Chapter Two #2
I almost reach for the paper still crumpled in the back pocket of my jeans and thrust it under her nose.
The paper has your name on it, I want to yell at her.
Why are you questioning the magic of a Holiday Spirit?
I drag one hand through my hair in frustration and anchor my palm at the back of my neck.
“The magic decides. You’ve been deemed salvageable, if only you mend your ways. You must make amends.”
These mortals are always the same. They fight it at the start—say they’re good, they don’t deserve it—but they can’t outrun the truth. The memories don’t lie.
And I can’t move on until I fulfill my ghostly duties. I have no interest in lingering any longer than I need to in this infernal place. I’ve spent a hundred years lingering. I’m tired of standing still.
I hold out my hand, impatient. “Let us begin.”
“I mean, we could. I guess,” she says. “Or we could wait.” I barely resist a groan. “Why do we need to wait?”
“Because I’m not convinced this isn’t a medical event and I don’t feel up to a haunting tonight, thank you very much.
You can proceed back to whatever corner of my mind you emerged from, and I can go to sleep and chalk up this entire evening to a weird batch of peppermint tea.
” She frowns and presses two fingers to her temple. “Or a concussion.”
“While I’m delighted to hear that I align with whatever dreams you might be having, that’s not how this works. I can’t just disappear. I am bound to you for the holiday season until you recognize the errors of your past and I can hand you off to a Ghost of Christmas Present.”
She laughs, borderline maniacal. “Oh good. More rules.”
I nod. “Yes. There’s a transition process.”
She mouths the words transition process. “This is all very organized.”
“Yes,” I concede. “It’s not how I expected it to be either.”
I didn’t have a choice when I died, but if I did, I wouldn’t have chosen this. This utterly mundane existence, watching other people go about their lives while I stay exactly where I am. Haunting terrible humans. Watching their dismal, sad memories.
After more than a hundred years haunting the worst humanity has to offer, I can hardly remember my human life.
It comes and goes in flashes of color and sound.
Robin’s-egg blue. Sea-glass green. Pale, pale pink.
Waves lapping at the side of a ship and a church bell, somewhere in the distance. A lighthouse on the shore.
Flashes, instead of moments. I’ve lost everything I used to be. Now I’m this instead. A shell of a man forced to endure the worst of others.
I hold out my hand again, frustrated. “Time to begin.”
She doesn’t move. “No thanks.”
I drop my hand. “Harriet.”
She picks up her mug. “Ghost man.”
“You can’t avoid your fate.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s a very good line.”
I shift on my feet, uncomfortable. I heard another Ghost of Christmas Past say it once. It always seemed very powerful.
Apparently not.
“How can I get you to take my hand?”
Her eyes trail along my shoulder and down the length of my arm, considering. Being a ghost means I’m rarely seen—almost never studied. It’s an unusual feeling. Her slow perusal sends awareness tingling down the length of my spine.
My fingers twitch.
She snaps her gaze back to mine. “I’d like to talk to your supervisor, Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Oh, please. Don’t be that person.”
She laughs. A bright burst that slams out of her body. She laughs like she’s made to do exactly that, and it’s enough to have me teetering on the edge of indecision.
“Then you talk to your supervisor,” she says, still grinning.
“That’s how you can convince me to examine my past, or whatever it is you claim you do.
” She tugs her discarded blanket back into place, wrapping herself like some sort of burrowing creature.
Her cheeks are pink and her lips are candy-apple red.
She matches the lights on her tree, all colorful and bright.
A little frazzled at the edges. “If you show up again tomorrow, maybe I’ll believe this wasn’t some weird fever dream. ”
“That’s all you need? For me to return?”
She nods, looking past me to where the movie is still playing on her TV.
I remember the year White Christmas came out.
I sat in the very back of the movie theater with all the mortals, a box of Hot Tamales in my lap and my heart in my throat.
I watched Danny Kaye spin Vera-Ellen around and around in a pale pink dress and felt an ache in the palms of my hands.
Homesick, or something like it. A tug beneath my breastbone for something I couldn’t reach. Something I couldn’t even name.
That wisp of familiarity grips me again.
The creak of a boat beneath my feet. Sea salt air and my hands on burnished metal.
Pale, pale pink.
“Tomorrow,” I repeat slowly, trying to grasp the feeling but failing, dallying in the middle of her living room.
This has never happened before. I’ve never had someone refuse to take my hand and …
ask to speak to a manager. Short of tackling her to the couch and forcing her to agree, I can’t make her relive her past. She needs to choose it.
Another one of our little rules.
“Yes. Tomorrow.” She uncovers a popcorn bowl from out of nowhere. Her own sort of magic. “If you use the window when you leave, please remember to shut it all the way. It gets drafty.”
I blow out a breath, amused despite myself. “I won’t be using the window, Harriet. I’m a ghost.”
“So you say.”
I take a hesitant step back toward the tree. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her firmly. Perhaps by then, I’ll gather my own resolve.
She shoots me a distracted thumbs-up. I roll my eyes and tug at my magic. It sweeps up and over me before she can offer any more excuses.
Or lob anything else in my direction.