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

Holly Munro; she was new, a kind of assistant to the rest of us. She sort of counted, too, I guess, but it was George and Lockwood who had meant the most to me. Meant so much, in fact, that in the end I’d been forced to turn my back on them, and go a different way.
    Four months earlier, you see, a ghost had shown me a glimpse of one possible future. It was a future in which my actions would lead directly to Lockwood’s death. The ghost itself was malignant, and I had no reason to trust it, except for one thing: it echoed my own intuitions. Time and again, Lockwood had risked his life to save mine, the line between success and disaster growing finer and less definite on each occasion. Coupled with that, even as my psychic Talents had grown strong, my ability to
master
those Talents had become frayed. Several times during cases I had lost control of my emotions—and this had dangerously strengthened the ghosts that we were fighting. A series of near catastrophes had ended with me unleashing the power of a Poltergeist; in the ensuing battle, Lockwood (and others) had nearly died. I knew in my heart that it would take only one more mistake and the ghost’s prediction would become a reality. Since that was something I could never bear, it stood to reason that I had to avoid it. Hence I’d left the company. That had been my decision, and I knew I was right.
    I knew it.
    And now, assuming you didn’t count a talking skull, it was justme.
    As far as I could judge from reading the papers, my departure from Lockwood & Co. had coincided with a period of great activity for my former colleagues. In particular, their success in locating the Source of the Chelsea Outbreak—a room of skeletons buried deep beneath the Aickmere Brothers department store—had earned them the publicity that their leader had long desired. They were rarely off the front page, with photos of Lockwood particularly in evidence. There he was, with George, standing among the broken masonry of the Mortlake Tomb; there he was, alone, posing beneath the blackened outline that was the only remnant of the St. Albans Ghoul. And there he was, finally, in perhaps my least favorite image of the sequence, receiving the coveted Agency of the Month award at the
Times
offices in London, with the slim and elegant figure of Holly Munro standing picturesquely beside him.
    So they’d done well, and I was happy for them. But
I’d
thrived, too. My part in the Aickmere’s department store case had not gone unnoticed, and no sooner had I rented a room and placed a small ad in the Agencies page in the
Times
than I began to acquire customers of my own. To my surprise, from the first, most were other companies. I worked with the Grimble Agency on the Melrose Place Murders, and with Atkins and Armstrong on the Phantom Cat of Cromwell Square. Even the mighty Rotwell Agency had used me several times; and whatever Farnaby might say, I knew that they’d turn to me again.
    Yes, I was flourishing.
    I was succeeding on my own.
    And did I
mind
being on my own? Not really. For the most part, I got along fine.
    I kept busy. No one could say I didn’t get out much, or didn’t meet all corners of the community; it was just a pity that most of them were dead. In the past week, for instance, I’d seen a ghost child on a swing; a skeleton bride sitting in a church; a bus conductor floating past without his bus; two squashed workmen; a phantom dog being led up Putney High Street by a vast black shadow; a headless librarian; a suitcase containing three nimbuses, two Glimmers, and a Wisp; a wandering severed hand; and a semi-naked neighbor.
    That last one had been alive, by the way. I kind of wish he hadn’t been.
    Yeah, the nights were always frantic, packed with incident. It was the days that sometimes felt a little hollow. Particularly at dawn, after just finishing a case, when I walked back through the empty streets, bruised and weary, with the weight of the solitary hours ahead pulling at