Later, Kasper and Felix will both be mortified when they realize that they are neighbours and must share a bathroom for the next year. But that’s still to come. For now, Oscar tells Rima he’d better go after Felix and make sure he’s OK. That they’ll do lunch another day.
Rima nods her understanding, then kneels to help Kasper pick up the pieces of smashed glass. They go their separate ways without even introducing themselves. (That would take another three weeks.)
But do you see yet? How hard it is to stop yourself from caring, even when you know you shouldn’t? How much family matters?
Oscar knew. Felix knew. Harriet doesn’t know yet. But she will.
Chapter 5
HARRIET
Harriet’s power was locked up somewhere inside her where she couldn’t reach it. She tried to create clouds out of her fingers, imagining rain and thunder, but nothing happened. She needed to talk to this Qi person right now.
While the others were cooing over Rima’s fox, she turned to Kasper, and pleaded, “Will you take me? To see – er, Chi?”
“Qi, yeah,” Kasper confirmed. He squirmed and looked at Rima. “I don’t know, though. Qi is kind of busy.”
Harriet remembered the way his eyes had been filled with longing when he looked at her earlier. Her gran had taught her when she was very young that if you wanted something from someone, you had to work out what they needed. If you could find a way to offer it to them, then you’d have them eating out of the palm of your hand.
Kasper wanted love. Or the excitement of first lust, at least. That was the simplest thing in the world to give to him. She’d watched a lot of people flirting, especially in freshers’ week. There were girls who drew constant attention simply by tilting their head in a certain way, or rearranging their hair over their shoulders. She drew on those memories.
“Please, Kasper,” she said, pitching her voice low and intimate, so quiet that the others didn’t hear her speak. She lifted one side of her mouth to make her cheek dimple. “Can’t you make an exception, as a favour to me?”
Out of sight, she took his hand and rubbed his thumb with hers.
Kasper looked down at their entwined fingers. There was a moment when she thought he might be about to say no again, but then he mumbled, “I guess we can go and talk to Qi. It can’t hurt.”
He stood up, pulling her to her feet. “Catch you guys later,” he said to Felix and Rima, who stared at them in bafflement.
Harriet bit down on her victorious smile. That flirting thing had been a lot easier than she’d expected. Making friends was far tougher, but this, she was good at.
“How are you dealing with everything?” Kasper asked as they walked to Room 4E, where the mysterious Qi apparently lived. “It’s a lot.”
“It is, at that,” she said dourly. “I don’t know. I guess … I just thought it’d be different, you know? I didn’t believe in the afterlife when I was alive. I assumed once you died, then that was it, fade to black. But I always thought, if there was something after death…”
Harriet picked at her fingernails, trying to work out what she wanted to say. “I thought it would be so incredibly amazing that I wouldn’t care about my old life any more. I wouldn’t want to return to real life, because it would be even better afterwards. Being stuck here, I feel kind of cheated. The afterlife should be less … dusty, I think.”
She fell silent, aware that she had been talking for far too long. Kasper had stopped in his tracks and was staring at her, wide-eyed. He had long, pale eyelashes.
“Wow. I prefer your version.”
She let out a low laugh. “Me too.”
His hand crept onto her lower back again. “Listen, I think you should be prepared for this to fail. Qi will try her best to help you, but it would be easier if you accepted that it’s not going to work.”
She let out a noise of exasperation. “Never,” she said firmly. She was going to find a way to go home, with or without a power.
With infinite care, he took her hand in his again. He did it in a way that made her suddenly regret ever initiating contact.
“OK, then,” he said. “Let’s hope Qi knows what she’s doing.”
Just then, Rima ran up behind them. “Wait, I’ll come with you! I haven’t seen Qi in ages.” She eyed their entwined hands, then added, “Unless I’m interrupting something?”
“You’re good,” Harriet said, relieved, just as he replied, “Kinda.”
Harriet turned to Kasper, who opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. When Rima choked on a laugh, he let go of her hand and strode on.
Rima caught her by the elbow, holding Harriet back. “You know he’s flirting with you, right? Kind of blatantly.”
Harriet couldn’t help the smile that twisted her lip. As if she could have missed that. “Oh, I know.”
Rima hesitated, then said, “You should know that Kasper might act cocky, but he’s actually a lot more vulnerable than he seems. Be gentle, OK?”
Harriet must have slightly overshot the mark on the seduction front, if she was already getting the “best friend” talk. “Is this the part where you tell me that if I hurt him, you’ll kill me? Because I think you’ve missed the boat there.”
Rima laughed. “Sorry! I just wanted to let you know. I wasn’t trying to warn you off, or anything. I think that you could be good for him, because he and Felix have this really odd… Well, I think this whole place makes everything a bit toxic. We’re all cooped up together all the time, and it can get a bit much. So new blood is always a good thing. Go for it, is what I’m saying.”
Harriet was drowning in other people’s problems. She was trying to get home, not catch up on decades’ worth of
