The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co., #5)

by Jonathan Stroud

My name is Lucy Joan Carlyle. I talk with the living and the dead, and it sometimes gets so I can’t tell the difference anymore.

Our lanterns flickered. Blackness hung over our heads like a witch’s cloak.

“Let’s have the baddish one first,” George said. “I prefer my misery to come at me in stages, so I can acclimatize on the way.”

Even then, it took me a long while to fall asleep. You might have thought that after thirty-six hours without rest, I’d be able to drop off easily. But I was wired into a grid that refused to cut the power. I lay on the bed, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing, and when I did doze, I almost as quickly woke again.

He looked like an elderly owl that had recently fallen out with a woodpecker.

So my heart sang, and my heart despaired, which was pretty much the usual combination for me whenever Lockwood was around.