Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

started swelling. He told me his fingers were bulging like five blue hotdogs by the end, but they still had to manhandle him into the ambulance. Why? Because he wanted to go and find you . See if you were OK! He wouldn’t be told, even though the ghost-touch was on him and he’d have died within the hour if someone with some common sense hadn’t jabbed a needle in his bum. He wouldn’t be told! Like hewasn’t prepared to wait for me to get back last night! Like he wasn’t prepared to let me do some proper research, so I could find out exactly what you were getting into. No! As always, he was in far too much of a hurry. And if he’d only waited’ – he kicked out viciously at the fallen gourd, sending it spinning away to crack in half against the skirting – ‘none of this stupid mess would have happened!’
    Let’s see. In the previous twelve hours I’d almost been murdered by a vicious ghost. I’d fallen from an upstairs window into a small tree. I’d sprained my arm. I’d had a spotty bloke with tweezers pulling twigs and thorns out of sensitive portions of my anatomy half the night. I’d also set fire to a small suburban house. Oh, and Lockwood had been ghost-touched and, whatever state he’d been left in, was now being grilled by the police. What I badly needed was a bath, some food, a lot of rest – and getting to see Lockwood again.
    Instead I got George having a hissy fit. That didn’t make my day.
    ‘Shut up, George,’ I said wearily. ‘This isn’t the time.’
    He wheeled round on me. ‘No? Well, when is going to be the time? When you and Lockwood are both dead, maybe? When I open the door one night and see the two of you hovering beyond the iron line, plasm trailing, worms poking from your eyes? Yeah, fine. Let’s have our little catch-up then!’
    I snorted. ‘Charming. I wouldn’t come back like that. I’d have a nicer guise.’
    George gave a hoot of rage. ‘Really? How do you know what kind of Visitor you’d make, Lucy? You know nothing about them. You don’t read anything I give you. You never make notes on what you see. All you and Lockwood care about is going out and snuffing Sources, as quickly as you can!’
    I stepped forward, close to him. Probably, if my arm had been less sore, I’d have prodded him in his puffed-up chest. ‘Because that’s what makes our money , George,’ I said. ‘Faffing about with old papers like you do gets us nothing.’
    His eyes flashed behind the stupid round glasses. ‘Oh? Nothing?’
    ‘That’s right. If you were less obsessed with it, we’d have done twice as many cases in the last few months. Take yesterday. We waited all afternoon for you. You could have got back any time, come along with us. But no. You were too busy in the library. We left you a polite note on the thinking cloth. Didn’t go out till almost five.’
    He spoke quietly now. ‘You should have waited.’
    ‘So what that we didn’t? What difference would it have made?’
    ‘What difference? Come on! I’ll show you what difference!’ He drew back and, turning, led me up the hall and into the kitchen. Ignoring my gasps of disgust at the piled dishes festooning the surfaces, he threw open thebasement door and clattered away down the iron steps. ‘Come on!’ he shouted up. ‘ If you can be bothered!’
    The curse I gave would probably have curdled the milk if it hadn’t been sitting out on the table for thirty-six hours already. I was really angry now. I too banged down the spiral stairs. In the office the light was on over George’s desk; scattered papers, dirty cups, apple cores, crisp packets and half-gnawed sandwiches marked the scene of his recent vigil. The ghost-jar was sitting there too, uncovered, the skull faintly visible in the yellowish murk. For some reason the disembodied head was floating upside-down.
    George plucked several of the papers from the desk. I didn’t wait for him to start, but launched right in.
    ‘You know what your problem is?’ I said. ‘You’re jealous.’
    George stared. ‘Of what?’
    ‘Of me.’
    He gave a harsh guffaw. Over in the corner, the head in the ghost-jar aped his outrage. It made a face of theatrical dismay. ‘Oh sure!’ George said. ‘You’re fantastic. You’ve just burned down our client’s house. You’re our best assistant yet.’
    ‘Too right I am. The last one’s dead.’
    He hesitated. ‘That’s not the point.’
    ‘It’s exactly the point. Remind me how Robin died again.’
    ‘Met