Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow Read Online Free PDF

o’clock in the morning.”
    “All the better—the furnaces will be roaring. When you send me their stamped certificate tomorrow, I will pay you for tonight’s work, and not a moment before. You others”—he glanced at the industrious trio—“I was going to give you the rest of the night off. But since Miss Carlyle has such a high opinion of your energies, we will see whether we can’t fit in a second job. I believe there is a Changer in Highgate Cemetery that needs tackling. I shall drive you there. So, hop to it and finish your tidying!”
    He turned away from me and began packing up his sandwiches. My fellow agents, with evil glances in my direction, wearily did as they were told. I was otherwise ignored. I picked up the silver-glass box.
    “Skull,” I said.
    “What?”
    “You had a point about that plant pot.”
    “There you are, see? Didn’t I say?”
    Without further words, I tucked the mummified head under my arm and left the house. I was tired, I was angry, but I didn’t choose to show it. Arguments with supervisors were nothing new; I had them almost nightly. It was just how things were, part of the deal of my new freelance life.
    From the start I’d done things properly. I’d gotten myself a card, nicely laminated, with a classy silver-gray border. Here’s what I handed out to all my employers, and why they all wanted me, even if I
did
annoy them.
    LUCY CARLYLE
    Consultant Psychic Investigation Agent
    Flat 4, 15 Tooting Mews, London
Psychic Surveys and Visitor Removal
Aural phenomena a speciality
    I could have gone for a swanky logo, with crossed rapiers or skewered ghosts or something, but I preferred to keep it simple. Just being a consultant was enough to get me noticed, because that meant I was independent. There weren’t many psychic investigation agents working solo in London, on account of most of us ending up dead.
    As a freelancer, I could hire myself out to any agency that wanted my services, and let me tell you, during the course of the Black Winter, a lot of them had wanted those services
bad
. My special sensitivity—Listening was my particular Talent (and between you and me, I was better at it than any agent I’d ever heard of, except perhaps one)—gave almost any group an additional edge. An extra bonus for them was that I knew how to survive. I knew when to Listen and look, I knew when to use my rapier, and I knew when to get out. That’s what it always boiled down to, in the end. Three options, and simple common sense. It’s how you stayed alive.
    In short, I was very good at what I did. Of course I was. I’d learned my trade with the best.
    And I wasn’t with them anymore.
    The Black Winter had been a decent time to start a business. Right now, in late March, there were signs of seasonal respite. The weather was improving, the days were lengthening, pretty spring flowers were showing their heads beside crusted flecks of ancient snow, and you were marginally less likely to be fatally ghost-touched when venturing out for an evening pint of milk. We hoped the ordeal was easing for a time.
    Over the previous few months of seemingly endless nights, however, the Problem—the epidemic of ghosts that had long beset our country—had intensified considerably. No single cluster of hauntings as bad as the infamous Chelsea Outbreak had taken place, but the winter had been unrelenting. Every agency had been sorely stretched, and many agents, young and younger, had fallen in the line of duty and been buried in the iron tombs behind Horse Guards Parade.
    Nevertheless, the difficulties of the season
had
enabled some companies to thrive. One of these was Lockwood & Co., the smallest psychic detection agency in London. Up until the beginning of the winter, I’d worked for them. It had just been me; Anthony Lockwood, who ran the show; and George Cubbins, who researched stuff. We’d lived in a house in Portland Row, Marylebone. Oh, there’d been another employee as well. Her name was