghosts were supposed to be on the ground floor and cellar. The building itself had not been around at the time, which would make them a bastard to clear out. It would be Lucy's first Blitzers as Lockwood called them, and she wasn't keen.

"But you must have encountered a variety of other type ones in the Night Watch?" Lockwood said. For a moment Lucy felt like she'd missed a step and was left fumbling for purchase. Of course Lockwood would think she'd worked for a Night Watch—that was the official story after all—but here on a case with him she suddenly realised how little she'd thought this through. She had far too much experience with ghosts for someone who only patrolled and never engaged. Realistically, she was unlikely to have any experience with type twos, since the official Ministry truth was that they were all dealt with. The only reason a Night Watch would encounter one would be a recent death, or if it had been stirred up by some unauthorised external event. Like, for example, some idiot digging up their garden without a permit. In any case, Lucy clearly knew far too much about ghosts.

Best to be vague. "A few."

"Great. Not completely new territory then." He held her eyes a little too long, his expression contemplative. Lucy exhaled when he finally released her.

They took the lift up to the fifth floor and started working their way down. It was a big space for two people and it quickly became obvious that they did not have enough chains for a safe retreat from everywhere. They focused on clearing one floor, then moving to the next, taking their chains with them.

"Can you sense anything Ms Carlyle?"

"Oh, for fuck sake just call me Lucy!"

Lucy had been feeling something. A discomfort, pricking at the nape of her neck, making her feel slow and heavy. Perhaps that was why she'd snapped. Lockwood stared at her and she mumbled an apology.

"No, no, that's quite alright."

"It's just, I have six sisters. It's weird being Ms Carlyle-d about a million times a day." She took a steadying breath. "I do feel something, as a matter of fact. A sort of... unhappiness."

He nodded. "Malaise. I sense it too. It's strange though. I wouldn't expect it from type ones, not unless there are quite a few of them. Well, there are no death glows at least. How about sounds?"

Lucy shut her eyes and concentrated. "Thumps," she said. "Irregular ones. Like... someone is being bashed about." She opened them again. "I don't think it's near here."

"Let's continue down then."

The malaise got worse as they descended down the floors, the thumps louder. They went through one office after another, so similar that the journey obtained a dreamlike quality. They were moving, but it didn't feel like they were getting anywhere. Any small talk had been replaced by a watchful silence. They both expected something, that much was clear.

When they pushed open the door to the second floor, Lucy nearly doubled over from the sensations. There was a powerful feeling of powerlessness. It sapped at her strength. Lockwood swiftly put down a chain circle and pulled her inside. He'd drawn his rapier, and now he was pointing with the hilt down the corridor.

"Ghost fog." His voice sounded very near. "Our Visitor will be down there. Still hear it?"

"Yeah. It's like I said. Something—someone, maybe—being pushed around. Falling into stuff." She shut her eyes. A grunt. A sense of not getting enough air. A weight on her chest. She gasped, putting her hand to her throat. "It's bad Lockwood," she said. "Something bad happened here."

"It's okay Lucy." He gave her arm a squeeze. "You stay here in the circle. I'll go take a look."

Just like that he was out of the circle. He walked swiftly with his rapier lowered but engaged. Finally he arrived at the room where the thumps came from. Lucy couldn't see his expression in the dark, but his shape moved to open a door. As soon as he did, his face was illuminated by otherworldly light. She saw surprise give way to calm determination and he stepped back. One, two, tree steps, rapier raised and painting intricate patterns in the air. A great, lumbering shape followed him through the door. It was fast for a limbless. It threw itself towards Lockwood who just about managed to side step. He bent back, avoiding a stump of an arm from slapping him across the naked skin on his face.

There was an office chair behind him. One of those with five wheels and more settings than anyone knew what to do with. He stumbled, his butt hitting the upholstery with enough force that the chair skidded away. There was little left of Lockwood's natural grace when he fell to the floor, rapier still in hand and pointing up towards the mountain of flesh that was bearing down on him.

Lucy had fought ghosts since she was eight. The moment the limbless appeared her mind had changed track. She stepped out of the chain circle and secured a loop of it around her hand. It was achingly familiar how easily the heavy chain became an extension of her arm. Her other hand went to one of the salt bombs and she hurled it to draw the limbless' attention. It twisted to the side, turning its back on Lockwood. Lucy watched him scramble to his feet. The limbless was between them, and now that she could see its face, it had a morose, pitiful expression.

Fear, then irritation at the fear. Disdain, quickly drowned in terror. Embarrassment, first at the panic and then at the embarrassment itself...

Lucy shook her head to break off the connection and instead started swinging the chain. Like one, they started to fight the limbless, Lucy with her whirling loop of chain, Lockwood with his rapier. It moaned as it jerked from one attack only to fall into the next. Limbless were hardy bastards, so it took them a while before it lurched back towards the office. They followed and watched the massive hunk of pale flesh disappear into the desk, leaving behind a stress ball gently rolling towards the edge and a sign reading Neil Crawford, office manager.

Lucy didn't have much experience of corporate life, but she thought the office had an oddly staged look to it. Dumbbells had been left out next to motivational books with suspiciously unbroken spines and names like "Ten habits of highly effective business leaders". It took Lucy a moment to realise the series of pictures with geometrical shapes on the wall was artsy close-ups of feminine body parts.

"Quickly," Lockwood said. "The source should be in here somewhere."

Lucy was already tugging open the drawers, emptying them on the floor. Pens and envelopes and, rather optimistically for an office she thought, an unopened package of condoms. Her fingers brushed against a pink teddy bear and she snatched her hand back, fingers tingling, then reached back in for a proper grasp—

Jesus, Neil was raging tonight!

"Calm the fuck down bro!"

"Wasn't enough to have a go for my fucking promotion, was it you fat fuck? Now you're shagging my wife too?!"

"It was just a bit of flirting, bro. Veronica's class! Just chill, okay?" He tried to back away, but the hard edge of the desk was digging into his thighs. Neil stepped closer. He could feel the spit on his face, see the gum around his straight, white dentures...

"Fuck you Gat-dick!"

"Jesus, Neil." He let out a nervous laugh. "This is some real small-dick energy man..." He lifted his hands in a placating gesture. Neil's nostrils flared. The bloke lived off protein shakes and neon cans of electrolyte bevvies and spent all his time pumping iron.

