Ghosts on Board by Fleur Hitchcock Page B

as clever as he is and I’d have two of them telling me how things work and that would be intolerable – especially if you added in Jacob and Tilly as well.
    We lug the raft onto the beach. It looks ordinary – if really badly made. No one would know that the planks had once held spirits. Now they just seem to hold huge amounts of seawater.
    â€˜We need to find Jacob and Victor,’ says Eric as I squeeze water from my socks.
    â€˜As soon as possible,’ says Flora Rose from right behind me.
    In the afternoon light, Flora Rose and Billy are barely visible. A couple of purple smudges move at the edge of my vision, but if I look at them, I can’t really see them. It would be easy to forget that they were there.
    â€˜Where do you suppose they are?’ I ask.
    â€˜Victor will want to get back into the castle  … ’ starts Flora Rose.
    â€˜But Jacob will want to eat something  … ’ I make myself hungry thinking about this morning’s chips.
    â€˜Hm,’ Eric interrupts me. ‘You have a point. But –’
    â€˜There!’ shouts Flora Rose. ‘There they are, by the castle.’
    I swing round, possibly passing right through Billy but trying not to think about it, and look up at the castle. Strolling down the hill are Victor and Jacob. Victor is still hazy. He’s obviously trying to look like a casual tourist, a borrowed straw hat on his head and what looks like a borrowed pair of Jacob’s dad’s shorts on his grey legs. In between, his long coat, tie and high-collared grimy shirt just make him look like a complete madman. One that’s lost his trousers and tried to find a substitute at a jumble sale.
    â€˜Gosh,’ says Eric.
    â€˜Shh,’ I say, ducking my head below the sea wall. ‘I think we’d better follow.’
    They take the long way down; we take the short cut and slip into the tunnel where we first saw the ghosts. Eric and I back into a dripping doorway. I try the door behind us and it opens but we can’t get inside because it’s full of hundreds of cartons of cocoa powder.
    â€˜We’ll just have to make do with the doorway,’ says Eric.
    We step back out and put our backs against the wooden door and in the gloom Flora Rose and Billy disappear completely.
    â€˜What are we waiting for?’ says Flora Rose from disturbingly close.
    â€˜We’re waiting for –’
    â€˜Shh,’ I say, as footsteps sound in the corridors.
    â€˜Bet you wish you were still a proper ghost,’ Jacob’s voice echoes cheerily from the stones. ‘You could have slipped in and helped yourself.’ I shrink back against the wall as Jacob stops outside the end cell, the one piled high with pots of the dust that come from the mine that Professor Lee dug. Like all the others, it’s firmly locked.
    Victor stares longingly through the bars.
    â€˜Won’t you help me?’ says Victor, gently. ‘I mean, from what you say, this, in addition to your  …  remarkable power, would make us invincible. We could do anything, and who could stop us?’
    â€˜Tempting,’ says Jacob. ‘But not that tempting. I’m the most powerful person in the town just at the moment – I don’t think I want to change that. Now I think it’s time we investigated the tea shop. They do a lovely chocolate cake.’
    â€˜Perhaps you could get me just enough to stop me fading in and out? Just a little?’ Victor stretches his arms past the bars, but even though he’s half ghost, he’s not ghostly enough to get through and, as a half human, he’s not going to be able to reach anything. ‘No, sorreeee. Not going to,’ says Jacob, swinging back up the corridor. ‘C’mon upstairs to the tea shop. We need to get a table before all the day trippers turn up.’
    I send up thanks for Jacob’s selfishness. He could easily melt the bars, even