The Living Ghost

The Exchange

           

According to Flo, the exchange was being held at a disused block of flats overlooking the Thames the next evening. Holly, George and I sat outside a café, near enough to the flats that it gave us a clear view without it being obvious we were spying. Lockwood and Kipps were waiting in a taxi around the corner, driven by our old friend Jake – the driver who had found George the night he was attacked.

"Are you sure we can't go in George?" I said, tilting down my over-sized sunglasses to eye the block of flats reproachfully. It didn't look like much, but I guess that was the point. Graffiti covered the walls, many of the windows were broken or boarded up, abandoned plants on balconies had withered and died. According to George, it was the site of a number of hauntings and had therefore been abandoned years ago.

George didn't look up from the newspaper he was hiding behind as he replied to me. "I know you're eager to reunite with your BFF, Luce –" I scowled at him – "but I want to find out what the Orpheus Society is getting up to without they're leader, and that means waiting until the exchange has happened and following them."

"Don't worry, Lucy," said Holly, glancing up from the book she was reading to give me a smile. "We'll get him back, we just have to be patient."

Patience was certainly not my virtue. Every second we spent sitting around doing nothing, I got more and more agitated, itching to take action. We'd already been sat here for over an hour, watching as the surviving Winkman's had arrived with several burly bodyguards, then as a shiny black car had pulled up and a middle-aged woman, flanked by two men one of whom was carrying a briefcase, got out and went inside. They'd been gone for what felt like forever but was probably only twenty minutes.

I tapped my fingers against my leg as it jolted up and down, trying to use up some of my excess energy. It wasn't working. Just as I was about to jump up and storm the building, George's plan be damned, the door opened and the woman and her guards came back out, this time with a satchel just the right size for a skull.

"Alright, quickly," George said as the three people across the street moved to get back into the shiny car, "let's get Lockwood and Quill and follow them."

I waited and kept an eye on the car, while George and Holly ran off to fetch the cab, which pulled up next to the café a minute later. "They went left," I told Jake as I hopped into the front seat beside Lockwood. I was expecting him to budge up, but he pulled me onto his lap and fastened the seatbelt around us both, just in time as Jake slammed on the accelerator and jerked us all forward. 

"So, are you lot planning more heroic deeds then?" said Jake, conversationally as he swerved the taxi through the traffic to set us directly behind the black car that I pointed out to him. "Tearing down more occults?"

"Something like that," Lockwood replied. He had his arms around my waist for added safety from Jake's manic driving, and I was all too aware of them.

"Not had enough of being in the papers, eh?" Jake said as he slammed the car forward as the traffic light threated to change to red and separate us from the black car. Our seatbelts locked and Lockwood's arms tightened around me. I heard Kipps groan in pain and caught sight of him in the rear-view mirror, clenching at his side with his hand. Holly was rubbing her neck where the seatbelt had jarred it and horns from angry drivers blared around us, but Jake didn't seem to care all that much.

"Well, you can never have enough publicity," said Lockwood. "Again, thanks for doing this for us, Jake."

"Nah, it's no problem, Mr Lockwood," said Jake. "You say these are the geezers who caused Mr Cubbins all that trouble?"