The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker Page 7

  Harriet brushed back her hair, straightened her shoulders, and walked away. There was no point asking anyone else for a rat if they’d laugh in her face like this guy. To stand a chance of making a trade, she had to work out what the ghosts valued. Then find a way to get some of it.

  Every innocent conversation seemed to reveal some new discovery about ghost life. She needed to talk to someone who knew everything there was to know about being a ghost, who had theories about powers and mythology. She had to talk to Felix.

  I know it won’t help you much yet, but can I show you something?

  When I was born, my mother had to hide me from my father. I was a girl, which was a disappointment. I was also nearly dead – born too soon and barely moving. She kept me alive, until I was strong enough that he wouldn’t have an excuse to kill me. I remember a moment from my childhood when he stared at me with unconcealed bemusement, like he couldn’t even imagine what was supposed to make him love me. The whole concept of fatherhood was completely foreign to him.

  My mother adored me, and I think that just confused him even more. He couldn’t understand why.

  That’s the way that Harriet looks at the others, when they are laughing and joking together. Like there is something that she’s missing. I wish there was a way to help her find it.

  It’s hard to see what’s really going on if you love someone. They can mistreat you as much as they like, and you ignore it because you don’t want to acknowledge the truth. If you did, then you’d have to deal with it. And that can mean the end of everything.

  FELIX

  Felix was on a tour of the building, saying hello to all the people he hadn’t spoken to in decades, since the last time they were all awake. He was trying to find a guy who always exchanged comic-book theories with him, singing to himself as he walked, when he bumped into Harriet in the entrance hall.

  “Have you got a moment to talk, Felix?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, surprised.

  They sat down together near the dusty, graffiti-covered reception desk on the ground floor. Harriet fell quiet.

  She seemed distracted. He didn’t want to push her to speak, in case she needed time to compose herself before talking about her death.

  Silence always made him slightly worried, though. It was just so loud. It set him off thinking of reasons why the silence could be awkward, until he wasn’t able to tell if it actually was an awkward silence or a comfortable one. By the time the other person spoke, he was usually sweating with anxiety.

  He worried a lot about whether people hated him. Felix had been the self-conscious sort, when he was alive. He’d never taken any risks or stepped out of his comfort zone, just in case he was judged.

  So, of course, he hadn’t made many friends in halls until after his death, which said a lot about how shy he had been when he was alive. It had taken literally an eternity for him to open up enough to make real close friends, rather than casual acquaintances. Even then, he’d only managed it with Rima, Kasper and Leah.

  When he was little, he’d always been worried and quiet. His brother was the brave and outgoing one. He pretended that Oscar was here now, rolling his eyes at Felix’s nervousness. What would he say to Harriet? What would he think of her? He’d have known exactly what to do right now. A yearning for his brother opened up inside Felix again.

  “Can you show me your power?” Harriet asked.

  Felix was relieved that she clearly didn’t need coaching through a death-related therapy session. This was a topic of conversation that he could handle. He’d been wondering how long it would take Harriet to ask what their powers were.

  Instead of replying, he looked at Cody and thought: Roll over. The fox immediately rolled onto her back and started licking in between the pads of her back foot.

  Harriet didn’t look impressed. “Rima can do that, too.”

  “Yeah, but she uses commands,” he explained. “I hypnotized her.” His power was less hypnotism and more insistent suggestion, but hypnotism sounded more impressive.

  “That’s so extra,” Harriet said.

  Felix preened. He always had to resist the urge to brag when he told people about his power. He had an excellent one. Not like poor Kasper.

  There was a new gleam in her eyes. “What other kind of things can you do?”

  “Well, I can make people see things that aren’t there. Look.”

  He focused on Cody, imagining a pink butterfly fluttering around her head. She opened her eyes sleepily, then snapped her jaws at it. The butterfly flew out of reach, making Cody leap after it, wiggling her bum.

