Rufus and Vini were quick enough to tell Harriet to steal powers, but they’d never do it themselves. They know that they’d go mad if they did. Instead, they stick with just the one power, and let their subordinates take the risks of gathering more.
I think it’s time to look back at the moment Harriet died, now that the snippets of the future I’ve seen over the centuries have begun to reveal themselves. I can start planning and testing theories for how we’ll get from Point A to Point B.
When I first saw her in the future, I tried to find the moment of her death. But it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Dipping in at random periods is no way to find answers. I usually saw snapshots of Kasper snoring in his bedroom, or Rima stroking Cody’s fur, or Felix wiping his glasses. Quiet, peaceful moments. No big conversations that revealed exactly the information I needed to know. No dramatic showdowns.
But now I know when and where Harriet’s death happened, I can find it again. I can go back to the past and see those important seconds before Harriet cracked her skull open on the steel beam.
Let’s replay it. Harriet is walking up the stairs to the top floor of Mulcture Hall. She’s taking photographs and listening to pop music. She’s getting a call from her grandmother.
It’s about to happen. You’ve seen it before, so you know the score. This time, shall we look at it from another side? You might see something different.
Harriet walks towards the edge of the stairwell. She doesn’t notice the barriers, pushed up against the walls – or the dust-free places where the bright yellow warning signs used to stand. But we do, don’t we?
Someone moved them. Those barriers were there to stop people from going too close to the broken edge of the floor, where it had collapsed. Now they’re stacked up against a wall, out of sight.
There’s something else I didn’t see before. Right at the edge, before floor becomes air becomes a deadly fall, there’s a wire. Strung at ankle height, in the perfect place to make someone trip over the edge.
There she goes now, past the barriers and warning signs, talking to her gran about Autumnwatch. And her shoe catches, as we knew it would, on the hair-thin tripwire.
And then she’s nothing but blood and shards of bone and a very angry, very confused ghost.
Someone made this happen. Harriet Stoker’s death wasn’t an accident.
It was murder.
Chapter 11
HARRIET
Harriet crashed into the foyer, taking the stairs three at a time, just as the police officers in bulletproof vests piled out of their cars. She stood by her corpse, waiting with clenched fists. Her hands were slipping in and out of visibility, but she couldn’t focus enough to control it.
She pressed a hand to her forehead. Her temples burned. Her brain was melting. Everything ached. Had she made a mistake, going back up to the Shells?
After Kasper had fallen asleep the night before, she’d slipped away to the fifth floor to claim the powers of another Shell. The excess energy made her ignore everything except getting another fix.
She felt guilty, but her hunger outweighed everything else. It no longer mattered if the Shell disintegrated. That concern felt blurry and far away. She couldn’t even remember why she’d been so worried about it. Getting powers was more important.
When she reached the top floor, the Shells had all skittered in a panic. She had chased them from room to room, finally pinning them in the corner of the building, up against an outer wall where they couldn’t escape.
Choosing a boy at random, she had tugged him forwards, ignoring the petrified shrieks that burst from his mouth. This one struggled more than the last, and it had taken all her strength to hold it long enough to suck it clean of energy. It screamed the whole time.
It didn’t last long enough, but her body had still cried out for more energy. Mindless, she had lunged at another Shell. They were all wailing now.
The second Shell disintegrated in her grasp, which was frustrating – and quite clever, for a Shell. To her horror, the others all followed suit, collapsing into the ashy remnants of their molecules before she had a chance to take them in.
Harriet had been furious, screaming up at the early morning pink of the sky, and feeling her rage unravel. She’d tried to push it back inside, like she usually did when she felt this way, but the fresh energy had made that impossible. She’d screamed until the feeling subsided.
Her skin had started glowing with a fluorescent, hyper-bright colour. Energy oozed from her pores, harsh and electric. It ached in the roots of her teeth, a bone-deep throbbing richness. It would keep her going for a while, even without any more Shells.
The energy was still thrumming through her veins, but the buzz had calmed down enough that Harriet was aware of what she was doing again. It was like she was watching her actions from a great distance. Even as Harriet had shouted at Rima, she had known that she shouldn’t be doing it – that it wasn’t fair or rational. But though Rima had looked hurt and sad, hunching her shoulders inwards and avoiding Harriet’s gaze, she couldn’t stop herself.
The energy was twisting everything in Harriet’s head.
In one night, she’d messed up all her progress – sleeping with Kasper, upsetting Felix, shouting at Rima. It was going to be hard to convince them that she would be a good friend now.
Plus, Rima might still be helpful. Harriet had put a lot of work into staying on her good side.
The entrance hall was crowded with so many ghosts that Harriet couldn’t even see her corpse. Qi and Greg were there, along with most of the other ghosts she’d met during the last few days. Presumably, they were waiting to see if Harriet had a catastrophic emotional breakdown when the police moved her body.
The police officers shone torches around the foyer, illuminating spiderwebs, broken glass; and then stiff, yellowing skin; the black congealed blood surrounding Harriet’s head.
An officer let out a gasp, her hand rising involuntarily to her throat. “Jesus Christ.”
Harriet couldn’t control her breathing – she gulped air down uselessly, faster and faster. She could feel the eyes of all the ghosts on her, waiting for a reaction. She wasn’t going to give them one.
Don’t show weakness. Don’t give them anything they can use against you. Her gran’s words comforted her. She stood straighter.
There was a long moment of silence – among both the living and the dead – and then it was all action. Radios began crackling with static, and the room filled with more police. When Harriet still didn’t start wailing, several of the ghosts drifted away, disinterested.
Kasper appeared at her side. He silently tugged her towards him, fingers sliding up her wrists to smooth warm lines down her veins.
“This is good, right?” he said, trying to read her expression.
Harriet was too tired and numb to care what her face was telling him.
She couldn’t even bring herself to reply. She was so sick of the feelings that her death had forced on her. In the last few days, she had needed to acknowledge more of her own emotions than she had since her parents had died.
After a few minutes, the radio dispatcher said, “Can someone tell the grandmother?”
Harriet’s heart stuttered. Her gran was going to be told she was dead, that her only surviving family member had died. She was the last one left, having lost her husband, her son and his wife, and now her granddaughter.