"Big. Fucking. Mistake. Gatwick." Then Neil was reaching for the paper weight...

"Lucy!" Lucy opened her yes and stared at the bear in her hand. It was holding a heart in its chubby arms with the text I wow you in curlicue letters. Lockwood's hand was warm and steady on her shoulder. "Lucy are you okay?"

Instead of answering she reached for a paper knife and cut the cuddly toy open. There, in the tufts of fodder, was a single finger bone.

Lockwood got over his surprise so quickly you'd hardly have known it was there at all, but Lucy had felt him tense before he released his grip on her. He snatched the bone up and wrapped it in a seal.

It was like the whole building exhaled.

Then a different tension rose.

Lockwood was staring at Lucy, eyes wide with surprise and something else. Not disapproval, she didn't think. She looked away and down at the name plate.

"I think this bloke murdered his colleague," she cleared her throat. "So that's why there would be an unaccounted for limbless moseying about."

Lockwood stared in silence for a moment longer, then finally looked away. He cleared his throat. "Excellent. Good job Ms Carlyle. You're quite the natural." He stood up swiftly and replaced his rapier in his belt. "Just, maybe let the chain circle stay in place next time? We do have other chains and it's quite nice to have somewhere to retreat to in case of emergencies."

Lucy tried not to groan as Lockwood sauntered out of the office. So much for keeping the extent of her ghost-hunting experience a goddamned secret.

Chapter Text

2007 - Wooler

Three weeks after the Humbleton Potato, as the ghost in the root cellar had been named, Jacobs let his angels know that the ordeal had left them low on lavender. It was a resource that needed constant replenishing even when they applied it more modestly. If it wasn't fresh enough, it might as well be rose petals for all the good it did against the ghosts.

"This is a lesson," Jacobs said, tapping his temple. "Stop and think. Don't be hasty. It was wasteful, burning the stash. I'm not cross—we'll take it as a learning experience." He put an unlit cigarette in his mouth, exhaling through his nose as he studied the angels with his morose eyes. Picked it out again. "I'll go shopping tonight," he pointed the fag at them. "Carlyle and White, you come with us—you too Dawks."

They took off in Jacobs' car, stuttering along the winding country roads. Out of all of their tools of trade, the lavender was easiest to get a hold of. It grew in big, ostentatious fields a short drive to the south of town. The shadows grew long across the road, a few sheep bleating sleepily at the vehicle. Jacobs cast an eye at Lucy in the backseat.

"Ever met your dad's cousin Frank, Carlyle?"

Lucy frowned and shook her head.

He grunted. "Little hope for a family discount then. Shame that."

He didn't elaborate, but Ari's cheerful face peered around the passenger seat.

"We buy iron from him," he said. "Has a farm up by Lowick."

Later Lucy would learn that they got almost all their iron from Frank's yard full of rusty scrap metal, dubiously obtained outside the Ministry's control. Ghost fighting materials were state controlled resources and all sale had to go through them, unless there were special supply rights in place. When dealing with the lavender farms Jacobs would sometimes handle his dealings with them directly, but always in a manner that didn't leave a paper trail. He might have his angels patrolling the fields, in what Lucy supposed must be some kind of underhanded arrangement. There were a lot of deals and favours in Jacobs' world. That was the business.

That night Jacobs didn't do things even that much by the book. Paul Bell had whispered to her that the job hadn't paid—the whole thing having gone up in flames with all the potatoes—and now the book wasn't balancing. Lucy imagined Jacobs putting his big ledger on his head and walking between the nicotine yellowed walls of his office with his arms spread wide like he was trying to take flight.

They arrived at the lavender fields at dusk, parking the car in a copse. Far away you could see golden squares of lit windows—the farm, Lucy supposed—but there were no people around in the fields. Ari showed her and Norrie to a hollow beneath the fence and the two girls pressed inside. They emerged dirty and rumpled and with a new tear in Lucy's jumper.

"I'm glad you're here Lucy," Norrie took her hand, giving her a gap-toothed smile. "I was on me own last time and I was that scared."

Lucy would always remember her first time in those fields. The fear and the wonder of it—the dogs barking in the distance as she carried armloads of scratchy lavender down neat, purple rows. It smelled strongly, comfortingly, of the flowers. Norrie was already becoming the sister she got to choose rather than generous bucketful she'd been handed by life's lottery. Not that she disliked her sisters. She loved them dearly, Mary especially. But already, only a few months into joining the angels, she could feel a growing distance between them. Between the angles and the world, really. They were that close.

Jacobs stuffed the lavender into the boot of the car and slammed it shut. A bird fluttered from a tree branch.

"Now where's that fool Dawks?" he mumbled under his breath. The boy emerged as if on cue from the undergrowth, leaves caught in his brown locks and a strange, gnarled branch in his hand.

"Look what I found, little frog." He poked Lucy's hair with the branch and Norrie rolled her eyes. "Doesn't it look funny? I wonder how it grows like this—"

"Jesus," Jacobs cursed. "You're as harebrained as your mam, boy. I'm not having that thing in my car. We're civilised folks—no one can tell us otherwise." He folded his long legs into the drivers seat and his child army scurried to their places, sliding back and forth across the seats as the car rattled through the quiet night.

2016 - London

Lockwood had assumed from the beginning that there was a fair bit of space between what Lucy had been convicted of and what she'd actually been doing up in that northern town of hers. For example, she clearly had some experience with ghost hunting. It wasn't unheard of that Night Watch were more active than they were supposed to be, especially in places that didn't have a local Ministry presence. Officially the Ministry would never admit as much. The laws around unauthorized ghost hunting were strict because they were supposed to act as a detractor. There had been incidents before the laws. People had dried in droves. Unfortunately, that also meant that if Lucy had been convicted for that, she'd been sent off to a mine or a high security prison. For the Ministry, being generous with the truth was just good sense.

