PROBLEM - Anthony Lockwood

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

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xxxiii

it was nice knowing you

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"ALICE IS ASLEEP," Lockwood declared, his voice low and croaky. There was a distinctly hollow look in his eyes, like someone had taken a shovel and dug out his entire soul, leaving him a deadenned, discarded husk.

Lucy looked up at him, narrowing her eyes slightly. The three of them sat in the kitchen, drinking tea. True to his words, Alice had fallen asleep after the events of Combe Carey Hall, Onyx beside her. "And?"

George stared hard at the table, realising where this was going.

Lockwood swallowed.

He was loosing his nerve, as he felt them waiting for him to carry on. But for someone who loved the spotlight, all he wanted to do was curl into a ball in a corner so dark no one would ever find him again. 

No spotlight would ever be as bright as the light in her eyes when she laughed.

Lockwood had been foolish. He'd allowed himself to bask in that light, get lost in it, without realising that it was a deadly, sweltering flame. And he was the moth. And now that flame was ravaging away at him and burning down all of his defences and everything he'd worked to build.

Not just the agency, but the walls. The walls he fortified with iron and built up around himself. The walls he had never let anyone past since he was nine years old and lost everyone and everything.

And once again, he'd lost it all.

And was left to pick up the peices.

He let her in.

He let her in thinking she was some sort of medicine, when in reality, she was a poison.

Lockwood forced himself to speak, to stay strong, to put on that nonchalant, feirce mask that he put on for the rest of the world. The mask of the reckless, rogue, child prodigy agent - the leader of his own independent ageny. The man who loved the spotlight and would do anything to win.

Not the scared boy who'd showed his pain and vulnerabilities to the girl with the scars and the secrets.

"I think after Combe Carey, we all know what she is," Lockwood continued.

George hesitated for a moment, before looking up, "I've known since she channelled Annabel." When Lucy shot him a look to elaborate, he sighed. "No talented person could maintain that level of connection - and the bruises confirmed it. People can't touch ghosts and survive. Alice wasn't just channelling Annabel in that memory, she became her."

Lucy stared hard at the thinking cloth. "I think it's none of our business."

"She's a-" Lockwood's voice broke. He paused, closing his eyes for a second.

He couldn't say it out loud.

He couldn't.

"She's that," he forced himself to say, "She lied to us. And her people are some of the most evil on the planet."

Lucy looked up at him with wide, shocked eyes. Her gaze flickered between Lockwood and George several times, her mouth slightly open before she decided to speak. "She saved our lives. Multiple times." Lucy crossed her arms, shaking her head, "She's risked everything for us. Think about it for a second. Alice isn't stupid: she went into Combe Carey Hall and knew that the only way she could secure it was through witchcraft, knowing that we would find out. And she did it anyway."

Lockwood looked down.

"Look at me," Lucy demanded, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Everyone's evil. Even agents can be some of the most vile beings on the planet. But you saw those scars and I'll bet my life that they weren't caused by her people."

George stirred his teacup, his gaze flickering to the door, as if scared that Alice would walk in and hear them having this converstation. "She knows something about Fairfax. About why they were emptying the Hall. And why did Barnes force her to change her name - what does her name mean?"

Lockwood clenched his jaw, his eyes flicking to the thinking cloth, where he found a little game of knots and crosses. He'd played that game with Alice when attempting to teach her about the Plans, that day before Sheen Road.

They day before everything had went downhill.

And yet, there was something about her that he couldn't let go of. Something that he couldn't force himself to hate. Alice Deane was an actress, just like him, and just like him, she'd broken her walls.

She let him in.

The day when they were training swordplay and it became less about rapiers and more about the way she felt against him. The day she almost quit and cried into his arms in Tyburn Gallows. The day they went for tea and she revealed to him how her parents died.

He felt sick.

Lucy turned to George, "Did you see the terror on her face, George? The look in her eyes when she looked at those crates?" She looked down, leaning back in her seat, "You didn't see her scars like Lockwood and I did. She was tortured, George. That's got to be the only explaination." Lucy shook her head, pursing her lips, "If that's what happened to her, then no offence, I don't want to know what they're trying to hide about Fairfax."

Lockwood stayed strangely silent, trying to weigh it all up in his head. Both Lucy and George had good points, but everything was a mess. All of his thoughts, all of his reasonings, all of his emotions were jumbled up and torn. He was stuck in a mix of being painfully numb but somehow also like a hurricane at the same time.

He tried to rack his brain for memories now, for tells, for anything that proved what Alice Deane was and had always been.

How had he missed it all?

How had he become so blinded?

Lockwood swore, gritting his teeth as he realised. He curved his hand into a fist, nails cutting deep into his palms, the frustration torturing him like a knife carving out his insides. "She hates it when we use our chains. She turns into a nervous wreck every time we use them. She refused to get her own." He swore again, "It was so obvious."

Lucy looked down into her teacup.

"For the good of this agency, this friendship and also everyone's sanities, I think we should all just pretend like we don't know," she suggested, "Let's all just go back to acting normal and pretending as if none of this has happened."

"We deserve answers," George countered.

Lucy shook her head, "No. We deserve a functioning agency, especially after all we just risked to stop it from getting shut down. Alice is still our friend. She's still the same girl from before Combe Carey and Annabel."

Lockwood didn't know what to think.

His entire life had burned down just like Sheen Road; and now he was wishing that he'd stayed in that godforsaken house and burned with it.

Better burn then to look into those dark eyes again.

Eyes that had looked into his and lied to his face. Eyes that had kept secrets knowing that they were walking into danger blind. Eyes that pretended they cared.

Did she actually care? Or was that a lie too?

Were any of those moments real? Was anything he felt real? Every decision he made, every feeling that he felt, every word that he spoke could've been manipulated by her magic. It could be fake.

All of it could've just been a trick.

And even though he wanted to put continents between them, Anthony Lockwood simultaneously wanted more than anything to hold her in his arms.