Page 19 of Hot Ghost Summer

My heart pounds and my palms grow clammy. I’d considered whether I should message some of these people back, let them know Hollis has died, but if he’s tied up in some murder and I text the wrong person, I could bring their attention to me. I click the screen off.

Maybe it’s best I keep that secret for Hollis. It’s the least I can do after today.

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Hollis

It’d been dark when I first woke.

There’d been no air, but I’d felt the heat.

I’d had no body, but I’d felt the pain as every blood vessel in my body transmuted into tin wires. The residual ache is a phantom of a biology I no longer possess.

When my consciousness came online, it showed as a hyper-dense grid of microscopic lights—deep red, vivid green, and bright blue—that all fired at once to create a glittering neon stadium. Then, just as fast, the colours had drained, leaving me alone in the pitch-black.

I’d recognised the digital interface of my phone first. The apps and images present were mirrored, and I realised that I wasn’t looking from outwith, but from within.

I’d died.

Yet, I’m not dead.

I’m something far worse.

I’ve become what my family have spent centuries hunting. I’m one of them.

A geist.

A clink from a key, cheap and brassy, turns the deadbolt of a lock.

A flash of fluorescence.

The gyroscope in my phone registers a steady sway from side to side, and the camera grants me snapshots of polished concrete steps that echo.

Another lock.

Another light, this one soft and golden.

A thud.

Then Theo’s face looms over me. Flushed cheeks beset with freckles. Dark brown eyes. Backwards cap. He swallows, and that stamp-style tattoo on his neck bobs. Baby. Murderer.

He walks away, and the darkness returns.

Anger surges, and a static buzz drowns out the sound of his retreating footsteps.

I know what I am. Technomancer. A rare spiritual entity who can fuse with electricity to control technology and machines. Except I’m also a neophyte: too fresh and raw to have gained any mastery.

A burst of ironic laughter crackles through the inside of my phone. Had Theo not come back for me, I’d have remained an imprint—a shade. Nothing more than the echo of an intense, traumatic energy. My phone’s anti-static rubber case, specifically engineered to keep out all electrical interference, would have become my tomb, and Plot 47 would have become my haunt.

Mindless.

Endless.

Unknowingly, Theo fulfilled the one condition that would ever have emancipated me. The moment he wrapped his fingers around the case, my new form bypassed its outer defence. Human skin, composed mostly of fluids and salts, is conductive. One touch was all it took, and I’d felt him instantly.

Awakened by my murderer.