All that said, Lucy's handling of the Colham House limbless had shocked Lockwood. When he'd lain there, brought to the brink of his own demise by an office chair of all bloody things, he'd prayed that his ward would have enough sense to throw a salt bomb or two. He shouldn't have worried. The fact that she'd come running, whirling a chain like a mad woman, found the source and identified the cause of death, was nothing short of remarkable. He was trembling like a bowstring for the rest of the job. They'd found the Blitz victims on the ground floor as expected. Also, as expected, there was no easy way to find their source. Lockwood assumed it was in the foundations. That was usually the case with the war victims. The houses had been demolished, but if the foundations were good they sometimes just piled the new house on top of them. He wouldn't be surprised if the cellar was an old bomb shelter. He said as much to Barnes and a woman called Veronica Mendez who was in charge of assignments. Ms Mendez was an old school friend of Penelope Fittes—short and dark with sharp features and a brisk manner.

"They'll have to ward the ground floor and close off the cellar if they want to turn it into flats," Lockwood said. "Unless the Ministry wants to spend uncountable man-hours trying to narrow the haunting down, that is?"

"No, that's not likely." Ms Mendez flipped to the next page of the report. "What about this limbless?"

"That's dealt with."

Barnes gave a grunt of displeasure, but Ms Mendez was more practically inclined.

"Your efficiency is admirable, Mr Lockwood. It says here that it was an office worker?"

"Oliver Gatwick," Lockwood said. "Murder victim. He'd been missing for seven months apparently. The met has taken over the case now. Seems pretty open and shut. Neal Crawford—that's the suspected murderer—burned the remains but kept a finger bone with him as a sort of souvenir."

Ms Mendez made a note in her papers. "What about your ward? Did Ms Carlyle perform adequately?"

"Ms Carlyle was excellent." Lockwood stopped himself before blurting out that she'd most likely saved his life. "Her Talent is remarkable and she remained calm under pressure."

"No challenges to your authority?"

"None whatsoever. She's as docile as a lamb." He'd likely get an earful from Ms Carlyle if she'd heard him say that, but it's not like she'd ever know. "I believe she truly wants to better herself. She knows this is her best chance." He hesitated for a beat. "Actually, I was hoping to get permission to reward her for her good work."

"Surely that's a bit premature?" Barnes said. "You've only been on a single case."

"What did you have in mind, Mr Lockwood?"

"Ms Carlyle is uncomfortable in her uniform. It doesn't fit her well and I'm personally a bit concerned about the practicality of overalls in an operative situation. I was thinking shirt and trousers might be more suitable?"

"That's within protocol. Go down to outfitting and talk to them about the options. You may take Ms Carlyle with you. Was that all?"

"Oh, er... Yes?" Lockwood wondered if he should have thought of something more substantial. Lucy deserved to be rewarded for her good work and it wasn't like she was getting paid. Well, next time perhaps.

"Excellent." Ms Mendez smile whispered past with a softening of her severe brow. "Penelope will be pleased with this. She keeps an eye on you, Mr Lockwood."

"Ms Fittes is an acquaintance of my uncle."

"No doubt you being a competent young man has more to do with her interest."

"Thank you, Ms Mendez. I do hope so."

Lockwood left the room in the most excellent mood. Not only was Penelope Fittes pleased with him, he'd be able to repay Ms Carlyle with a small kindness. He'd always found gifts to be the simplest display of appreciation.

Of course, Ms Carlyle—Lucy, he corrected himself, liking the sound of her name on his tongue a bit too much—wasn't nearly as chipper as he was over the case. At the end of the day, he went home to Portland Row while she was stowed away in that horrible little cell. Was it even possible to be genuinely happy with circumstances as hers, or would she never be more than merely content? The thought gnawed at him.

Once again he found himself wondering over the misfortunes that had landed Lucy here. What had her life been like up there, in her little northern town? He recalled her the first time they met, on that trip three years ago. She'd been bold and brash, and surrounded by a clot of friends—as tight as soldiers. There had been a girl with red hair. Two boys. Where were they now? Considering the offence that caused Lucy to be conscripted was Disturbance of Code Yellow with fatal outcome he supposed it was possible they were all gone...

Well, that was all in the past, and none of his business. Not only was this arrangement beneficial to him, but it could be for Lucy too. Their Talents complemented each other. Lockwood couldn't help imagining himself as a sort of benevolent mentor. They'd work together, and gradually his leadership would help Lucy find her joy and confidence again. He'd very much like to teach her to use a rapier instead of that interesting chain work she had going on. Maybe she could even be employed as a free woman by the Ministry one day? The thought of working side by side with Lucy as an equal sent a thrill though Lockwood that he wasn't keen on examining too closely.

Wasn't this exactly why Penelope had taken a chance on him? She'd given him a supervisory role over a conscript even though he was the youngest Ministry employee. She believed in him. Lockwood could imagine Gale's sour look as he was shuffled to the side and Lockwood got all the praise. He would rise in the ranks of the Ministry, being able to make a proper difference at last, and Lucy would have her freedom.

There really was such great potential in this.

***

"George!" Lockwood slammed the door of 35 Portland Row shut, listening for the telltale bumblings of his friend. A thud from the first floor and he appeared bleary-eyed at the top of the stairs, glasses askew and trousers barely hanging in there.

"The prodigal son hath returned," came George's dry tone. "Is there any particular reason you disturbed my nap or were you just missing the sound of your own voice?"

"You were sleeping?" Lockwood hung his coat on top of the other coats jostling for space on the hangers. "Aren't you supposed to work one of those cushy day job these days?"

George yawned and slouched down the stairs. "I was experimenting on the Skull."

"I'm still not sure about having that nasty old thing in my house, George."

"It's me and my quirks or the crushing weight of loneliness, take it or leave it. Tea?"

"Yes please."

The kitchen was Lockwood's favourite part of the house. Back when he and George had lived at the same Spirit Corps dorm, they'd liberated a sheet from the washing rotation and used it as a sort of mood board. After Lockwood moved permanently into Portland Row, realised he wasn't at all good with silence and invited his best friend, the kitchen table cloth had quickly filled the same role. It was less of a rebel act when it was your own stuff you doodled on, but it made the old place feel homely. The house had been Lockwood's parents and was still full of the debris from their lives, but things like the Thinking Cloth—yes, it had a name—had slowly made it feel like his own. Well, his and Jessica's, if she ever came home.

"So, how's things going with the criminal?" George snatched a pen and put a curly moustache on the blob Lockwood had been drawing on the thinking cloth. "And what on earth is this supposed to be?"

