“How long do you think the energy will last?” he asked. “Before we, you know … go to sleep again.”
Leah, who was the most experienced among them, shrugged. “Could be anywhere from a few months to a year. It depends how much energy escaped and how much she kept for herself. She seems quite strong to me, so probably only a few months.”
Felix swallowed. That didn’t seem nearly enough time to do all the things he wanted to do. He felt revitalized, born again. No matter how much he prepared, he was never ready to return to that dull, dreamless hibernation.
“Well,” he said, lifting up the corners of his mouth in an attempt at a smile. “I suppose we’ll have to make the most of it while we can.”
Just then, a small fox spirit appeared from the shadows and trotted up to them.
“Cody!” Rima gasped. The fox leapt into her arms, wriggling furiously and twisting upside down to reveal a pure white belly. “I’ve missed you so much,” Rima said, burying her face in her ginger fur. The fox let out a short, squeaky sort of yowl.
“I can’t believe she’s still here. I thought she’d have disintegrated by now.” Felix stretched out his hand, grinning. The fox tapped it with a black-tipped paw.
“She’s a tough old thing, aren’t you?” Rima kissed Cody’s nose.
Before they had all gone into hibernation mode, Rima had been training up the dead fox as a pet. The process had involved a lot of snarling and baring of teeth from both Rima and Cody, but in the end, she’d even got the fox doing tricks.
Cody jumped to the ground, stretching out her front legs, back curving into a bow. She let out another hoarse yowl, then swiftly jumped across the room to chase a mouse into the wall.
Felix stared up the stairs, after Kasper and Harriet. He wondered what they were talking about, and if his hand was still on her back. But most of all, he wondered how he could stop himself from caring.
Chapter 3
KASPER
Kasper led Harriet up the stairs, weaving between the ghosts who were still watching her. They all closed their eyes as she passed, like they were breathing her in. A girl from the second floor – who used to do student radio when she was alive, and sometimes still put on shows for them all – even darted over to touch Harriet’s arm.
Kasper couldn’t blame them. Harriet was glowing golden bright, even though she’d lost some energy while she was outside. Kasper had been so scared when she’d left Mulcture Hall. He wished desperately that he was as brave as Rima, who had gone after her without any hesitation at all. If only he could have played the role of rescuer to Harriet’s damsel in distress.
“What do they want? It’s like they think I’m a snack or something,” Harriet said, brushing her hair flat nervously. It was woven up in some fancy twist. Her make-up was very fancy too. Had she been planning to go out to a party that night, if she had survived? There were probably loads of boys waiting for her to turn up right at that very moment.
“You’re a novelty,” he replied. “Besides, your fall was kind of brutal. No one else has ever had such a good death, I don’t think. Well, I suppose Leah might have, but she’s never told us how she died, so that doesn’t count.”
Having a good death was a gruesome badge of honour. Kasper always wished his own was more exciting.
He summoned up all his courage and added, “Plus … you’re well fit. That makes you even more interesting.”
Kasper waited with bated breath for her reply, nerves fluttering in his stomach. It had been a long time since he’d said anything like that to a girl.
“Less fit now that I’m a rotting corpse,” Harriet muttered, and ran one hand over the back of her head again. There was a dip there, where her skull had caved in. Kasper and the others had been lucky – they had no wounds.
“Oh, I dunno about that,” he said breezily. “You’ve raised the bar for rotting corpses everywhere.”
“Thanks, um—” She paused, clearly trying to remember his name.
“Kasper,” he said. He didn’t mind. She’d gone through a lot, very quickly.
She smiled at him, her eyes lighting up so beautifully that it completely changed her face. “Thanks for coming with me to get my phone.”
“No problem. There is something you can do in exchange, though.” He let a small smile pull up the side of his mouth in a way that he used to practise in front of the mirror during pre-drinks, back when he was alive and could go to clubs and flirt with all the girls he wanted.
“What do you want?” Her voice was wary.
He bit back a grin. “Well … you don’t happen to know how the Sky Blues are doing in the league tables this season, do you?”
Harriet grinned. Something inside him lightened. He had been hoping for this.
HARRIET
As they walked up to the top floor, Harriet made awkward small talk with this boy, Kasper. He had apparently been a rower, not a rugby player; he had been studying Art History; and he’d been seventh in line for a peerage when he had died.
When they reached the fifth floor, it was full of ghosts too. The ones up here seemed different somehow. They weren’t watching Harriet curiously, but just sat around, staring blankly into space. Some were slumped against walls or curled up on the ground. They were faint, too – dimly lit compared to the brighter ghosts she’d seen so far, who could almost pass for living people.
“What’s wrong with them?” Harriet asked.
“They’re still Shells,” Kasper said, sounding surprised to see them too.
“Shells?” Harriet moved closer to one, but he didn’t react – not even when she touched his arm. There was no sign of life on any of their faces.
“Ghosts with low energy are called Shells. They’re like empty husks of ghosts, nearly gone.”
“What?”
Kasper shook his head. “Energy doesn’t last for ever. When we first die, we’re fresh and bright, like you. But after decades, you just sort of use it all up. You stop being able to move around, and eventually your energy runs out completely and you disintegrate. Until today, we were all like this too.”
Harriet stared at him. “So what changed?”
He gestured at her. “You arrived. Your death released energy that spread through the building. We absorbed it, and it was enough to wake us up again. We were all Shells until the moment you died. We’ve been Shells before, but we’ve always found more energy from somewhere or other before we disintegrated. This time, we came really close to it, I think.” A worried look crossed his face.
“Wow.” Harriet was a bit miffed. Kasper had taken some of her energy? Surely that should have gone to her. It was Harriet’s death, after all. “So why didn’t the Shells up here wake up when I died?”
“Hmm. Well, you probably died when you hit the ground floor, right? The energy would have radiated through the building, so the ghosts on the lower floors got the most. By the time it reached this far, it was too weak for the tiny bit of fresh energy to make any difference to the ghosts here. So they stayed like this.”
No wonder the ghosts in the building were all watching Harriet. They were waiting for more energy. Well, she wasn’t going to give it to them. If losing energy meant turning into a Shell, then she was going to keep as much as she could for herself. When she got out of here, she needed to have enough energy to spend years watching over her gran with the ghosts of her parents.