  “Brilliant!” Harriet said, watching the butterfly dissolve into dust. “Though if you can hypnotize her, why did Rima bother training Cody? You could just force her to do whatever you like. You could have an army of foxes!”

  Felix shook his head, frowning. “I would never do that. She has to want to do stuff for Rima, otherwise it’s not fair.”

  Harriet blinked, looking very much like she was struggling to process this. “Right. Well, could you make Kasper pick his nose?” She grinned.

  Perhaps she hadn’t understood him. “No,” he explained patiently. “I don’t use it on other ghosts. I’d get sent down to the basement.”

  He didn’t use his power fully much at all. Sometimes he worried that if there was ever an emergency, it would be useless, like a muscle he hadn’t exercised. But the threat of it was usually enough to keep people scared of him.

  She frowned. “People don’t ask you to use your power for them? Is that not the kind of thing you trade for stuff?”

  When had she learnt about trading? She’d only been here for a day. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t trade my power.”

  Harriet raised her eyebrows. “Why? If there’s something you want, surely it would be easy to use it to get stuff?”

  “I can’t go around making everyone do things against their will.” A tinge of horror made its way into his voice, without his permission.

  Harriet’s expression froze for a second, but she recovered quickly. “No, obviously. I was hypothesizing.” She let out a short, fake laugh. “But what do you trade instead? Like, what would you say most people are after?”

  Why was she asking about trading so much? What had happened with Qi? Harriet clearly hadn’t found her power, based solely on her miserable expression. Was that why she was digging for information? Felix picked at his fingernail, thinking about how to answer her.

  In the end, he forced a smile. “Oh, I’m a simple sort. I don’t really need much. I’ve never really traded anything. Some people trade stuff for rats—”

  She cut him off. “The spirit energy, yeah, I know. But what else do people want around here?”

  There was such an intensity in her eyes it almost scared him.

  “The same things as everyone, I suppose,” he said, pretending to misunderstand her. “I mean, what kind of things do you want?”

  Her face went stiff. “I want to go home.” She bit her lip. “My parents are dead, too. I think they might be ghosts at my gran’s house. Maybe even my grandad – he had some sort of medication overdose after dental surgery when I was a kid. He died in bed at home. I want to see them all again. I want to talk to my mum.”

  Felix softened. He could understand that. He missed Oscar every second of every day.

  “It’s hard being stuck here. Everyone has someone they want to see again, whether they’re alive or living as a ghost somewhere else. But there’s no power that lets us leave the place where we died. If that’s what you’re looking for, you won’t find it. I’m sorry, Harriet.”

  Harriet looked away from him. The muscles in her neck were tight with tension. She swallowed.

  “Right,” she said. Her voice was cold, brittle. “I guess you would know. You’re the expert.”

  He tried to unravel the thoughts behind her expression. It was almost like she blamed Felix and the others. Did she think they were keeping her here on purpose? They didn’t ma
ke the rules, just tried to live by them. He found that hard enough, most of the time.

  It had been impossible to control his power when he’d first died. Unlike Rima, whose power hadn’t manifested for almost a month, Felix had been able to hypnotize people the moment he died. Distraught, panicked, and terrified – whenever he had felt a strong emotion – he’d accidentally inflected his words with hypnotism.

  It had caused quite a bit of trouble. Especially around Kasper.

  Kasper and Felix had hated each other before their deaths – they had been famous for never managing to sit at the same table during lunch without arguing over something or other. Their hallmates used to place bets on them.

  That was nothing compared to their arguments after they died, though. Once, Felix had accidentally hypnotized Kasper into shutting up in the middle of an argument, and only realized after he hadn’t spoken in a week.

  Once they became friends with Rima, she managed to stop them fighting. She helped Felix realize that most of Kasper’s bluster was designed to cover up his fears and worries. He was more delicate than he wanted people to believe.

  Harriet was staring into space with a frustrated expression that made Felix’s skin prickle. He wondered whether he should apologize to Harriet for not being able to help her leave. Everything about her was disquieting.