"It's a limbless, obviously." Lockwood sighed. "Never mind, I'm no good at drawing. It's supposed to be the ghost we dealt with last night. Lucy—"

George gave him a blank look. Lockwood thought it was rather amused blank look, but he couldn't be sure. He cleared his throat.

"We had our first case last night. Ms Carlyle is talented—of course, I expected as much—but she has good instincts too." He hesitated. "She saved my life George."

"Well, that didn't take her long." 

"No. Exactly. She used a chain like a sort of lasso, I've never seen anything like it." Lockwood gave the stick figure he was drawing a bob and a whip. George peered at it, then gave it significantly more womanly shapes. "George!"

"What? She looked like a cowboy in a helmet. So, you think she's done it before?"

"Almost certainly."

"Can't say I'm that surprised. We always suspected something was afoot up there. Maybe she'd be interested in taking another look at my skull..."

"You're not showing my ward that manky old skull in a jar! You're not even supposed to have it in the first place. It's a Ministry asset and you're not a Ministry employee."

George rolled his eyes at the old argument. "I'm just borrowing it for a bit. No use in it just gathering dust, is there?"

"It's been five years! Oh, never mind. Just don't go around flashing your rank old sources to Lucy. She's had a hard enough time of it as it is."

"My rank old sources? Is that some kind of euphemism? Besides, she already saw it when we were on that recruitment trip up north, so it's not like—fine, fine. Don't get all huffy about it now." George shoved a hobnob into his mouth and swallowed it down with his criminally milky cup of tea. "Do you think she'd be willing to talk to me about—where was it she was from again?"

"Some pokey town up by Cheviot Hills. I doubt it. She's not very forthcoming about her past. Why would you want to know about it anyway?"

"I'm working on a research paper about the discrepancies between local mythologies around ghosts and the official Ministry records."

Lockwood raised a brow. "And the Ministry is okay with that?"

"They are. Well, as long as I make sure I call the local stories mythology."

"What else would you call it?"

"Oh, I don't know? Facts?"

"George!"

"I know, I know. It's heresy to even insinuate the Ministry are wrong—but the facts remain, Lockwood. We all saw how the hauntings and the official stories about the hauntings diverged when we were in the Corps. That's an observable fact. I bet it's even worse so far from the capital."

"They don't do that to mislead people, George. The Ministry's job is to keep people safe. No one will benefit from panic."

George grunted. "Your faith in the system is admirable and getting more impressive by the year. Old Sykes wouldn't recognise you."

"I'm just pragmatic."

"If you say so. Oh, sod it, suppose I don't have to talk to Lucy if it's that important to you. I have other avenues of research."

Lockwood stayed in the kitchen after George went back upstairs, his pen filling in the contours of the doodle. George mentioning his old mentor Nigel Sykes felt like a slap even though his friend hadn't intended it to be. Lockwood didn't think he'd changed all that much since his messy boyhood years. He had less anger perhaps, but it's not like he had suddenly turned into one of those good little operatives who never questioned a thing. The fact was, you had to maintain a balance to be effective. Bend the rules when they needed bending, but not most of the time. For all his blustering Sykes had never really achieved much. He'd talked like a rebel but lived the life of a low-level agent—his Talent at the mercy of the ministry's more scrupulous bottom feeders. Then he'd died. His name was on a brass plate in the large concrete cylinder of the Hall of Heroes. Even though Lockwood visited every year on Sykes' death day, he could never remember where exactly it was. It had gotten lost in the flood of disrupted lives, each just a scratching on a metal plate. That was what it was about in the end. The Ministry's job was to keep that flood under control. Was that more important than truth? Lockwood hesitated. In his mind, Sykes' disappointed face seemed indistinct, fading, and in its place Penelope Fittes stood in all her polished glory. A shudder went through his body and he shook his head to dislodge the distressing image. He needed some rapier training. An outlet for his excess energy. Something to quiet his thoughts.

Esmeralda and Floating Joe got a proper beating that evening, and when he was done—sweaty and exhausted—he'd brought his focus back to Lucy Carlyle. She was a problem he could solve. A Talented, clever girl who'd fallen between the cracks of society. He wouldn't let her down.

Chapter Text

2009 - Wooler

If Wooler had a ghost of some repute, it was the unfortunate Penny Nolan. She'd drowned in the river when Lucy's mam was a girl. Penny's life had been a short and unremarkable affair, but she was the only type two haunting in town who was acknowledged by the Ministry. She was a problem they had tried, and failed, to solve. These days there were angry signs and barbed wire all around the floodplain, warning both people and Visitors off. Jacobs was currently in the process of dislodging a part of it like a child wiggling a loose tooth.

The angels were having a front-row view of the spectacle. Like the rest of them, Jacobs wore hip waders secured to his work belt, exacerbating his usual awkward gait into a sort of ungainly clomping. Lucy and Norrie kept catching each others' eyes and trying not to laugh. At the back of the group Arlington and Steph were messing around like two excitable dogs.

"There we go," Jacobs huffed. "I had the wrong bit of fence." He lifted a pole and revealed an illicit opening in the barbed wire. The gate had been installed by some local fishing enthusiasts and was partly hidden by a blackberry bush. Lucy dipped under the branches with Norrie and Alfie-Joe, then Ari found a branch and pushed the shrubbery aside for the rest of them, smiling at Steph as she brushed past.

"Well then, here we are. Spread out," Jacobs pulled a flask from his pocket and took a fortifying swig. He wasn't a big drinker, but he was a habitual one. "Keep the bloody chains away from the water. I'm not keen on another trip to Frank's because you lot rusted the iron again."

Lucy had to lift her legs high over the tufts of grass. The ground was uneven with treacherous pockets of water. Mosquitoes and gnats had come out in force for the twilight and were swarming around them. Norrie was particularly sensitive to the bites and got lumps the size of crab apples. Even though she smelled strongly of repellent she was trying to retreat into her clothes.

"This is useless," she grumbled. "We'll never bloody find it anyway."

"Jacobs' always been obsessed with Penny," Paul Bell said. "If we can find her source it proves our techniques are superior to the Ministry."

"What, flailing around with chains? Better than rapiers and flares?" Norrie scoffed. She flapped her hands at the insects. "Argh, I hate this!"

"Norrie," Hank put a hand on her shoulder. "You set up a circle over there. Get the lavender out, it will keep the worst of the bastards at bay." He smiled. "Ghosts and gnats. You too Alfie. We need a safe retreat when Penny shows up."

