Read Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy Online
Authors: Jonathan Stroud
Lockwood & Co. Book Three: The Hollow Boy
BOOKS BY JONATHAN STROUD
LOCKWOOD & CO.
The Screaming Staircase
The Whispering Skull
The Hollow Boy
THE BARTIMAEUS BOOKS
The Amulet of Samarkand
The Golem’s Eye
Ptolemy’s Gate
The Ring of Solomon
The Amulet of Samarkand: The Graphic Novel
Buried Fire
The Leap
The Last Siege
Heroes of the Valley
Text copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Stroud
Cover illustration © 2015 by Michael Heath
Illustrations © 2015 by Kate Adams
Cover design by Sammy Yuen
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney •
Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.
ISBN 978-1-4847-2254-1
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DisneyBooks.com
Contents
- Title Page
- Books by Jonathan Stroud
- Copyright
- Dedication
- I: Lavender Lodge
- II: Whitechapel Nights
- III: The Bloody Footprints
- IV: Unrest
- V: Dark Hearts
- VI: A Face in the Dark
- Glossary
- Praise for The Lockwood & Co. Series
- Praise for The Bartimaeus Books
- About the Author
For Rosie and Francesca, with love
I
think it was only at the very end of the Lavender Lodge job, when we were fighting for our lives in that unholy guesthouse, that I glimpsed
Lockwood & Co. working together perfectly for the first time. It was just the briefest flash, but every detail remains etched into my memory: those moments of sweet precision when we truly
acted as a team.
Yes, every detail. Anthony Lockwood, coat aflame, arms flapping madly as he staggered backward toward the open window. George Cubbins, dangling from the ladder one-handed, like an oversized,
windblown pear. And me—Lucy Carlyle—bruised, bloody, and covered in cobwebs, sprinting, jumping, rolling desperately to avoid the ghostly coils….
Sure, I know none of that
sounds
so great. And to be fair, we could have done without George’s squeaking. But this was the thing about Lockwood & Co.: we made the most of
unpromising situations and turned them to our advantage.
Want to know how? I’ll show you.
Six hours earlier. There we were, on the doorstep, ringing the bell. It was a dreary, storm-soaked November afternoon, with the shadows deepening and the rooftops of old
Whitechapel showing sharp and black against the clouds. Rain spotted our coats and glistened on the blades of our rapiers. The clocks had just struck four.
“Everyone ready?” Lockwood asked. “Remember, we ask them some questions, we keep careful psychic watch. If we get any clues to the murder room or the location of the bodies, we
don’t let on. We just say good-bye politely, and head off to fetch the police.”
“That’s fine,” I said. George, busily adjusting his work belt, nodded.
“It’s a useless plan!”
The hoarse whisper came from somewhere close behind my ear.
“I say stab them first, ask questions later! That’s your only
sensible option.”
I nudged my backpack with an elbow. “Shut up.”
“I thought you wanted my advice!”
“Your job is to keep a lookout, not distract us with stupid theories. Now, hush.”
We waited on the step. The Lavender Lodge boardinghouse was a narrow, terraced building of three floors. Like most of this part of London’s East End, it had a weary, ground-down air. Soot
crusted the stucco exterior, thin curtains dangled at the windows. No lights showed in the upper stories, but the hall light was on, and there was a yellowed
VACANCY
sign
propped behind the panel of cracked glass in the center of the door.
Lockwood squinted through the glass, shielding his eyes with his gloved hand. “Well, somebody’s at home,” he said. “I can see two people standing at the far end of the
hall.”
He pressed the buzzer again. It was an ugly sound, a razor to the ear. He rapped the knocker, too. No one came.
“Hope they put their skates on,” George said. “I don’t want to worry you or anything, but there’s something white creeping toward us up the street.”
He was right. Far off in the dusk, a pale form could just be seen. It drifted slowly above the sidewalk in the shadows of the houses, coming in our direction.
Lockwood shrugged; he didn’t even bother looking. “Oh, it’s probably just a shirt flapping on
someone
’s line. It’s still early. Won’t be anything
nasty yet.”
