Tamsyn Murray-Afterlife 01 My So-Called Afterlife Read Online Free PDF Page B

had never once suggested I give up. She’d been great like that. I missed her.
    Reluctantly, I climbed to my feet. Seconds later I wished I hadn’t as Hep and the church swam before my eyes. I swayed, blinking furiously until my vision cleared.
    Hep reached out to steady me. Her hands settled on my arms. ‘Are you OK?’
    I didn’t know. For a moment, I’d thought I was going to faint, the way I had last year when I’d tried to survive on a diet of sunflower seeds and grapefruit. That had come to an abrupt end after I collapsed in assembly. I couldn’t blame my diet this time, though. Ghosts don’t eat. ‘I think so. Everything went a bit weird then.’
    Hep let go and moved her pallid face closer to mine. ‘How long have you been away from home?’
    Who’d have thought I’d ever consider a public toilet home? ‘Dunno. A few hours, I suppose?’
    She pulled out her mobile and checked the time. ‘You’d better head home, unless you want your return trip to be a whole lot less pleasant than the one here.’
    Puzzled, I frowned at her. ‘Why?’
    ‘God save me from newbs.’ Her eyes shot skywards. ‘You’re tied to the place where you died. Taking something from that place will allow you to leave for a while, but since you’re new to the experience, it won’t be very long before you need to recharge. If you don’t, eventually you’ll be dragged back, and believe me, you don’t want to go through that.’
    Judging from the way she shuddered, she’d been there, and I was more than happy to accept her word that it was no picnic. ‘I’d better find Jeremy.’
    ‘Yeah, you do that.’ Hep tapped her phone thoughtfully. ‘Even if he’s only a little bit psychic, he might turn out to be useful. You should give me your mobile number so we can hook up here next week.’
    * * *
    I wondered what she meant the entire journey home. Not about the phone number: once I’d left the toilet I noticed I got a signal and Hep explained about the weird ghostly network the dead used. Obviously we couldn’t contact the living, else people wouldn’t be able to move for messages from the dead, but inter-spirit texting and calls were apparently OK. Once I’d got over my surprise that there was a Network Spooky, I liked what I heard. Unlimited talk-time and all the texts you could send? If I ever made any more ghostly mates, we could have a text-fest.
    What I didn’t get was her comment about Jeremy. He wasn’t bad company, and he was very handy in the magazine department, but he couldn’t see Hep, or any other ghosts for that matter. She didn’t strike me as the needy type. How she expected him to be of any practical use was anyone’s guess.

Chapter 6
    ‘Fancy a tour of the theatre?’ Jeremy asked casually a few days after our trip to the church. ‘I’ve got to check all the lighting rigs before the show starts so I’m going in early. You can come along if you like.’
    I didn’t have a better offer. Thanks to Jeremy’s halfbrained insistence that I go out regularly ‘for a breath of fresh air’, I was now an old hand at avoiding gormless tourists and could stay away from home for at least four hours at a stretch without feeling faint. Hep boasted she managed six times as long. Since our trip to the Dearly D, a whole new world had opened up to me, and Hep was the best part of it. I’d met other teen ghosts, but Hep and I had clicked, in spite of our radical differences. She was proving surprisingly patient at answering my gazillion questionsabout being dead. On the whole, things were looking up. I even ventured out without Jeremy from time to time. I didn’t tell him about that. He liked to feel needed.
    The theatre was one of those fantastic old buildings that you somehow become blind to when you live in London. The reddish-brown sandstone was dirty from the daily pollution but I thought it just added to the air of faded glory. Inside, it was all deep red carpets and gilt mirrors. The current production