Context: the following bonus chapter occurs shortly before Felix's flatmates all go home for the Christmas break, after their first visit to the manor house but before the NYE poltergeist event (more specifically, it occurs between chapter 11 and 12).

I can always tell when Mum is thinking. Her eyebrows crease ever so slightly, and she runs her tongue along the back of her bottom teeth as her dark eyes stare directly at whoever it is she's speaking with. To the untrained eye, her expression doesn't flinch, but having known her for nearly nineteen years, it's a look I can identify instantaneously. Why on earth she doesn't just ask him is totally frustrating.

When I query exactly this, Mum raises her eyebrows with a sigh. "If he has any knowledge about the spirit world, Ava, we need to let him come to us."

Ugh, I don't have the patience to wait an entire lifetime.

"Some spirit talking families are extremely private, you know that, and it's not our--"

"But he's so weird, and not just like, whoa, nineteen-year-old white boy weird. Whenever I ask him about spirits, he shrugs. Who shrugs at a question like that? Well, he shrugs a lot, but that's the kind of thing people don't just shrug at. There's someth--"

"Ava," Mum says slowly, forcing me to stop talking. "I've already told you not to try and coax something out of him."

"It's groovy, I've asked him about spirits, like, once," I lie. I click my tongue as I lean my head back against the sofa's armrest. "You and Dad both agree there's something he's not telling us, we know he's got a spirit attachment, and whoa, what about his aura? You've never not been able to read someone's aura bef--"

"Ava," Mum interrupts. "End of discussion. The important thing is that he knows we're here to talk to whenever--if ever he feels ready to."

I sit back up and go to open my mouth again, but Mum digs her eyes into my own before I'm able to get anything out. Despite her putting a hard stop to our conversation, her expression returns to the contemplative one decorating her face a few minutes prior. She's obviously just as intrigued by Felix as I am.

With a long sigh, I jump up from the living room sofa, and announce my plan to head back to the uni apartment. As I'm leaving the room, Mum reminds me to stop bugging Felix about spirits, which I pretend not to hear.

A short while later, I'm letting myself into the apartment, and both Jamie and Felix are occupying the living area. Perfect. Jamie's talking loudly about something, and it sounds like he's complaining, although I'm not sure who to because Felix is hunched over a thick textbook as he scribbles something into it.

"Ah, Ava!" Jamie calls over to me from one of the sofas near the window. "Do you harbour crockery in your room?"

"Yes," I reply as I stop beside Felix, who's sitting on one of the kitchen stools.

He hasn't removed the nail polish Carmen decorated his nails with a few days back, so they're still a bright maroon colour. It's quite cute.

"Hey, Felix, what's the youngest person you've known who's died?"

"What? No, it's--I mean, dirty crockery," Jamie elaborates. "I'm trying to prove a point that it's disgusting and barbaric to leave used plates around the apartment, which Felix seems utterly oblivious of."

"I don't--What do you mean?" Felix replies as he shifts his attention towards me.

I roll my eyes, then peer at the open book in front of him. He's drawn faces over a bunch of mathematical diagrams, and drawn a fire-breathing dragon attacking a sketch of a bridge. A bunch of cars and stick figures are diving off the bridge with speech bubbles screaming help!, and there's a giant butterfly overseeing the scene.

I feel rather sorry for Carmen, but I suppose you can't help who you're attracted to.

"Butterfly wings are more rounded than that," I tell him as I point at his drawing.

"Oh, nah, that's Mothman," he says as though it means anything. 'Y'known, urban legend? All round legend, if you ask--"

"What's the youngest person you know who's died?"

Felix stammers, and Jamie calls my name, but I ignore him. Felix still doesn't answer my question, and I swear talking to this boy is like trying to draw blood from stone. His green eyes are wide, and he looks even more so like a deer caught in headlights than usual.

"Your spirit attachment is definitely young," I explain as I sit down onto the stool beside Felix, and continue speaking as I lock my eyes onto his increasingly blank face. "I'm not great with ages, but I'd not say, like whoa, crazy young or anything. Maybe a teenager, but probably younger than us."