George and I glanced at each other. It was that time of year when the days were scarcely lighter than the nights, and the dead began walking during the darkest afternoons. On the way over from
the Tube, in fact, we’d seen a Shade on Whitechapel High Road, a faint twist of darkness standing brokenly in the gutter, being spun and buffeted by the tailwinds of the last cars hurrying
home. So nasty things were out already—as Lockwood well knew.
“Since when has a flapping shirt had a head and spindly legs attached?” George asked. He removed his glasses, rubbed them dry, and returned them to his nose. “Lucy,
you
tell him. He never listens to me.”
“Yes, come on, Lockwood,” I said. “We can’t just stand here all night. If we’re not careful, we’ll get picked off by that ghost.”
Lockwood smiled. “We won’t. Our friends in the hall
have
to answer us. Not to do so would be an admission of guilt. Any second now they’ll come to the door, and
we’ll be invited inside. Trust me. There’s no need to worry.”
And the point about Lockwood was that you believed him, even when he said far-fetched stuff like that. Right then he was waiting quite casually on the step, one hand resting on his sword hilt,
as crisply dressed as ever in his long coat and slim dark suit. His dark hair flopped forward over his brow. The light from the hallway shone on his lean, pale face, and sparkled in his dark eyes
as he grinned across at me. He was a picture of poise and unconcern. It’s how I want to remember him, the way he was that night: with horrors up ahead and horrors at our back, and Lockwood
standing in between them, calm and unafraid.
George and I weren’t
quite
so stylish in comparison, but we looked all business nonetheless. Dark clothes, dark boots; George had even tucked his shirt in. All three of us carried
backpacks and heavy leather duffel bags—old, worn, and spotted with ectoplasm burns.
An onlooker, recognizing us as psychic investigation agents, would have assumed that the bags were filled with the equipment of our trade: salt-bombs, lavender, iron filings, silver Seals and
chains. This was in fact quite true, but I also carried a skull in a jar, so we weren’t entirely predictable.
We waited. The wind blew in dirty gusts between the houses. Iron spirit-wards swung on ropes high above us, clicking and clattering like witches’ teeth. The white shape flitted stealthily
toward us down the street. I zipped up my parka, and edged closer to the wall.
“Yep, it’s a Phantasm approaching,”
the voice from my backpack said, in whispers only I could hear.
“It’s seen you, and it’s hungry. Personally,
I reckon it’s got its eye on George.”
“Lockwood,” I began. “We
really
have to move.”
But Lockwood was already stepping back from the door. “No need,” he said. “What did I tell you? Here they are.”
Shadows rose behind the glass. Chains rattled, the door swung wide.
A man and a woman stood there.
They were probably murderers, but we didn’t want to startle them. We put on our best smiles.
The Lavender Lodge guesthouse had come to our attention two weeks earlier. The local police in Whitechapel had been investigating the cases of several people—some
salesmen, but mostly laborers working on the nearby London docks—who’d gone missing in the area. It had been noticed that several of these men had been staying at an obscure
boardinghouse—Lavender Lodge, on Cannon Lane, Whitechapel—shortly before they disappeared. The police had visited; they’d spoken to the proprietors, a Mr. and Mrs. Evans, and even
searched the premises. They’d found nothing.
But they were adults. They couldn’t see into the past. They couldn’t detect the psychic residue of crimes that might have been committed there. For that, they needed an agency to
help out. It so happened that Lockwood & Co. had been doing a lot of work in the East End, our success with the so-called Shrieking Ghost of Spitalfields having made us popular in the district.
We agreed to pay Mr. and Mrs. Evans a little call.
And here we were.
Given the suspicions about them, I’d half expected the owners of Lavender Lodge to look pretty sinister, but that wasn’t the case at all. If they resembled anything, it was a pair of
elderly owls roosting on a branch. They were short, roundish, and gray-haired, with soft, blank, sleepy faces blinking at us behind large spectacles. Their clothes were heavy and somehow
old-fashioned. They pressed close to each other, filling the doorway. Beyond them I could see a grimy, tasseled ceiling light, and dingy wallpaper. The rest was hidden.
