Leah grew up in a town full of Roman soldiers, caught in constant battle with the Celts near by. She had a speckled cat who ate out of her hands. She sang constantly. She was happy. By the time I was born, she’d lost all of those things. And by the time she died, I was all she had left at all.
Honestly, I prefer being dead to any life I could have had among the living. It’s so much less messy, being a ghost. There are fewer expectations on a girl here.
I enjoy how much people underestimate me. They happily spill all their secrets in front of a baby, showing their true loyalties. I’m not saying that I’d choose to be like this if I had another option. But I’ve made the most out of a bad situation.
The most frustrating part about being so young is that I can’t tell my mother any of the things I see happening in the future. That never used to be a problem, because Leah could see the future herself. But since she stopped using her power, I’m the only one who can see what’s coming. I’ve got no way to warn her.
I’ve known about Harriet since the English Civil War. Leah and I saw out the war in style. This site was being used as an encampment for a troop of Roundheads. They all died like locusts. Honestly, you’ve never seen such poor hygiene.
For a season, we feasted on newborn ghosts all day and night, until we couldn’t do anything but lie around and dream, swollen with energy. Too much energy sends ghosts wild and crazed, destroying them from the inside out. The white hair is an early warning sign, an indication to cut back on your indulgences. We all had it, back then.
It was around that time that I started testing how far into the future I could look. It was just a way to burn up the excess energy, at first.
A decade into the future, I saw a vision of my father learning to knit with the wool from a sheep spirit who’d died before a shearing. It was a hobby he continued for many years. It would have been endearing if he wasn’t using two human fingers as knitting needles, taken from a ghost who’d upset him.
Fifty years away, the old barn had been burnt to the ground, and we were all huddled together under the charcoal remains of the wooden frame.
A hundred years, and we were pale and weak Shells, floating around a few stray stones on the ground.
I should have stopped looking, then. It was already too dangerous, trying to see that far ahead. Time becomes unstable. Just looking could affect things – a little stray energy could cause chaos if it slipped through time.
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
