‘Stop!’ I open my eyes, and find I’m lying on the floor of the modern apartment in the Shard once more, shouting. Well, I suppose this is where I always was. I struggle to my feet, blinking.
‘What have you done to him?’ Si is demanding. ‘Daniel, what happened to you?’ Mary ignores him, and I’m not sure how to explain what I’ve just seen.
‘So.’ The ghost of Mary stands in the centre of the room, crackling with a dangerous charge of electrical power once more. ‘Now do you understand? I am owed a new life, boy – a second chance. And for that I need Stacey’s body. I deserve it. And with me she will be powerful beyond anything she can imagine.’
‘But she’s only a tiny kid,’ I say, straightening my specs. ‘I doubt she imagines much beyond where the next doughnut’s coming from.’
‘Then what is there for her to lose?’
‘Only everything you yourself lost,’ I snap back. Well, I’m beginning to get annoyed with all this. ‘Yes, it was terrible what happened to you, Mary, and yeah, I guess you deserve a second chance. But Stacey deserves that too. She hasn’t even had her first chance yet!’
Mary sets her jaw and stares at me. She’s crackling as scarily as ever, but something in her eyes suggests she knows I’m right. I don’t miss my opportunity.
‘She’s like you were in that first scene you showed me,’ I say. ‘Small, and just trying to keep up with the grown-ups. You know what it feels like to be her, Mary. You remember. And that’s why I don’t think you can ever do anything to hurt Stacey.’
Mary looks down at her hands as they crackle with electrical power.
‘But it’s all so… unfair!’
‘I know it is.’ I step forward. ‘But you’re a good person, Mary. Don’t be unfair to Stacey.’
I’ve got through to her, I can tell. She glances up and I manage to catch her eye.
‘Bring Stacey to me, Mary,’ I say, as gently as I can. ‘Please. Let me take her down to safety. Then, I promise, I will do all I can to help you.’
Mary lowers her hands, defeated. She lets out a fizzing, spectral sigh. But then, just as she’s about to speak again, the worst thing that could possibly happen at this precise moment… happens.
‘Oh my God, are you getting this, Ned, are you getting this?’ Venn Specter shouts out as he edges into the room. He’s staring in complete astonishment at the column of crackling electrical power in the shape of a girl. And you don’t need to be able to see ghosts to see that, believe me. Ned walks in behind him, his mouth hanging open. The lens of his camera is on me and Mary, the little red recording light blazing.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Venn looks like he can’t believe what his eyes are showing him, but as he warned me earlier, he’s not going to let an opportunity like this get away. ‘You see before you proof – proof, I tell you! – that ghosts exist! They actually exist! I, Venn Specter, have brought you face to face with the nameless evil that is haunting the Shard. The devilish presence that is terrorising this place, which…’
Mary blazes with light, all sense of being swayed by my words forgotten.
‘Mary, wait!’ I shout, but it’s no good. She rises off the ground, her arms outstretched, her back to me now as she turns to face Venn.
‘Dear viewers, you are seeing history being made.’ Venn really doesn’t know when to shut up, does he? He even scurries round in front of the camera so that he can be in the same shot as Mary. ‘A real live evil spirit! And it is I, Venn Specter, who investigated it.’
As selfies go, this one’s pretty suicidal.
The windows of the apartment explode inwards. A bolt of lightning from the sky connects with Mary, who pours power out from her fingers in countless arcs of electricity. The whole flat erupts in light and flame and destruction, and I hit the deck.
When I next look up, Venn and Ned are in the air, floating upside down. Venn is screaming. Ned’s eyes are bulging out from his head, but the camera’s still at his shoulder, filming the lot.
‘Mary, stop!’ I shout, but I doubt she can hear me now with the crackle of power, and the wind and snow that’s roaring in through the windows.
‘I am not evil!’ Mary’s voice booms with the power of thunder. ‘And I. Am not. A WITCH!’
With a final pulse of electrical power, she rushes out through the ruined window and into the night sky beyond the building. With a cry of panic, Venn is pulled out after her, still upside down, his legs pinned together by a thick band of ice. Ned flies out behind him, still filming. Then all three rush up and out of sight, as Mary takes two more captives up to the summit of the Shard.
‘I nearly had her, Si,’ I say, still sitting on the floor. I punch the ruined sofa in anger. ‘Then that numpty showed up and turned it all into Halloween again.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Si says. ‘I warned you that Mary might be too far gone. Four hundred years of frustration and then this sudden great power. I don’t think she can resist it.’
‘I’m not accepting that, Si.’ I get to my feet. ‘And I’m not giving up and running away.’
‘But Daniel, there’s something you need to know.’
‘What?’ I snap, still annoyed. I remember now that he was trying to tell me something before Mary appeared.
‘Well, if we’re right that Mary’s great power is derived from the building, that the Shard itself is magnifying her in some way, then there’s no reason I can see why her power will ever stop growing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that she will simply grow stronger and stronger until either she gets the new body she wants and leaves this place, or until she destroys the building entirely. And probably a sizable portion of central London at the same time.’
I goggle at him.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Daniel, Mary is a four-hundred-year-old bundle of fury and resentment, fuelled by a spirit battery the size of a volcano. We need to be as far away from here as possible when that volcano erupts.’
‘No, Si. I’m not leaving, and I’m not just letting her have Stacey either.’
‘But what can you do?’ Si is flapping again.
‘I’m going to do what I always do,’ I say, straightening my lapels and setting my purple specs. ‘Come up with an awesome plan. But first, we need to get up to the top of this building.’
Simon looks appalled.
‘But how?’ he cries. ‘You can’t use the lift, the stairs are a death trap – how will you ever get to the top floor?’
I look around the flat. The wind is still roaring in through the shattered windows, and snow is already banking up around the singed and ruined furniture. There’s a flash and a clap of thunder as I turn to Si.
‘With a little help from a friend.’