"You sure you're not mistaking this whole spirit attachment thing for Jamie? The guy stalks me like a fly, and not sure if you've noticed, but he produces this continuous whining sound that--"

"Shut up!" Jamie interjects.

While I'm entirely aware this is one of Felix's many, many blatant attempts to evade spirit-related conversation, I have to admire his ability to enrage Jamie within the matter of seconds. He starts laughing at Jamie's outburst, and the dimples in his cheeks grow deeper as I cross my arms. I hum to myself while I wait until he's finished.

"What's the youngest person you know who's died?" I repeat for, I'm fairly certain, the third time.

"It's--You must have something mixed up," Felix replies, then shrugs. Of course he shrugs. He mutters as he moves his eyes from my face, and starts doodling again. "I don't know anyone young who's died, or anyone who's died generally,"

Bullshit. Everyone knows somebody who's died.

I follow Felix's movement with my eyes as he continues drawing in his textbook, and the energy surrounding us--the energy filling this room is undeniable, is so blatant that surely even a non-spirit talker could feel the electricity of it. There's someone else here.

We're all heading to The Cavern's bar tonight before we return home for Christmas, and I'm desperately hoping Felix gets extremely drunk because while, yes, this may be totally immoral, I want to take advantage of any opportunity I have where he's likely to be more honest. It's groovy because it's not like I'm forcing him to get drunk, right? If something happens to be revealed off the back of his intoxication, Mum can't scold me, right?

A lot of students have already left campus for the holiday, so as Carmen, Felix, Jamie, Tom and I wander into the bar, there are plenty of tables to choose from. With a grin, I skip towards a booth in the centre of the room, and spin around mid-skip to check the others are following me, which they are.

Carmen's laughing as she skips a few feet behind me, her curled hair dancing in-synch with her body, but the boys are walking behind with hands in their pockets as if they're cool or something; it's totally embarrassing. In fairness to Felix, he's not included in that because he's instead completely engrossed in everything Carmen is doing in a not at all subtle way.

"Whoa, so when are you going to ask Carmen out on a date?" is the first thing I say to Felix as he joins Carmen and I in the booth.

"Ava!" Carmen hisses in a whisper.

Felix starts stammering, and if it wasn't for the dark stubble covering them, I'm fairly certain his cheeks would be red. These two make me want to bang my head against a wall sometimes. I don't know why they won't just admit they fancy each other because it's even more obvious than Felix's blatant familiarity with the spirit world.

"How often do you shave?" I ask Felix as Tom and Jamie join us at the table.

"Are we talking about shaving? Shaving what?" Tom interjects. "I used to shave my ba--"

Jamie loudly, and rather aggressively, hushes Tom before he can finish his sentence. Before I can interrogate Felix any further, he stands--well it's more of a stumble, really--from his seat and announces he's going to fetch us some drinks. As he walks towards the bar, I'm fairly sure he's scowling at something. He does that a lot: pulls faces at nothing. I did contemplate the possibility of this being some evidence towards him being a spirit talker, but upon further contemplation, I think he might just be weird.

I excuse myself from our table to use the bathroom, and upon my return, Tom pounces at me with a rather stupid question. He's questioning me on whether I'd rather eat nothing but cucumber for the rest of my life, or only ingest liquids. I tell him it's a stupid question because cucumber contains over ninety percent water.

"No, but if you had to, like, say your life depended--Oh, if the ghosts' lives depended on it! Think of your favourite ghost that you've met, and--"

"The ghosts' lives? Ghosts are already dead, you idiot," Jamie says with a sigh.

"Did you just admit to the possibility of ghosts being real, Jamie?" Carmen chimes in.

"What? Ugh, no, I just meant--"

"Too late, you've already stepped in it," Felix interrupts. "Sorry, mate, you're now officially number one ghostie connoisseur." Felix bops his head around Carmen to look at me. "Sorry, Ava, you're out."

Tom and Felix both start laughing, although Tom's laugh is more of a guffaw, and he gives Felix a high-five as Jamie starts muttering under his breath. Carmen leans back in her seat and rolls her eyes, but she's biting her cheeks in a totally obvious attempt at disallowing herself to smile. I watch Felix's animated face in silence as I sip at my glass of Coke. While he acts like a clown far too often for it to be healthy, he's the only one who remembers I like lime in my cola, not lemon.

