Free Passions of the Ghost by Sara Mackenzie

laughed and wouldn’t let go.
    “Stop it,” she wailed, tripping and almost falling, close to tears. Jez drew her into the shelter of a gray cinder-block wall. His hair, dark rather than Amy’s fiery red, was wet and dripping, and he was shivering. His face, at ten years old already showing the beginnings of his reckless good looks, grew pinched and serious, like an old man’s.
    Amy watched him in silence. She knew what that look meant.
    “We need to get away from the flat for a bit,” Jez said. “Mom gave me enough money for fish and chips.”
    “Is Dad—”
    “I’m starving.”
    Jez was always starving. She didn’t argue, trotting after him down the hill in the direction of the greasy shop. She knew without asking that their father had come home from the pub, drunk and dangerous. It wasn’t safe to be in the flat when he was like that. One wrong look, one clumsy move, and he’d focus in on you with a stare like he hated you. Really, truly hated you. Even when you hadn’t done anything, you found yourself searching your memory, thinking there must be something you’d forgotten.
    Jez said it was the drink that did it, but Amy thought whatever made their father change was already inside him, and the drink just set it free. Her father terrified her more than she could say, but she didn’t have to tell Jez that. He frightened Jez, too. Her brother pretended to be brave, but Amy knew he was more than happy to escape with his little sister for a few hours, until things calmed down.
    Afterwards, they’d come back and find their father snoring in his chair in front of the telly and their mother quiet, moving a little stiffly probably, and maybe with a bruise or two on her face. It was the bruises you couldn’t see, Jez said knowledgeably, that were the worst. Sometimes he seemed far older than ten.
    That day when they came home, she was terrified, she with her muddy shoes, but for once it was fine. Their father was awake, and cracked silly jokes and laughed loudly. He didn’t notice her shoes, he was too busy boasting about his latest venture. Her dad was a great one for swindling people out of their property—he liked to think of it as an art—and yet he despised his victims. If someone was stupid enough to trust him, he said, then they deserved all they got.
    The next morning, Amy woke to the bedclothes being dragged off her and her father’s red, furious face as he held up her shoes and shook them at her. She’d carried the stripes from his belt for weeks.
    A year or two after that incident—one of many—Jez started stealing cars, and joyriding around the streets with his friends, and sometimes Amy. The fear of being caught and the excitement of riding in someone else’s car was thrilling at the time. Before long Jez moved on to bigger and better things. He’d been lucky to stay out of prison, and after a close call and a sympathetic magistrate, he’d sworn to Amy that he’d never do anything so foolish again. “So foolish as to be caught, ” he’d laughed.
    And so far he hadn’t. Not that the police weren’t keeping an eye on him. They’d known about him for years; they just couldn’t get the evidence to put him away. Detective Inspector O’Neill, he was the one. He seemed to have made Jez his personal crusade, but so far Jez hadn’t slipped up. He’d learned from their father’s mistakes, and he didn’t drink and never boasted.
    For a while, he and Amy had teamed up. She’d been as wild as he was, and there were times when the buzz of it kept her on a permanent high. And then she turned twenty-two and suddenly everything changed. She woke up at 6:00 a.m. with a man she hardly knew in her bed and the police banging on her door. They were looking for Jez, but they were happy to arrest her if they could find the evidence. She sat in a cell for a couple of hours, was interviewed, then released.
    It was horrible. She felt horrible. Later, Jez apologized for getting her into