𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧┃ Anthony Lockwood┃3┃

Chapter Eleven - Fear Of God

The woman was all fair and shimmery, with a pearlescent wasp-waisted dress that flowed down tight against her legs before spilling out like plunging foam. Her shoulders were bare, her long slim arms as white and sweet as sugar. She did not stand still, but swayed from side to side – her arms and body stirring separately, like reed fronds in an underwater current. Her pale hair fell in waves around her neck, cascading over her shoulders, moving, always moving, as if to secret music. And how enticing the face was! Nola wasn't especially sickly, or a lovelorn boy, so she frankly wasn't La Belle Dame's target audience, but even so she felt the tug of longing as she looked into those fathomless dark eyes.

What was it that made Nola yearn to walk across? What was it that made her want to give herself to the woman? It wasn't just that she was exquisite. Sure, she had the gently smiling mouth, the soft full lips, the set-square straightness of that lovely nose. Nola could take or leave all that. You could see similar blandly beautiful young people in any fashion magazine. But she was flawed too. That was the brilliance of it. There was a homeliness to her, something ordinary in the lines of the face that made her seem accessible. It was the flash of Doris Blower behind Marianne de Sèvres. Nola sensed that deep down, she understood what it was to feel imperfect and unspectacular. She understood Nola's need for love.

"Come..." A soft voice said. "Come with me."

It was as if she spoke directly to Nola's deepest sorrows, those parts of her that she guarded from the world. The pang that she'd experienced when she'd visited the attic, the anxiety she'd felt when Lockwood sat beside the empty grave – she could smooth such doubts away. Nola had an overwhelming urge to share them, let the woman listen to her fears. She opened her mind to her willingly. She let her sympathy pour in.

"Forget these troubles." The voice said. "Forget them, and come with me."

Nola stood and gazed at the ghost. As if frightened by her scrutiny, it drifted back a little like a startled deer. The agent felt a plucking in her heart, the need to follow it wherever it might go. She took a stumbling step towards the ghost.

"Well, she's a disappointment, and no mistake."

Nola blinked, looked around. George had come into the exhibition room from the foyer, and was standing there beside her. He had cobwebs in his hair and a salt bomb in his hand. He was frowning through his glasses.

"Meaning what?" Nola said. Her voice sounded odd and thick. "What are you talking about?"

"After all that build-up," he said, "I was hoping for the real deal when we met her. A little bit of glitz, a bit of high-end razzle... At the very least I was expecting some decent psychic glamour. But not this."

Nola looked back down to the far end of the corridor, where the ghost swayed and waited, sad and slender as a winter willow, her head tilted to one side.

"She's not good enough for you?" She said.

"Not good enough? She's a sack of pus and bones, James. That's below even my pay grade."

The woman was gazing at Nola, her long dark eyelashes beating in time with the rhythm of her heart. Again, the agent felt the tug of longing, again a jarring anger at the vulgarity of George's words. She laughed harshly. "What rubbish are you talking, George? Pus?"

"Well, Okay. Technically, it's 'clear, translucent ichor, manifested into a semi-solidified corporeal state'. But when it's all melty and icky and dripping off the bones, I think we can go with pus. The effect is much the same."

"Shut up, George."

"Pus, James."

Nola could have punched him. "Just shut up."