Ways to See a Ghost

cut off as the wings smothered around him, claws and teeth ripping in. Gouts of mouldy dust burst around Isis as she flung herself away, almost falling. Mandeville’s scream faded into nothing, lost in theblue-lit, glittering fog. Isis swatted at her arms and legs, as freezing bites nipped her all over. Eyes watched her out of the fog, unattached to anything.
    “Angel!” Isis’s scream was flat and quiet in the mist. Soft cold fluttered on her face, snowflakes falling out of the summer air.
    As quickly as it descended, the ghost-eater left. Ravelling its wings into tattery swirls, dribbling into the ground, its eyes staring out of the night-blackened grass, then fading.
    “Angel!” Isis spotted her little ghost-sister standing hunched by the hedge, faded and fragile as a dried leaf. Isis ran and picked her up into a freezing cuddle.
    “You two are so sweet,” said Philip.
    Isis turned round. She would have backed away if she wasn’t already at the hedge.
    “Where’s Mandeville?”
    Philip shrugged. “He’s gone.” He rubbed his arms briskly. “A bit chilly isn’t it? Maybe we should go back to the others, see if we can find you a jumper or something.”
    “What happened to him?” asked Isis, shock trembling in her legs.
    Philip shrugged. “It took him of course. I always knew it would in the end.”
    A dark fog was oozing back out of the ground, washing around Philip’s feet. Tendrils of darkness twirled onto his legs, draining into him like backwards blood. Angel squealed and tried to climb further into Isis’s arms.
    “Don’t be frightened,” said Philip, “it won’t take your sister. You made a bargain, remember?”
    “I didn’t bargain,” said Isis, staring at the fog pouring into him, trying to kick away the mist rising at her own feet.
    You see more clearly than any other. You will help me take hold.
    Memory words drifted into her mind.
    “You see more clearly than any other,” said Philip. “You will help me take hold.”
    Isis looked up, startled. His face was blank and empty.
    I am hungry. You will be my feast-giver.
    “I am hungry,” said Philip. “You will be my feast-giver.”
    Angel squealed and dropped like a breath of ice through Isis’s arms, vanishing off into the night. In the distance, Isis heard a woman shout and a man answer, as everything around them blazed into white, and lights began bursting out of the new night. Isis looked up and saw leaves. Golden-green and softly pointed, drifting into the sky, filling the air with upward leaf-fall.
    She watched, transfixed, while the Devourer slid its tendrils across the ground towards her. Wrapping itself around her ankles.

I rang Mum. I mean, what else could I do?
    I couldn’t tell her what was happening, so I said Dad had left me on my own while he went off with Cally. Mum went nuclear. In about three minutes, her car screeched up outside the house, with her like a thunderclap inside it. Yelling about Dad the whole time. I didn’t know she could swear like that.
    “Where’s he gone?” she snarled, like she wanted to rip his head off. I gave her the bit of paper with the coordinates on, and she punched them into her satnav. We drove so fast, it was only my seat belt that stopped me flying all over the car. The last bit was walking through fields, nearly in the dark, which only got her madder because she waswearing her best red dress and high heels for her meal out with Brian. She was screaming at Dad before we even got in the field.
    “What kind of a father are you? Leaving your son on his own! Going off with some
woman
!”
    “Jenice?” Dad was staring at us like he couldn’t believe his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
    “What am
I
doing?” screeched Mum. “What are
you
? You don’t even have Gray every weekend and you
leave
him? For this?” She pointed into the field, where people were standing weirdly still in the wheat. “For
them
?”
    I looked around. “Where’s Isis?”
    “So I left him on his own!” Dad shouted back at Mum. “Gray’s not five, he can look after himself! Nothing would’ve happened, I was coming back in the morning.”
    “Where’s Isis?” I asked, louder. There was no sign of her, or Philip Syndal.
    “I do everything for Gray!” yelled Mum. “And you can’t even look after him for
one
night? Is this the first time you’ve left him?” Mum swung round at me. “Gray, tell me if this is the first time.”
    Dad glared at me, Mum glared at me.
    “Well, is it?”