Ghost and Bone by Andrew Prentice

Author:Andrew Prentice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

“Where’ve you been, Oscar?” Sally hissed. “And get in here now—someone might see you!”

Oscar ducked inside Sally’s office and shut the door. He felt like crying with relief. All through his epic journey to the GLE headquarters, he’d been terrified that Sally would have forgotten him as well. It had taken him an hour and a half by train and three night buses to get to West London. He didn’t have any money but simply turned into ghost form to get aboard, then turned living again once he was on the inside. As dawn had broken, the shimmering ghost streets of Londinium filled with ghost markets, spreading over the streets of the living city. Oscar followed the river west. When he finally reached the looming stone tower in St. James’s Park, he turned living and ducked through a wall while arriving in the lobby past the ghost at the front desk, before flicking back to climb the many staircases to Sally’s office. He wanted to give her a hug—but that didn’t feel appropriate. He barely knew her, after all.

Oscar settled on smiling—his first smile since he’d left Little Worthington yesterday. He held his crutch close to his chest like a talisman—he hadn’t let go of it once.

If his mum knew who he was, she’d have been proud of him. She was always trying to get him to keep hold of his crutch.

“Why are you smirking like that?” said Sally.

“Because you know who I am,” Oscar said. “You recognize me!”

“I what?”

“It’s a long story. Can I have a cup of tea? Do ghosts drink tea?”

“There’d be riots if we didn’t,” Sally said. “I’ll fetch us both a mug.”

Sipping from the small cauldron of sugary ghost tea that Sally brought him, Oscar soon began to feel a lot better. It helped that the tea was piping hot and tasted more or less as it should—though there was a strange dusty feel to the liquid, as if it wasn’t actually made with water.

Oscar told Sally about everything: the attack, the fact that his mum thought he didn’t exist anymore, his struggle to find his way to London without any money or food or phone. He acted out his finishing blow with the crutch—nearly smashing Sally’s jar of boiled sweets in the process.

“I’d never even been on the train by myself,” Oscar said. “I had to sneak onto all these buses as a ghost and then turn bodily so I didn’t get left behind when it drove off. Nearly got caught twice.”

Sally was much less impressed by Oscar’s odyssey on the British transport system than by his second encounter with the mysterious hat-wearing ghost. She was positively amazed by the fact that he had defeated it.

“Sharp work there,” she muttered. “You’re a pretty talented ghost, Oscar Grimstone.”

She rootled around in the mess on Sir Cedric’s desk and surfaced with a kind of leather strapping.

“Tie this on you—Sir Cedric uses it for his axes, but this way you’ll be able to strap your crutch to your back, and keep it on you in case you’re attacked again.

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