Ways to See a Ghost

smile.
    “I going to get him too,” said Angel, letting go of Isis’s still-numb hand and running across the room. She waved goodbye with both arms, then vanished into a wall.
    Across the room, the door slammed open and a tall, dark-haired woman stormed in, wearing a white coat and an air of authority. She stopped when she got to Isis, hereyes widening. Then she turned to the man.
    “When did this happen?” she snapped.
    “Just as I was about to start the autops—” He stopped, wincing. “I don’t know how—”
    “Misdiagnosis!” said the woman briskly, taking hold of Isis’s wrist, feeling for her pulse. “A paramedic getting it wrong again, or some junior doctor upstairs.” She smiled down at Isis, her face suddenly warming. “Well, you’re clearly not dead.”
    “Muh…” said Isis, her tongue like leather.
    “Shh…” said the woman, “it’s going to be fine.”
    The door crashed again, and more people came rushing in, wearing green overalls and white coats. They filled the room with noise and activity, and Isis with injections and drips. They wrapped her up, putting an oxygen mask over her face.
    “Muh um,” she said into the plastic.
    At last, the door opened.
    Cally’s face was streaked red with burns, her eyes purple and blotched from crying. A nurse was leading her, almost holding her up.
    “This has never happened before…” the nurse was saying, while Cally ignored her.
    “Isis?” she whispered. Staring. Motionless in disbelief. Only for a heartbeat, then her arms were tight around Isis, hugging her through the crinkling space-blankets, tangling them both in the trailing drip-lines. “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered, kissing Isis’s hair.
    Cally pulled back a little, putting her palms on Isis’s cheeks, gazing at her.
    “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a tear running down the side of her nose and landing warm on Isis’s cheek. “For all the times I let you down.”
    Isis tried to shake her head, but she couldn’t with the mask strapped to her face. She lifted up her arm, pulled the mask off.
    “Mum,” she said.
    Isis turned her head, and saw her little ghost-sister run back in through the door, pulling Gray behind her. He stumbled to a halt, shocked-looking. Isis held out her hand, and Angel shot through one of the nurses, making the woman shiver.
    “I do it,” Angel said again, proud of herself.
    Isis looked up at Cally.
    “I’ve got to tell you…” she whispered. “I should’ve before, but I never knew how.”
    Cally smiled through her tears, smoothing a hair away from Isis’s face. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter.”
    “Yes,” said Isis, “it does.” And she smiled back, a smile that started at her mouth and reached all the way to the stars.
    “Look.”
    She took Angel’s cold little hand, and placed it in Cally’s warm one. Then she put her own hand on top, and held them tight.

Acknowledgements
    A book results from the efforts of many people, well beyond the author, and I owe a great debt to all those who have pushed this one along. I’d like to thank my agent Penny Holroyde for her hard work, support and many words of sense. I am also incredibly grateful to the people who gave comments on early drafts: Pat Walsh, Susan Goundry-Kruse and especially Graham Lusby, who is always my first port of call in a plotting storm. Gray is for you, Graham.

    Next, thank you to everyone at Templar for turning a pile of paper into a book. Especially Helen Boyle, who saw something in it and the designer and illustrator who have made it look so wonderful. And for making the final writing stages so pain-free, thank you to my editors: Emma Goldhawk for her help, advice and hard work; Catherine Coe for turning around my terrible grammar; and Sara Starbuck, for her warmth, wit and invaluable insights.

    Finally, Matt and Arlo, you have my gratitude and love, always. Without you, it would be nothing.

About the Author
    Emily Diamand was born in London. She would have been a streetwise city kid, but when she was two her parents moved to rural Oxfordshire, surrounding her with fields, footpaths and the kind of things they thought would be wonderful for children to grow up with. She never got to be streetwise, but her parents were right about the fields and footpaths.
    Emily was the booky type at school, but what she really wanted to do was save the planet. So she filled up her parents’ garden with ponds, chucked wildflower seeds about and worried