The river was a rusty colour and moved sedately through the reeds. There had been a flood when Penny Nolan had drowned in it, but her ghost was most active now the river had been laid low by summer heat and lazy with it. Whatever her source was, it wouldn't be in the running water. Most likely it had been buried in the floodplain.

You could tell it was a serious affair for Jacobs, because he had his old rapier hanging from his narrow hips. His license had long expired and he swung it like a cricket bat, stumbling away from shadows and spectres alike. Lucy didn't know if the actors on Silvertipped Hearts were an accurate depiction of rapier work, but there seemed to be a lot more flourishes to it when they did it. Jacobs didn't have much Talent these days. It was difficult to know if he ever did, though he'd enjoyed a brief career in the Ministry so he couldn't have been completely useless in his youth.

Their leader was patrolling the water's edge, muttering to himself and peering into the lengthening shadows, gnarled fingers twitching on the rapier's hilt. Lucy kept close to Hank. The oldest angel was a steady presence, cautious and alert to danger. It was an open secret that Hank was restless with the trade. At nearly eighteen he had more options, ones that could take him far away from Wooler. Jacobs had recruited him and Arlington when Hank was eleven and Ari nine. There had been a girl called Emily too. She'd died years before Lucy joined, but her shadow still stretched long. There was something almost mythical about Emily—her name a spell and a warning. Lucy had seen pictures of a girl with blonde pigtails and a round face, a gap-toothed smile and eyes looking straight into the lens.

The only one who ever talked bout Emily was Arlington. He did so without wistfulness, as if she'd just gone out for milk and would be back any moment now. Ari didn't really look behind him. He lived in the moment and let his whims pull him this way and that. Right now he was tossing a flat stone over the river, back low, feet wide, arm tracing a looping arch. It skipped, one, two, three times, then sunk into the water with a plop. Steph was close to him, picking at the flowers with restless fingers. Unlike Ari, she was alert. She scanned their surroundings with calm, storm-grey eyes. They were good friends, the two of them, and often in each others' orbit. Hank shook his head.

"Oi! Stop messing about you two!" He gave Lucy a friendly pat on her shoulder. "He'll be the death of me, that one."

"Ari's always been like that."

"Ay, but he's worse when she's around—Paul!" Paul had been walking through the grass with a thermometer, but came loping over when Hank called. Lucy was still looking towards Arlington and Steph. The banter and the playful closeness. She frowned, suddenly troubled.

"Alice won't be happy," she murmured. "She's fancies him."

"Your sister Alice?" Paul smirked. "That the chubby, quiet one, right?"

"She's not that chubby." Lucy felt the instinct to protect her sister well up inside her. There wasn't anything wrong with Alice, except maybe that she was a bit soft and silly.

"It's no use her going after Ari. He'll never want that."

"He might! You don't know!"

"Maybe if it was Sarah. She's fit."

Lucy shrugged, irritable as much because of the insult to her sister as the knowledge that Paul was right. Lucy had been forced to act as a courier between her sister and Ari a while back. She'd given him an eraser that was shaped as a unicorn and smelled of artificial strawberry. It was thanks for letting Alice borrow his pen, apparently. Ari had laughed and told her that Alice could have just given him the pen back, but he'd kept the eraser. Alice collected them and it had been her favourite one, so Lucy felt he'd been a bit casual about the gift. As a sort of afterthought he'd then given Lucy a pressed flower to give Alice as thanks. She'd been tempted to just throw it away but even though Ari would have forgotten about it almost immediately, she felt responsible to carry out the task. Of course Alice had been thrilled and all but considered him her future husband now. The whole thing was a nightmare which Lucy, not quite eleven, felt far too young for. Lucy knew that Arlington didn't mean anything with his gestures. He was just being nice. Sometimes that made him cruel.

"I want the two of you to inventory the area between the waters edge and the trees." Hank gestured at the grassy bank once Lucy and Paul had stopped bickering. "That's where Penny usually makes an appearance. Keep an eye on Lucy when she uses her Talent Paul, you two are our best shot." He looked towards Ari and Steph again. "Tonight could go wrong really fucking quickly. Penny's a bit of a bastard at the best of times, and it's been awful dry lately."

"It's not your job to look after that shitface." Paul didn't like Ari much. Mostly it was just a sort of casual rivalry that came as natural as breathing to Paul. He'd been brought up with three brothers and parents who pitted them against each other. Jealousy wasn't a flaw as much as a motivator in the Bell household. They framed everything as strife. Also, Paul probably fancied Steph a bit. There was a lot of that going on. Lucy like liked Ari a bit, mostly because of a lack of better options, Paul and Alfie-Joe thought Steph were fit, while Norrie had declared if she liked anyone at all, it was Lucy. That one had been a bit of a shocker.

All of it was just nonsense. None of them were actually getting together—that would be awfully awkward. Also, Jacobs had expressively forbidden it. It had been part of the sex ed which he apparently considered part of his responsibility as a mentor for a bunch of youths. Not that it had involved many useful specifics—mostly a bunch of weird metaphors about boys keeping their hats on and not pissing where you slept. Lucy got more concrete information from nature documentaries on the telly.

Either way, the whole mess meant that Paul had another reason to despise Ari, apart from the latter's perilously careless nature and Paul's sullen practicality. In fact, the only person Paul really respected was Hank. They all did. Hank was the steady older brother who kept them all safe. 

Hank appeared pensive rather than reproachful at Paul's comment. Lucy could sense a bit of a talk coming on. He didn't really speak much outside what was necessary, but there was a lot more going on in Hank's head than you imagined at first glance.

"Me dad gets a bit rough when he's on the drink," he said in a slow, low tone. "It's alright now. I'm taller than he is, stronger—and I bring in the money. It's just the two of us. A bastard ghost got mam when I was eight—Anyway, it wasn't so easy when I was little. Ari let me stay with him when it got really bad. His folks are alright, if a bit weird... They always seem a little surprised when he comes home, like they hadn't realised he'd left... Still, that seemed like paradise compared to what I had. He saved me back then." He was quiet for a moment, as if taking this in himself. "Didn't even think about it, he never does. Kindness comes easily to him. It's natural—but he doesn't think. He gets distracted. It's why I'm still hanging around you lot. You'll be alright." He gave Lucy a sideways smile. "You're small, but you got your head on right, but Ari—well, I owe him. Not that the fucker makes it easy for me—Oi! Done playing in the shallows like some fucking toddlers?" Ari was coming over with Steph in toe. He ignored Hank's shouting and instead crouched low in front of Lucy.

