Read Online Lockwood & Co.: The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud - Free Book Online

That meant you had to leave us in a hurry, which was difficult for you, I know, just as it was for us. We all had to pick up the pieces. I’m not going to pretend that Lockwood and Co. found it easy after you left….George was pretty upset about it.” He looked down at his hands. “Anyway, I’ve no doubt those feelings of yours still remain. Teaming up for a night would be weird for all of us, but most of all for you. But I
do
think you could be strong enough to ignore the weirdness, Luce, if you thought it was the right thing to do. One night’s work, Luce…it’s almost nothing. Just helping us out. Who knows, it might make us
all
feel a bit better about things, I don’t know.”
    He flicked a glance up at me—it was sad and hopeful all at once, a glance that presumed nothing—then gently lowered his gaze and went back to contemplating his hands. He’d made his pitch; there wasn’t much else he could say. I was looking at my own hands, frowning at the scrapes on the knuckles, the faint magnesium staining on the fingers, the dirty flecks of iron and salt crusted under the nails….What was all that about? Flo Bones probably had a better manicure, and she made her living scraping holes in river-ooze. The skull was right: I wasn’t in good shape. Sometime over the winter, I’d stopped taking care of myself; I’d let myself go.
    But in the meantime, I
had
been focusing on something else, and that was my Talent. Could I control it better now? I thought so, yes—working with adult supervisors was an endless test of the emotions, and I’d never come close to losing control. So perhaps, for one time only, it would be safe enough….
    It
would
be good to help them out, redress the balance after the way I’d left them.
    I looked over at Lockwood as he sat shoulders-forward, head slightly bowed. He seemed more diffident than I’d ever seen him: not vulnerable, exactly, but certainly exposed. After what I’d done, it must have been so difficult for him to come here.
    “There are other Listeners out there,” I said. “Good ones, too.”
    “Like who?”
    “Kate Godwin’s okay.”
    “Oh, come
on
. She’s not half the Listener you are.”
    “There’s Leora Jones of Grimble, Melita Cavendish at Rotwell…”
    “As good as you? You don’t believe that! How many of them can buddy up to a talking skull?”
    “I
don’t
buddy up to it.”
    Lockwood made a face. “Whatever. Besides, they’re not freelance, are they?”
    This was true. And he was quite right, incidentally. The rest paled in comparison to me. Only one other person had ever spoken with ghosts the way I did, and she’d died long ago. I was silent for a while.
    Lockwood started to get to his feet. “It’s okay, Lucy. I understand your reluctance, and I don’t blame you in the slightest. I’ll go back and tell the others.”
    “I suppose doing a job for Penelope Fittes might get me noticed,” I said.
    He hesitated. “It very well might, yes.”
    “And it would really help out Lockwood and Co., you say?”
    “It really would, Luce.”
    “So if it’s just a one-off…”
    “Yes.”
    “And you really think my Talent would make a difference…”
    “There’s no one else I would want at my side.”
    Strange, sometimes, how you make a particular choice. When it’s not a specific thought or line of argument that decides you, but more a set of jumbled sensations that changes your mind. I’d been ready to say no to him the entire time; even at the very end I was opening my mouth to apologize and say good-bye. But then images passed across my vision, like a pack of cards being flicked in front of my eyes. I saw Lockwood, George, and Portland Row, the house and life I’d left behind. I saw the Fittes furnaces, and moments from my solitary walks through London. I saw the hapless Rotwell team; most of all I saw Mr. Farnaby himself, in all his swollen pomposity and heartlessness, turning his back on me.
    For once, just for once, it would be nice