‘Niamh, wake up!’
‘Huh?’ I opened my eyes to see Gwendoline inches from my face, practically screaming at me. I jumped, almost going through her she was so close.
Gwendoline floated back. ‘I’m sorry, but I saw Edie’s friend Josh in the cemetery by the park. He was doing a seance.’
‘Son of a—’
‘Goodfellow found him.’
‘As if this month can’t get any worse.’ I hopped out of bed, almost falling over. Gwendoline reached out to help me, but for obvious reasons, couldn’t. I righted myself, then grabbed the nearest clothes and began changing into them as fast as I could. ‘Can you get Edie and Ben, please?’
‘Of course.’ She vanished out of sight.
I was grabbing my phone from the bedside table when Edie barged in. ‘Mum—’
‘We’re going,’ I said.
Thomas floated in, a concerned expression on his face. Tilly followed, clearly on edge because she knew something was wrong. She kept looking between us, as if searching for answers.
‘Can you look after Tilly, please?’ I asked Thomas.
He nodded. ‘Yes. Anything. Just get him.’
‘We will.’ Edie hugged him. ‘Come on, Mum. Let’s go! Who knows how much damage he’s done to Josh already? Where’s Gwendoline?’
‘Getting Ben,’ I said. I rubbed Tilly behind the ears, then we dived out of the house and into the car.
*
Of course the green metal cemetery gates were closed when we got there. Because who needs to quickly get into a cemetery in the middle of the night? There had to be a way to get in. How else could someone have gotten in and vandalised the gravestones? And started this whole mess?
‘I got this,’ said Edie, crouching down in front of the padlock. She mumbled a spell. Her powers buzzed through the air. The gate rattled, but the lock didn’t open. Unusual. Concerning.
‘Frazzle!’
‘Have you used that spell before?’ I asked, crouching down to study the lock. Did I need to start carrying a lock-picking kit? I’d never needed one before, but then, I hadn’t needed to break into anywhere before. It seemed to be a regular occurrence for all of us lately.
‘Yes!’ She stood up and huffed. ‘But I feel weird. Wonky.’
Oh no.
If we couldn’t rely on Edie’s powers to open a gate, it seemed unlikely they were going to be any use against Goodfellow. Which was just great timing, wasn’t it?
Think Niamh, think!
Should we have asked Ben and Fadil to bring a lock-picking kit?
Was it too late to ask them? Probably. And I doubted either of them owned one anyway.
There were no resident ghosts who haunted the cemetery, so we couldn’t even ask them for help or to let us know if there was another way in. And since it was so huge, by the time we got to the other side of it, Goodfellow could have finished Josh off once and for all. Not an option.
Worst-case scenarios ran through my head, drowning out my ability to find solutions.
‘Why don’t you try?’ suggested Edie, pulling me out of my own head.
‘Try what?’
‘My spell. What if it’s just my powers that are the problem, not the spell itself? It’s worked on tougher locks before,’ she said.
‘It’s worth a shot,’ I agreed. She gave me the spell she’d written to get into the bakery below Dominic’s flat. I crouched down to the lock, imagining it opening as I said the words. Click. ‘Yes!’ I pushed the gate open.
It was so dark we couldn’t see much, but there was a faint outline of three people near a tree, right in the centre. Since most of the cemetery consisted of gravestones and grass, they stood out against the rest of the landscape in a disconcerting way. Especially since two of them were glowing.
It was hard to tell from a distance, but it looked like Goodfellow was beating Josh and Tessa was watching in horror. Every so often she’d reach out, as if trying to intervene, but she’d get flung backwards and stay there few a moments before trying again.
We followed the path to them as fast as we could. It felt like the closer we got, the farther away we were, but I knew that was our minds playing tricks on us. We were getting there. We just had to keep running, and we’d make it to Josh. And we had to make it.
Noticing us, Tessa floated over. ‘Where’ve you been? Never mind, thank god you’re here! I’m so glad that other ghost was patrolling and found out what was happening! I tried leaving Josh but I couldn’t.’ She frowned, looking down at my legs. ‘Can’t you run any faster?’
‘Not sure if you’ve noticed, but we still travel on the ground. Using our feet and legs. You can basically fly now. It’s a little bit slower than your mode of transport,’ I said.
‘Run faster!’
I rolled my eyes, ignoring her since I was already going as fast as I could.
Running made me breathless, proving just how unfit I was. But I had to keep going, for Maggie’s and Abigail’s and Josh’s sakes. Thinking of them gave me a burst of adrenaline that acted like accelerant, putting Josh just a few feet in front of me. He lay underneath a leafless tree, curled up in the foetal position. Every so often, he let out a strangled moan. The chilling wind moaned too, as if in conversation with him.
Edie caught up with me, but she didn’t stop. Her face contorted in heartbreak and horror as she ran closer to her ex-boyfriend and former best friend. I tried to reach out and stop her, in case Goodfellow was using Josh as a trap, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Goodfellow’s gaze flickered between Edie and Josh. A plan was bubbling behind those sinister eyes, I just knew it. But I didn’t know what it was, and I was terrified to find out. He’d already shown himself to be plenty dangerous. What was he going to do next?
Please don’t let him hurt Josh. Please. He’d been through enough. Maggie had been through enough. All the Morgans had. They didn’t deserve this.
What was Josh even doing there in the middle of the night? Gwendoline had said he was trying to do a seance. But in a cemetery? He knew he was being haunted. What difference did being in a cemetery – where Tessa wasn’t even buried – make?
A smirk crept over Goodfellow’s lips.
Before we could stop him, he disappeared inside Josh’s body.
‘No!’ shouted Edie, reaching out to him.
Tessa gasped, covering her face with her hands.
Josh fell to the floor, hitting his head on the tarmac. His chest still rose and fell, but he didn’t move. The two souls were fighting it out for control. Any minute, we’d see the external signs of that, too. Then, who knew what would happen?
I put my hand on Edie’s shoulder to stop her from getting any closer. We were metres away, but it felt like miles. The closer we were, the more we risked putting ourselves in danger without a plan. We might’ve been trying to work out how to get rid of Goodfellow since our last confrontation with him, but we hadn’t come up with anything effective. Which meant we were stuck and now had to improvise. And, just our luck, it appeared that our nemesis was already two steps ahead.