  To his relief, Rima jumped from the first floor into the foyer before he had to cast around for something to say.

  “You should have killed me when you had the chance!” Rima yelled at Kasper, hitting the floor in a barrel roll. She was almost giggling too hard to get her words out properly.

  Kasper dived over the banister after her. They were clearly in the middle of some intricate play-fight involving a hero and villain face-off.

  “You could have just taken the stai—” Felix started to say, exasperated, and then gave up. They were shouting too much to hear him anyway. Besides, Rima had spent years perfecting the art of the dramatic entrance. She took pride in it.

  “You aren’t as funny as you think you are!” Kasper yelled at Rima, stalking her across the room. “Once I overheard you memorizing puns in the bathroom!”

  Leah had followed them downstairs more sedately, with Claudia balanced on one hip. She interjected, “He’s right. You said that even your mum never used to laugh at your jokes, Rima.”

  “All of my jokes,” Rima corrected. “I said all of my jokes. And I told you that in confidence, Leah! If you keep this up, I’m gonna stop being best friends with you.”

  “When?” Leah asked, longingly.

  Rima gasped, insulted, her hand flying to the Best Friends Forever locket around her neck. It was in the shape of half a heart. She’d traded another ghost for the two necklaces years ago on the black market and given the other half of the heart to Leah. Felix had never seen Leah wear it, but he’d also never seen her get rid of it. He suspected that it was hidden inside one of the pockets in her shift dress.

  On more than one occasion, Felix had entertained private imaginings about giving Kasper a locket, too – or better yet, being given one by Kasper himself. The daydream was buried very deeply in his brain though, where it was going to stay until the moment he disintegrated. There were some things the world didn’t need to know.

  Kasper was still stalking Rima across the entrance hall. She twisted into a bat and flew up to a ceiling light. She bared sharp, vampiric teeth at Kasper, hissing.

  “You set the image of paranormal creatures back by thirty years when you do that,” Felix observed. “Stop being such a stereotype. You’re a ghost, not a vampire.”

  Rima turned back into a human, dangling from the light. “Don’t be such a buzzkill, Felix! You don’t have to be a vampire to turn into a bat, just like you don’t need to be a werewolf to howl at the moon!”

  Kasper yanked his shirt over his head and started flicking it at the light fixture. “Get down here Hamid, this is cheating!”

  Two girls were coming down the stairs, but they stopped when they saw the play-fight going on. A flush crept up Felix’s neck. He knew the other ghosts thought he and his friends were slightly ridiculous. The girls usually spent all their time looking out of the windows at passing humans, so they could spread the news of the latest fashion trends around Mulcture Hall. They’d never mess around like Rima and Kasper were doing.

  “What are you fighting about, anyway?” Felix asked, seizing the chance to talk while nobody was yelling. Having a conversation with them was like herding cats – they tended to scatter.

  “Well, Harriet and I came up with this theory earlier that I’m the funny one of the group,” Rima explained to him, making a little grateful curtsey in Harriet’s direction. “I was telling Leah about it, and Kasper said he reckons he’s the charming one, which is bull! The only thing he could charm is a damp dishcloth.”

  “Well, we all know it’s not Leah,” Kasper said. He was rubbing at the back of his head, fluffing up his hair in such a cute way that Felix felt furious about it.

  “How dare you?” Leah said, serenely. “I have charisma. If I really tried, I’d have you all blushing, stuttering and buying me flowers within the hour.”

  “Oh, sure!” Kasper spluttered. “You decide, Felix. Who’s the hottest, me or her? You’re the clever one, after all.”

  Felix felt like he’d been punched in the chest. Kasper thought he was the clever one? “I, er … well—”

  “Sure, she’s cute in an anaemic, gothic sort of way. But how can anyone beat me?” Kasper fluttered his eyelashes.

  “If anyone is the charming one, it’s Harriet,” Felix said.