Given we don't arrive back at the apartment especially late, Felix and Tom are both rather impressively inebriated. Most of us have early starts tomorrow morning, so nobody stays in the living area for very long, but I make a base on the floor at the end of the room. I rest my back against the wall so I can peep through the long window overlooking the narrow lake below our apartment building to watch the ducks.

I'm fairly certain Felix's spirit is here. I can feel its energy in the air, and although Felix's bedroom is situated the other side of the living area wall, the niggling sensation underneath my skin is too strong for there to be any bricks separating us.

"Hello?" I call out.

Within seconds, the energy scatters. Damn it.

I don't have the opportunity to dwell on the spirit's disappearance for too long because far sooner than anticipated, the blue door at the other end of the room swings open, and Felix barges in. He always makes food when he's drunk; even if we grab a takeaway on the way home from a night out, he will undoubtedly make something in the kitchen within an hour of us returning home.

Felix takes a few moments to spot me sitting in the corner, and he's already in the kitchen area by the time he does.

"Shitting hell, what--Hey, Ava, what are you--Why are you sitting on the floor?"

"Ducks," I explain.

Felix blinks at me as though I just said something ridiculous. He looks a little like a duckling right now, his wavy hair sticking up in all kinds of directions.

The energy has returned to the room, so I assume Felix's spirit has followed him in, and the spirit seems... I'm not entirely sure; it's difficult to tell without it making a connection with me, but it seems impatient, or annoyed.

"Your spirit is agitated," I try as Felix bends down to open a cupboard near the floor.

He chortles, then mumbles something under his breath, but says nothing to me. He stands back up with a can of baked beans in hand, which he throws onto the counter with a questionable amount of force, followed by a loud bang.

"Oops, sorry," he mumbles. "I swear the counter was closer. Does--Hey, do you want some beans?"

"No, thank you, I'm groovy."

Felix shrugs, then spins on the spot to grab something from the cutlery drawer. He's still wearing his oversized brown jacket, but when I ask him if he's cold, he furrows his eyebrows as if confused. I watch as he pulls a huge kitchen knife from the cutlery drawer, and I widen my eyes as he wedges the blade into the edge of the can.

"Whoa, Felix, what are you doing?" Despite my questioning, Felix continues to stab the tin can. "Wait, I've got a can opener, you don't--"

He stops ramming the knife into the can, and lifts it to his eyeline to, I assume, read the label.

"It's cool, it's vegetarian," he says with a shrug, and one final stab which bursts the can open as an orange liquid seeps from inside it.

He drops the knife onto the counter with as much force as he did with the tin earlier, only it lands far more quietly. Huh, that's rather stra--

"Did you say you wanted some? Can't remember," Felix queries, shifting my attention back to his face as he gestures the can of beans towards me.

I don't respond, just stare, and he shrugs once more as he tears the hole he's created in the can further open. He then retrieves a fork from the cutlery drawer, and somewhat stumbles over to plop himself onto the hard floor opposite me. I stare at his hands as Felix pokes the silver fork into the can, and he begins eating the cold beans directly from it.

"Wanna see if we can feed the ducks from up here?" he questions with a mouth full of beans, then nods at the window beside me. "Can ducks eat beans? I think bread makes them explode or some shit."

There's defintiely something wrong with him.

I'm dying to know what his parents are like. Perhaps that's it; perhaps his parents aren't spirit talkers, at least not knowingly. It's impossible for someone from a non-spirit talking family to have abilities, but he could have a distant relative who's part of one of the twelve families. It's uncommon for abilities to manifest in distant relatives, but it's not entirely unheard of. Maybe he has abilities, but simply doesn't realise it.

I'm about to offer a spirit-related helping hand for the umpteenth time, but hold my tongue as Mum's words echo around my head, followed by the promise I made to her. Ugh, fine, I'll let him eat his beans in peace. For now. Besides, if anything strange happens to him, he wouldn't let it get so far that it becomes dangerous, right?

"Nah, on second thought," Felix says, and I return my focus back to the drunk teenager sitting opposite me. "I'm too hungry to share. Fuck the ducks."

"Fuck the ducks," I repeat.