I wanted to know how long it would take for us to disappear, like all the other ghosts around us. How could we keep surviving without people or animals or a building of any kind?
I skipped ahead in time again, and saw Harriet. It was just a flash – the vision was too small and fragile to last longer than a few seconds, stretched so far across time – but I saw a girl with a hole in the back of her head. Leah and I were there. Harriet was kneeling down beside us, a glowing chain of energy stretching from her hands to ours.
I wish I could have told Leah what I saw. But my mother doesn’t realize I have a power at all.
I try my best to help her avoid danger – crying out in warning, or leaching energy from a threatening ghost until they leave us alone. I’ve kept my mother here for much longer than she’d have managed on her own. For a helpless child, that’s about the best you can hope for.
Leah has no idea that Harriet is just the beginning. I’ll fight alongside her, when the battle starts for real. I’ll be their secret weapon – so secret, even they aren’t aware of it.
FELIX
Felix sat on the fire escape outside Oscar’s old student bedroom on the second floor. Rain trickled down his spine in an ice-cold stream, making his teeth chatter.
Oscar’s room had been emptied of his things years ago, but Felix liked to pretend that Oscar had made some of the pen marks on the desk. Just so he had something of his brother.
His death was the worst kind of nightmare: so outrageously awful that it couldn’t be real.
He kept reliving the terrible moment when he’d understood that he wasn’t going to be strong enough to stop both Harriet and Kasper from attacking Oscar. It had hit him like a punch in the chest: the terrible dawning realization that his power was going to fall short, and Oscar was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
If he’d practised using his power more, instead of being stubbornly moral about hypnotizing anyone for all these years, he might have been able to control them.
“Hi.” Kasper was leaning out of the window, raindrops falling through him.
“Hi,” Felix said back, automatically. They stared at each other for a moment, then Kasper climbed out beside him.
In silence, they watched dark grey clouds rolling across the landscape. He knew Kasper must be feeling guilty, in the worst kind of way, but he didn’t know how to tell him that this wasn’t his fault. Not without bursting into tears. He was teetering on the brink already.
“Felix…”
“I know we have a lot to discuss. But can we just … sit?”
Kasper bobbed his head. When he held up his arm, Felix fell against his chest, tucking his face into Kasper’s side. His familiar touch anchored something deep inside him, making his pain feel so much more bearable.
Kasper pressed his lips against Felix’s head. “Tell me about him.”
“He was always so much braver than me.” He was trembling, letting out short, muffled sobs against Kasper’s chest.
Kasper let Felix talk, holding and supporting him. They moved closer with every inhale, until Felix was half sitting in his lap.
When he finally pulled away, the rain had stopped. Kasper rubbed water away from Felix’s cheek with one thumb. Felix pretended that it was rainwater instead of tears.
“You’re going to survive this. I promise.” Kasper swallowed. “This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been there.”
“He died because of Harriet, not you,” Felix insisted.
“You had to stop me. Again.”
“I’ll always be here for you. What I said before – I was wrong. I’m not going anywhere. If you need me, I’m here.” Just like Kasper was there for him.
Kasper’s hand came up, pressing at the back of Felix’s head until their foreheads touched. His pupils were blown wide open. “I’m not going anywhere, either.”
When his gaze dropped to Felix’s lips, Kasper sucked in a stuttering breath. Felix was shocked once again by how close they were. Kasper kept pushing at the boundaries he’d erected between them; creeping closer each time they touched, then darting away again. But maybe now, maybe finally, this was—
Someone yelled, “There they are!”
Felix’s heart stopped. Kasper’s head reared back.
Rima and Leah were barrelling across the room towards them.
HARRIET
Harriet was waiting for Oscar’s power to manifest. She’d done this enough times now that she could tell from the way it was bubbling under her skin that it was almost ready. She hadn’t given up the hope that it might be something useful. Even if it didn’t let her get back to her gran, it could still help her to defend herself if the others came after her again. She’d barely managed to hold them off last time.
She had felt sick and dizzy ever since Oscar’s death. Her lost eyelid and the incisions down her back from Rima’s claws had been oozing constantly. Her whole body felt torn to pieces, like a scab that wouldn’t heal. She itched and itched and itched until she wanted to scratch her skin off.
After the fight had ended, she’d turned invisible and slept in the shadows, lost in the wracking torments of energy. Slowly, as light turned into darkness turned into light turned into darkness, Oscar’s excess energy died away until she could think again.
Regret overwhelmed her. She hadn’t meant to kill him. All she’d wanted to do was use Oscar’s body to get home, but everything had somehow spiralled out of control. The energy and chaos and adrenaline had got mixed up in her head, and he’d just tasted so delicious, better than anything she’d tried before.
Killing humans was different to making a Shell disintegrate. Killing Oscar … that was murder. She’d murdered him. Felix’s twin brother.
Was she a monster, or was this how everyone felt on the inside? Were they all somehow wishing for blood and death and fear, too? Was everyone else just better than her at pushing those urges down?
Harriet focused on making Oscar’s power manifest, because that felt like the only thing she could control any more. She had tried hunting rats to get a burst of energy, but she hadn’t been able to catch one. There was no one around to trade with, either. The whole population of ghosts in the building seemed to have disappeared. They must be hiding away somewhere until the fighting was over for good.
Gradually, Harriet realized that heavy electronic music was playing near by. It vibrated through the floorboards and made her head pound. It was coming from a group of human students who were making their way through the hall.
They were clearly hours into their pre-drinks, and covered in glowing fluorescent paint. Shining phone lights into the shadowy corners, they kicked old beer cans across the concrete, making room to set down their own bottles of vodka in the corridor where Harriet was hiding.
“All right, Squash Club!” one of the boys said, clapping his hands together. “Where are the freshers at?”
Four pasty students stepped forward, looking nervous. The boy poured lemon juice into a bottle of Baileys, and shouted, “What team?”
“SQUASH!”
He eyed up each of the freshers, then handed the bottle to a blonde girl, who looked dismayed.
“We like to drink with Charlie, ’cause Charlie is our mate,” he began, and the watching students joined in, shouting the rhyme as the fresher choked down the congealed liquid. “AND WHEN WE DRINK WITH CHARLIE, SHE GETS IT DOWN IN EIGHT …”