Page 21 of Hot Ghost Summer

“Very good. Charge to normal account?”

Theo pulls me away from his ear long enough for me to watch how his hesitation morphs into intrigue, and then into that sparkle of mischief that almost lured me in. “Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Yes.”

“What is lift code for delivery this week, sir?”

“Code? Oh, um, I’m at a colleague’s house. Can you deliver t’ him?”

“Yes, address?”

I zone out while Theo tells the restaurant his address. Labelling Theo a brat had been an understatement. Purchasing tiger prawn pad Thai—the favourite meal of the man he murdered hours ago—and charging it to his bank account is another level of operating entirely.

My incandescent outrage ends the call.

Theo stares hard at the screen. Still, he doesn’t notice me in here, staring right back.

“How’d that happen, then?” He flips the phone backward and forward in his hand as he examines me. “Maybe it’s a cosmic thing, like a shared last meal?”

He turns me over again, and my gyroscope overheats as it struggles to compete with Theo’s erratic handling. Nauseating.

When he can’t figure anything more out by turning me over, he finally sets me down and walks off.

I hate this. Hate that this is my life—afterlife.

I shouldn’t exist.

Everything I know about radiation tells me that I should have just died. Outright. Yes, it’s theoretically possible that the beam from the plasma accelerator could have dispersed my atoms, but it doesn’t fully explain how I ended up stuck inside my well-guarded phone.

I hate being trapped like this, and being… dead. I’d had a plan for my life, and being a technomancer isn’t it. I want to finish my database, build my app, then return to Ötschergräben and assume my role as Prinz.

My god, my database!

Speeding through my files, I locate the right spreadsheet, and then analyse the cells to learn if whatever happened to fry my body also fried any data. This project is my life’s work and I can’t lose it.

I’m not even one row deep when the doorbell rings, and Theo floats into view of my camera. Powerless, I can only listen as he collects his stolen dinner, and my static anger grows louder.

I won’t ever again know the delight that is the crunch of peanuts on a bed of fresh noodles in the chef’s special pad Thai sauce.

Theo pulls up a chair beside me and impatiently sets the container with my food in it on the table. Taking up the plastic fork provided, he pokes the food around. No plate, no spoon, he just digs straight in. But it’s less about manners, and more about the look of disgust that overtakes his face.

Triggered, my outrage expresses as an impromptu clip of Gordon Ramsey’s gruff voice as he demands, “You, you, you… Get out!”

Theo starts, and his noisy slurping of noodles is interrupted. He leans over me and stares in bewilderment at a dark display. I can see what he does: the screen isn’t on, no apps are active, and yet… I played the sound.

He shrugs and goes back to eating, but soon starts spitting out small pieces of peanut. They’re the best bit! Without them, the texture is too soft.

Then, he drags out a whole prawn and wipes it on the side of the carton. “I’m sorry, Hollis. I tried.”

For a second, my static hum ceases. Does he know I’m here after all?

But Theo isn’t looking my way; he has a prawn speared on the end of his fork and is eyeing it with cold contempt, as if it’s affronted him. “I thought that because you phone called the restaurant, it was some sort o’ sign.” He huffs a sardonic laugh. “But I can’t eat another mouthful o’ this shit. Prawns are bottom feeders, you know?”

He shudders and stands with the half-eaten dinner.

This shit?

He steps away, probably to dump the best pad Thai in London in the bin.

I blast Eminem’s “Kim” at full volume.