South London Forever // George Karim

-ghost jars and glassy eyes-

"Sorry about him, Fred isn't back from Arif's yet, he gets tetchy when he's hungry." Anthony grinned at Lucy after eyeballing the rude boys retreating figure, then gestured to the couch in front of his. "Take a seat."

Cups clattered in another room, but it couldn't drown out the high pitched screech of the dusty floral patterned couch as Lucy sat down, resting her achy feet. They both winced. Anthony cleared his throat, scanning the paper in his hand. "So you've got the sight and the touch, but primarily, you're a listener."

Lucy shrugged, rolling her lips in, "I've got good touch, but it sometimes merges with what I hear. Touch sometimes triggers the sounds."

"George can do a bit of that," Anthony explained. He grinned again, "not me. Sights my thing, Death glows, trails, all the ghoulish residues of death. Then again, we've got Freddie, so I do most of the normal seeing anyway."

He ignored Lucy's nervous laughter, and hopefully didn't hear her stomach growl over the mere bruised apple and coffee flavoured sweets she'd had over the last two days. "It says here you trained up north with a local operative names Jacobs. Got your grades one to four, I presume?"

Lucy blinked. "That's right."

"Did he give you a reference?" he asked, flipping the page over to see a smudge of dried black nail polish and nothing else.

"No," Lucy said. She put her hands underneath her legs and breathed in scrambled eggs and some sort of leather polish. "My last employment ended... uh... abruptly. I could tell you the whole story if you want, but it's just not something I like dwelling on."

"Some other time, then," Anthony said, folding over her CV.

She didn't say anything to that. She just focused on the crinkle of the polaroid in her pocket when she moved as a tray of tea and biscuits was placed in front of them all on a thick blue plastic binder labelled 'Catching Fire'. Lucy took a breath and let it out.

George sat down on an armchair. Anthony took a cup with finger painted sunflowers on it and took a sip, smiling at Lucy again and gesturing to a row of covered objects on the coffee table. "Shall we get on with the tests?"

"What tests?" She asked quickly, looking between both boys. "The advert didn't say anything about tests".

"Well, frankly, I don't set much store by references or referrals. I prefer to see talent with my own eyes." Anthony said, leaning forward in his seat. He gestured to the plate of plain biscuits easily, as if Lucy didn't get extreme test anxiety. "Please, take a biscuit. George will only eat them all."

George squinted, biscuit crumbs on his chin, "nu uh."

"Now, then." Anthony said after pointedly rolling his eyes at his friend and eating his own. He took what looked like a cut up pillowcase and pulled it off a large silver contraption jar, used for storing Sources and the like in the less... tea-party-like agencies. "What do you think... this is?

Lucy jerked back a little, cursing herself for leaning in curiously until she was faced with a frozen skull. It was swimming in a vomit-coloured vaper and looked like misery. "Uh... it's silver-glass, made by the Sunrise Corporation."

Her biscuit didn't taste quite as good in her mouth anymore, but she finished it. She tapped it cautiously, her black nails clicking against the glass she hoped wouldn't break. Dark green turned to neon, reminding Lucy of the glowsticks she'd seen little kids play with outside the corner store.

Something moved a little and the skull jerked forwards, jaw swinging as if it was on a latch.

Lucy stifled a yelp and patted down her bangs, sitting back properly. As far from the cursed jaw as she could get. "It's... it's a ghost-jar. The skull's the source, and the ghost is tied to it. Couldn't tell you what sort. Phantom or a specter, maybe?"