"Look what I found, little frog." His hands were cupped around something Lucy thought was a stone at first, until it tried to skip away. "It's one of your little mates."

"Idiot," Lucy tried to scowl but a smile was tugging at her cheeks. It was difficult to be mad at Arlington Dawks. Not when his dimpled grin had so little guile. "Let it go and help us catch a bloody ghost instead."

Not long after, things got dire. The mood changed so suddenly. Summer storms in the high lands, winter nights falling fast. The sky got dark, mist curled around the reeds. A shadow among the shadows disengaged from the rest. Branches became arms, reaching greedily, longer than arms should be. Hair like river weeds hung limp, the spectre's head bowed, skin moonlight pale and featureless. She wanted to come closer. Longed for their company. Hungered for it. Wanted them. It was hard to breathe.

Jacobs came running, strides long and graceless, rapier drawn. He waved it about. It was hard to believe that this man had taught them all footwork and chain swings.

"Mind where the little cunt goes off to!" he hollered like a madman.

In moments of pure action, Arlington was in his element. Quick and bright, his chain swinging and lashing at Penny Nolan, his feet dancing easily over the uneven terrain. He was bolder than any of them and more effective for it. Both Steph and Hank were more cautious. Only Paul could match him. He was a fierce and efficient fighter, but his style was all artless struggle. There was no joy in him, only survival. Norrie and Alfie-Joe were hanging back and using their senses to track where Penny went.

Lucy was torn between action and vigilance. Penny was lashing out in anger. She wanted only to put her arms round them and bring them closer. She was so very cold and so very alone. Wouldn't they come? Wouldn't they join her? The ground was treacherous, damp and muddy. They sunk into it. It felt like a trap, that soft, mud, sucking at their boots. Penny lashed out at Lucy who got caught in the mud and fell back. Before she hit the ground Arlington had hauled her up and tossed her into the river. She thought she'd fall and sink, but Steph was there, steadying her.

"Get into the running water pet," Steph said.

Lucy stopped where the river reached her to the middle of her thighs. It was cool in spite of the season. Currents tugged at her, sloshing around her legs. Her trousers got damp beneath the waders. Steph kept hold of her hand, one leg in the water and one among the reeds. She tossed a salt bomb towards Penny.

At last the onslaught of salt and iron cowed the ghost. She dove into the ground like it was water. In her world perhaps it was. The river had been so high that year she drowned, and so very strong.

"Where did she go!?" Jacobs swung around, stumbling when the mud caught his foot. He shoved the tip of the rapier into the ground and used it as a crutch to haul himself up. "Where did the little bitch cunt fucker go?! Did you see her? Well, go on, get to digging, it has to be somewhere here!"

It was an impossible task. The area too big. The vegetation too dense. Jacobs stared at his angels who stood in mute reproach around him. Some on land among the lavender and iron, some, ankle-deep in mud, some standing up to their thighs in the flowing water. He cursed. Spat. Glared at the silver smile of the moon and the swell of the gurgling river. "Shit! Right, one more time. She'll return, just you wait—we'll get the bitch eventually."

A collective sigh went though the angels. They wouldn't get her, but Jacobs would keep trying. He was like a man possessed that night. Like the fey had got him and he was trapped in their dance. Again and again towards the dawn, around and around. Ari stepped down next to Steph and reached for another flat stone to skip across the river. He murmured something close to her blonde hair and she giggled and slapped him away.

"Right, I'm getting a biscuit," Lucy waded out of the river and towards Norrie in her lavender nest. It was shaping up to be a long night.

They didn't get Penny Nolan in the end. Other jobs came, more profitable, more successful. Penny Nolan kept her mournful vigil from between the river and the barb wire fence the Ministry had put up. Calling, always calling. Wanting nothing more than company. A girl forever trapped in her own, solitary dying.

Chapter Text

2016 - London

It was at the same time comfortable and unsettling how Lucy's life in London gobbled her up within five busy months. It seemed an age since Wooler, the lavender fields, the camaraderie with the angels under Jacobs' increasing capriciousness, the goddamned mill... All the things that had felt so big, and she'd felt big too, in that little pond. Five months in the sea that was London and she was just another body in the downtrodden crowd of conscripts. Lucy felt like she'd spent her youth like a rock skipping across the surface—a stone vainly trying to take flight. Now it had sunken, inevitably, into this mass of unfortunates. Obscurity, for Lucy and for all her terrible secrets. And if she sometimes wished she'd torn loose before the fall—like Norrie had always wanted them to—then she'd keep that truth hidden with the rest of them.

Lucy put her name down in the annex ledger and blipped her Oyster Card on the bus into the city. The annex was in New Cross, about 45 minutes from the Ministry's headquarters on the Strand. According to Lockwood, the youths in the Corps considered it the bad dorms. The relative remoteness, the location, and a general air of un-coolness hung over the place like a Pale Stench. Lucy liked the distance. The state supplied Oyster Card had been handed to her two months after coming to London, and with it permission to travel to the office unaccompanied. It was a small thing and easily revoked if she ever coloured outside the lines. Even so, it felt like the release of pressure after a source was contained. Lucy supposed that was intentional. The conscripts were restricted to such a degree that the smallest give felt like a victory. Perhaps the same could be said about Lockwood and his damn gifts.

It had started almost immediately, the gift-giving. The work belt had come first, then a more relaxed dress code. She still needed to be visibly branded as a Ministry conscript, but she had more freedom in her choices. A conscript jumper with her own skirt and leggings. Conscript trousers and waistcoat with a long-sleeved tee. That sort of thing. When she stopped grumbling about her clothes Lockwood got it in his head to sort out her breakfast. Lockwood ate like a teenage boy—that is to say, he wasn't very particular—but he had ideas about tea. It had to be Pitkins for one. In spite of herself, Lucy had been dragged into this unbearable snobbery, not by choice, you understand, but by habit. He'd kept buying her new variants. She'd gotten used to them. In fact, she had a thermos of perfectly prepared Pitkins English Breakfast in her bag right now. She liked it slightly milky but not too sweet.

