Page 32 of All Her Ghosts

Turning away, I lean my body in the corner, press my forehead to the wall facing the hallway outside, and slip into my party trick. I bend through the wall, scanning the hall. A glacial pressure crashes against me, immense as an ocean, floodwaters swelling, filling up the building and my head. It almost sounds like muffled voices, like a name I can’t quite hear. I have to grit my teeth to concentrate, to hear past the sound of…beggingto the footsteps pounding down the corridor. The nurse rounds the bend, hand pressed to her ear.

“Building breached. Target lost. All students secure,” she says, unreasonably calm, all things considering. “Focus unclear but confirmed within the building—repeat: the remnant’s focus isinside the building.” She swings into the emergency ghost shelter, tucks herself in beside a mop bucket, and slams the door.

Target? She can’t meanme, right? And what is a focus? Does she know what’s drawing the ghosts here? I start to step out of my body, meaning to follow her. Maybe I can hear the rest of her strange conversation if I stick my head through the door, but behind me someone screeches, “Oh my god, is shepossessed?”

My attention fragments.

“It’s called praying, dipshit,” Bas snarls. “Maybe you should try it if there’s a god out there who’s not sick of your mouth.” Distantly, I feel his shoulder bump mine. My half-occupied body shivers. “Whatareyou doing, by the way?”

Closing the projector, I snap back into my skin. Slumping against the wall, against Bas, I tangle my fingers in the sleeve of his hoodie and drag him down beside me.

I need to tell him. I can’t see a way around it. I need to go downthere, need to see what’s going on, what’scalling me, but if I leave without warning, he’ll think I—I don’t know—died.

Moths flutter in my throat so thick I want to gag. I swallow hard, over and over, but it doesn’t help.

“So I’ve got this thing,” I blurt, barely louder than a whisper. “I call it my party trick. I can kind of… leave my body? I know it sounds fake, but it’s a thing, I swear. Astral projection.”

Bas tips his head. I scan his face, scouring the exact curve of his mouth, the arch of his eyebrows—does he think I’m crazy? Is he going to laugh at me? Pull away?

But he just asks, “The thing hippies do with mushrooms?”

God, I can barely look at him. I swallow hard, scanning the room, digging my fingernail into the ragged cuticle of my thumb. We’ve lost the attention of the class now that I’m not actively being weird and I almost miss the distraction.

“Yeah, except I don’t need the mushrooms.” I peel back a hangnail rather than glance at him, concentrating on the itchy-sharp pain instead. “I just need to concentrate.”

Bas reaches over, stealing my hand and soothing my restless fingers.

“You pass out now, everybody’s gonna freak.”

“I know. But I…” I don’t know how to explain to him what I can’t even explain to myself. This demanding summons, this burning need towitness, the bone-deep surety that I have a responsibility. And I know that doesn’t make sense. I know it sounds crazy. “I have to. I have to see it for myself.”

Shrugging, Bas smiles, small and sweet and just for me.

“All right, I’m game.”

Swinging an arm over my shoulders, he cups my head in his hand, bringing my cheek to rest against his shoulder. For a girl without a heartbeat, my pulse figures out how to hammer in my ears anyway, bonfire face burning. I hide my face in his hoodie, but not before he sees it—I catch the edge of his smug as shit grin, the ass. He knowsexactlywhat he’s doing. And right when I need to concentrate.

Sucking in a deep breath, I lean backward out of my body, somersaulting into the hall. Through the rising pressure, living people mumble like a radio stuck between stations. Staticky prayers overlap an argument, a news broadcast, crying. I ignore them, heading down the hall and concentrating on the static itself. Where is it coming from?

With the power off, shadows fill the hallways. The stairwell gapes like an open mouth, a throat endlessly swallowing. I barely make it to the landing before I see them.

Before they seeme.

Ghosts don’t remember. I pick apart the outlines of their shapes, searching for claws and teeth and fast legs, so I can remember for them. But these ghosts—they don’t need that from me. Today, theyallremember. A head turns my way, recalling the exact contour of her mouth, shaping something like a sound turned inside out—a residue of sense, a sensation of a name.

She remembers her hand, all five fingers distinct as she reaches toward me, pulsing with undead life. She remembers a cuffed sleeve, an embroidered blouse. Behind her, galvanized by her lucidity, several more remember themselves. I catch a business suit, track pants. I close my eyes, try to snap myself back into my body—

But the world jars around me andnothing happens.

The ghost opens her mouth again. A noise unlike sound spills out.

Scrambling backward, I leap up the stairwell. Fast as my un-feet can carry me, I lunge down the hallway, stumbling, careening into walls. The ghosts follow, unhurried but gaining, no longer constrained by the memory of feet. I squeeze my eyes shut—doesn’t work—force myself to forget my shape. I’m a ghost, I can do what I want. Rules don’t apply to me. Exploding forward, I blast through the hallways as a current of light andnot today, Satan, slamming through the wall and back into my own body.

The force of my return sends me rolling forward, palms slapped to the gritty linoleum, gasping for air.

“What is herdamage?” someone demands, but I only have time to deploy a middle finger. Before the girl even finishes speaking, someone knocks at the door.

A bucket of ice water sluices over my head. My stomach spasms, horrified.