  Kasper nodded in an “I’ll allow it” gesture. “I suppose Harriet is a more worthy opponent for the title.”

  Harriet, who looked a bit overwhelmed by them all, raised her eyebrows. “I’m clearly the famous one who leaves halfway through Season Three. It’s only a matter of time before Hollywood discovers me. I’m ‘pre-famous’.”

  Felix laughed. Harriet was funny, when she let herself relax enough to joke around.

  Harriet looked both surprised and gratified. She smiled down at her lap.

  “There’s more dust in this building than common sense,” Leah muttered as she sat down next to Felix, yawning. “Can you take Claudia for a while?”

  Felix swung the baby over his hip in one well-practised movement. He’d been babysitting Claudia – and, before that, his older sister’s daughter – for years. The baby dropped her head onto his shoulder, letting out a small noise of contentment. She always smelt the same. Warm and milky, with a hint of honey. He kissed the end of her button nose. She giggled.

  “Hey, Leah?” Harriet asked. “What’s your power?” Her voice was casual, but Felix could see the intensity in her eyes. Her obsession with powers was back again. Did she ever think about anything else?

  Felix pretended not to be listening, leaning forward like he was scrutinizing Kasper, who still hadn’t put his shirt back on.

  “I can see through time. Sometimes,” Leah told her. Felix was surprised. It had taken nearly a decade for Leah to tell them that much. In fact, Felix was sure that she’d told Rima she didn’t have a power. Rima had believed that for the first few years of their friendship.

  Harriet’s eyes widened. “Wait, really? You can see the future?”

  “And the past.”

  “That’s amazing! Do you think you could find out what my power is? Knowing what to aim for might help me to manifest it more quickly!” Harriet was speaking faster and faster in excitement. When they’d all been messing around, she’d just stared down at her lap – even when she was joining in with the jokes. But now she was genuinely joyful. She was a mystery.

  “Can you look into the future for me?” she asked Leah.

  Felix scowled at the ground. What right did she have to ask Leah for a favour? They’d only spoken once.

  Leah sighed. “I don’t look into the future. Not any more. It takes too much energy. I can’t sustain it these days. I used to be
able to change things in the future sometimes whenever I used my power. Now I can’t even look.”

  This was news to Felix. He’d thought she’d only had visions, not the ability to manipulate things through time.

  “Wait, so you can actually change the future?” Harriet asked, eyes wide. “Could you get my gran to – I don’t know – come here with the police or something?”

  “It doesn’t really work like that, even if I did have the energy. I could never control it that carefully. And these days I can barely see five minutes from now. Sorry, kid.”

  There was a tension-filled silence. Eventually, Harriet nodded. “No problem.” It was clear from her voice that this was indeed a problem.

  Felix’s heart-rate accelerated. These new social dynamics weren’t doing great things for his anxiety.

  In answer, Leah turned away from them all, and lay down. Clearly this conversation was over.

  “I don’t think Leah likes me,” Harriet whispered to him. Felix wished he could pretend to be asleep too.

  He shook his head, letting Claudia tug at his hair. He didn’t want to get involved in another tense conversation with Harriet. Once was enough for one day.

  “No, she does. She’s just like that with everyone. It’s not you. She’s got – well, we think she’s got – postnatal depression,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

  Harriet’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  “Yeah. We think she had it when she died and got stuck like that. She sleeps a lot, even when she’s got plenty of energy.”

  Harriet blinked, aghast. “Wow.” She shook her head. “I suppose I got off lucky. She’s going to be really tired and depressed … for ever? For the whole of eternity?”

  He winced. When she put it like that, it sounded a lot more horrifying than he’d realized. “Not for eternity. We’re all going to disintegrate one day, anyway.”

  “What happens to ghosts when we disintegrate? Do you know?”

  “Nobody knows. I’ve always wondered.”

  “When I went outside the building, it felt as if I was breaking into atoms,” Harriet said. “Like it was a final end and I was losing all consciousness. Becoming part of the universe.”