Lucy didn't trust Lockwood—how could she, with him being the very embodiment of the fucking Ministry—but she did like him. He was easy to like, Anthony Lockwood. Full of vigour and enthusiasm, clever to the extent that he was undeniably a bit full of himself, but quick to dish out praise and give credit to others. He could be generous and kind, and if he was also a bit impatient, far too ambitious, vain and frequently lazy—then who was she to judge? It was probably difficult to keep your head on straight when your own mirror image blinded you every time you passed the hallway. That was another thing, of course. Lockwood was too pretty. Lucy didn't trust pretty boys any more than she trusted rich boys. Not for the first time she recalled Arlington and his innate carelessness. How often it had accidentally turned his kindness cruel.

Sometimes, mostly on cases, Lucy even felt close to Lockwood. For a breath they'd be perfectly in step, almost as if they were true friends. She had to remind herself how little they actually knew of each other. He didn't know her secrets, and if she could help it he never would. His curiosity was habitual, not personal. Lucy was a moody and unpolished northerner, with her father's shoulders and her mam's sulky mouth. It was her Talent that made her valuable, not her glowing personality. As for him, she knew he lived in Marylebone with his friend George, had an uncle and a sister... somewhere, though not in London, but no parents. He was a bit posh but—like many somewhat posh people—considered himself middle-class, was ambitious, a fencing prodigy, and had made the frictionless transition from the Corps to the Ministry the week he turned eighteen. Oh, and his Sight was excellent.

And, she supposed, she did know how he took his tea. On the verge of over-seeped, no milk (perish the thought!), and just a splash of honey if he was feeling indulgent.

The bus stopped and Lucy disembarked, turning her face to the clear blue sky. Autumn had come with a bite in the wind and the smell of damp earth, but it was close enough to summer that she appreciated the relief from the inescapable clamminess of London in August. She checked her watch. She had fifteen minutes before they started to question her tardiness. Fifteen minutes of freedom; a brief window of time that had fallen between the cracks and was hers and hers alone.

She decided to stop by Greggs.

***

Lucy was in a good mood when she finally entered the Ministry offices. She'd scarfed down her beef pasty on the way over, the weather was decent and they had a simple evaluation job planned for tonight. Those were rarely very interesting, but it would just be her and Lockwood. Whenever they had to bring Spirit Corps soldiers with them regulations would tighten up. Lockwood would be more professional and Lucy shunted to the side, save the odd wink and smile behind the youths' faces. They'd learned the hard way that not handling it like that tended to make the youths hostile towards Lucy. She was at the bottom of the pecking-order and did well to remember it.

Lockwood was waiting for her in the lobby. Lucy's mood took a quick nosedive when she realised that he wasn't on his own. Her steps slowed, then sped up again.

"Ah," Sir Gale exclaimed as she approached. "And here's your little yappy dog now, Anthony, at last. You should buy a shorter leash."

"Sir Gale was just telling me we're expected for a meeting with Ms Fittes, Lucy," Lockwood said.

"Well, you are—but we can't very well let your pet roam free." To Lucy's horror, Gale reached out a hand to stroke her hair. She recoiled.

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, Gale. She bites too."

"And here I thought you said she was house trained? Docile, I think the word around the office is—?"

Anger swelled inside Lucy, but was quickly subdued. Her will was rocks inside her. Weighing down the quick flare of her indignation, and weighing her down too. Heavy and slow, like her mam's trod up the porch after ten hours washing other people's bed sheets. Anger was exactly what Gale wanted. She hadn't had much dealings with the bastard since he dragged her to London from Newcastle, but she'd absorbed the odd scrap of information. He was uncomfortably close to Penelope Fittes, and Lockwood hated him. Unlike the gently barbed rivalry between Lockwood and a fellow Ministry employee with the baffling name of Quill Kipps—which reminded Lucy of nothing so much as kittens play-fighting—there was a real edge to the way he spoke of Gale. It felt raw and personal. Lockwood didn't seem like the type to let grudges fester, so Lucy wondered sometimes what had pinned that hatred so firmly in place. Well, it was hardly her place to ask. She had her secrets, but Lockwood wasn't very forthcoming either. There was a distance in him, polite and quiet. You were loath to breach it.

They walked to the lifts at the back of the lobby, passing three stainless steel doors before reaching the golden one. Lucy had never been in the penthouse lift before. Her downcast eyes revealed rough and filthy boots against a spotless crème carpet. She straightened to find herself reflected back at every angle, crude and sour. The dark green of her conscript uniform looked brighter in the unforgiving glare of the overhead lights. Gale was putting a key into the control panel and pressing the top button.

It was an uncomfortably quiet ride. Little smiles passed between Lockwood and Sir Rupert Gale like they were trying to out-polite each other. When the doors dinged open both young men waited for the other to get out first. Lucy rolled her eyes and clomped into Penelope Fittes private lobby with all the grace of a fledgling just out of its nest.

Ms Fittes' office was large, light and airy, expensive furnishings and art scattered about like stains on a white canvas. The woman herself sat in an armchair, backlit by the high noon sun from the panoramic windows. Lucy's head span as she glanced the view. The silver coil of the Thames curled around a muddled weave of blocky buildings, foliage breaking into the seams and bridges stretching across the river as if stitching up a tear in the landscape. For a moment Lucy felt suspended between the fear and the pull of the fall. Then Penelope Fittes spoke.

"Anthony," Her voice was lower than you expected, but softer too. "It's been such a while. Please, sit down. And you too, dear Lucy. Rupert, would you be a darling and call for another cup?"

The Ministry Director didn't make public appearances very often, but there was no trace of shyness in Penelope Fittes. She was a woman with the impersonal beauty of a television broadcaster. Perhaps thirty, with brown hair tumbling down her shoulders like she'd stepped out of a shampoo ad. If she was less perfect in real life, it wasn't by much. It wasn't a natural beauty, though it had been built upon good foundations. Her kind of beauty was a battle field. Age and the elements against any treatment money could buy. It was oppressive. The luxury, the flawlessness, the unfathomable life of the rich and powerful. In spite of the excessive amount of wasted space in the office, Lucy felt more cramped here than in her cell at the annex.

The role of Ministry Director was appointed rather than elected, and generally expected to remain in the job for life. Penelope's grandmother, the indomitable Marissa Fittes, had been instrumental in the foundation of the organisation and its first director. The gruelling work had worn her out and she'd died young, leaving the government to scramble for a replacement. For several years Lord Nobby Fielding—or Sir Nibs as he'd been known at the time—had been left to lead the Ministry in a floundering and weak manner which nearly killed off the whole endeavour. He'd been ousted a few years back and replaced by the young Penelope. It had happened some time after Lucy joined the angels, and as such she'd been party to many a long winded rant by Jacobs. A girl, was how he'd described Penelope. She was a manipulative cunt who sucked her way to the top in one breath and a dim-witted doll put in place to distract the masses in the next. In hindsight Penelope's appointment had actually saved the Ministry. Trust had been so low at the time that the Tory government had started to consider the advantages of a free market over their pals in the Lords. Perhaps that had been the true source of Jacobs' ire. For better or worse Britain could have ended up with some sort of French system, with a multitude of independent agencies. Instead they got Penelope Fittes.

Once Lucy and Lockwood had arranged themselves in Ms Fittes' swanky lounge suite, a quietly unobtrusive woman came in to pour tea and offer slices of French pastries. Her clothes were the sort of white that made Lucy anxious. She folded her hands in her lap. If she didn't move she wouldn't ripple the serenity. Her heart drummed fast. Sweat gathered in her arm pits.

"I've called you up here for a special assignment, Anthony." Ms Fittes stirred her tea tree times, then put the silver spoon down with a melodic chime.

"Oh? I'm intrigued."

"As you should be. It's regarding a job, of course," she smiled at Lockwood, then shifted her sharp gaze to Lucy. She had her mouth full of cake and didn't smile back. "Not in London. You're going as representatives for the head office."

Lockwood's dark eyes widened in a rare display of surprise. "Just the two of us?"

Gale gave a aloud bark of laugher. "It's hardly the two of you, is it, Lockwood? It's you and whatever assets you need to do the job—be they blades or girls."

"Oh, don't be so rude, Rupert," Ms Fittes smiled. "Lucy is certainly a vital part of this assignment."

"Me?" Lucy put the cup down with a loud clatter and wiped her sweaty palms on her trousers. Ms Fittes' attention felt like a trap.

"Yes, you, Lucy. The job is up north, you understand. In fact, it's not far from where you grew up."

"What, in Wooler?"

"Is that the name of the place? How quaint. There are such charming little villages in our wild and rugged north. I do wish I had more time to travel domestically."

No. No, no, no. They couldn't go up there. She couldn't go up there. Lucy glanced at Lockwood but saw only surprise and pleasure in his face. He was only mildly paying attention to her. Gale was a different matter. He was looking straight at Lucy, his smile a cruel, predatory delight. Lucy felt her jaw tighten as she forced her distress down. She wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing how shaken she was, not now, not ever.

"Why us?" her words came tumbling, their northern lilt exaggerated by stress and thoughts of home. "Surely there are closer branches? Newcastle—or Hexham maybe?"

Ms Fittes let out a regretful sigh. "Let's just say there has been some... unease in the northeast, following a number of slanderous articles." Two little divots appeared between her brows, already too comfortable in the flawless planes of her face. They'd settle down there permanently one day. "It has rather damaged people's trust in the Ministry I'm afraid. The press is free, of course—this is a democracy. They must be allowed to bleat." Gale barked out another laugh even though Lucy wasn't sure it had been a joke. "We need to show people we take our responsibility to this nation seriously. What could be more serious than sending a star agent from our headquarters all the way up to little Woolly?"

"It's Wooler, actually—"

"—And you are important too, Lucy. As a local girl, as well as a perfect example of our juridical system working beautifully. We are very happy with both of you."

Ms Fittes gave Lockwood a thick folder and he tucked it away. Lucy's head was spinning with possibilities. If they were doing a job in Wooler, what could it be? One of the many existing hauntings? Maybe the elusive Penny Nolan who they tried and failed to hunt down with Jacobs? If that was the case, they were in serious trouble. Then again, perhaps it was a new one? Someone she'd known? Worry churned in her stomach. If they went there, Lockwood would notice the way the townspeople treated her. If they met her mam, her sisters, Paul Bell's awful brothers... Even a trip to the chippy was laden with risk. She didn't know if she could be invisible in Wooler—not when every surface was a funhouse mirror, reflecting back the many Lucys of her past, distorted and ugly.

***

"This is marvellous!"

Lockwood walked so quickly Lucy had to take double steps to keep up with him. His coat flared, his smile flashing so bright faces turned as if trying to catch the last of the sunlight. Lucy felt flushed. Defeated, she slowed to a comfortable walking pace. It took Lockwood a good ten feet to realise he'd lost her, but then he stopped to let her catch up.

"This is coming from the very top, Lucy," he continued. "Penelope Fittes and the other Ministry bigwigs have singled us out! It's because of the great work we've been doing of course. Your Talent is a big part of that. I've been talking you up as much as I can—everyone knows how well you're doing... Oh, are you cold? You're not getting unwell are you?"

"No, no. I'm quite warm actually."

"You do look a bit peaky. Come on, let's nip into this cafe for a bit. I suppose we'll need to plan, buy train tickets, that sort of thing... Which hotel would you recommend? Or, maybe you have someone you'd want to stay with—?"

"No, I don't know... Lockwood," Lucy took deep breath. "Can we... Where is it, the ghost?"

"Oh—oh! Of course, you might know the place. Let me see." He flipped open the folder and Lucy's vertigo from the penthouse office came back with a vengeance. "Ah! here it is—Wilford Mews Inn, the place is called. That's fortunate. We might be able to stay at the inn. It's in the garden—Lucy? What is it? You're awfully pale..."

Lucy felt like she was about to throw up. Her head was spinning, her mouth dry. A feeling of detaching from her body came over her, as if her ghost was prematurely fed up with its ramshackle home and tried to tear its bonds. Lucy did know that place. She had a horrible feeling she knew the Visitor too.

She might even have known it when it was still alive.

"No," she tried to smile. To not fall over. She cleared her throat and started again. "Sorry, but no. I don't really know it well at all."