Chapter 4
The rich, welcoming scent of good coffee—quite unlike anything stashed in the office—greeted Casey as the lift opened onto the top floor.
The door to the office stood ajar, a ribbon of warm light spilling out into the dark hallway.
She stood for a moment, hesitating, trying to make any kind of sense of what was happening, but she couldn’t.
So far, she had come up with “hallucinations caused either by the farm-shop mushroom tagliatelle she’d eaten before her shift being accidentally spiked with magic mushrooms” or “an elaborately covert government chemical trial.” She probably ought to cut back on the number of Netflix thrillers she watched before bed.
She drew a mental line through the governmental conspiracy theory.
The mushrooms, then. She began chewing at the corner of her thumbnail, a nervous, seasonal habit that left the skin at the sides of her nails in shreds by January.
“Are you waiting for a formal invitation?” came the woman’s haughty voice.
Maybe I’m unconscious, she thought. In which case, she may as well follow this delirium to see where it took her.
“What the…?”
The woman was fussing with a commercial coffee machine where the sideboard that held their kettle usually stood.
“What’ll it be?” she asked, pointing to a board that had appeared above her head listing festive-sounding coffees.
Casey gawped. The woman huffed impatiently, one hand on her hip. “Well?”
“I—um. A gingerbread latte? Please?” Casey stammered.
“Excellent choice. Cream and chocolate sprinkles?”
Casey nodded.
“Use your words, dear,” said the woman.
“Oh, right. Yes, please, cream and sprinkles.” If she must be stuck in a delirium she may as well enjoy the extras.
The woman made them a mug of coffee each with the ease of a seasoned barista and then urged her to “sit, sit,” as though this were her office and Casey was interviewing for a job.
All the same, Casey took a chair and the woman pulled Nigel’s chair over and sat opposite her so that their knees almost touched.
“You’re probably wondering what in the candy canes is going on here,” she began, and Casey nodded her agreement.
“To be honest, so am I. I came here hoping for anonymity. This was supposed to be a quiet little getaway where nobody could find me. I had planned to sit this Christmas out in the comfort of the store and let the world get on with it, let it lie festering in the bed it’s made for itself.
But apparently, you can see me. And that makes you, I’m sorry to say, a fly in the ointment. Any questions so far?”
So many questions! Casey spooned the cream off the top of her coffee, took a sip—it was excellent—and decided to start with the basics. “Who are you?” It came out sounding accusatory.
The woman leaned back and crossed her legs, her coat falling away to reveal the long, beaded tassels of her dress.
She sipped her coffee and licked away the cream mustache like a cat.
Her lipstick stayed perfectly in place. “Excellent question. I am the Spirit of Christmas Present. But you can call me Margo.”
Casey had not seen this coming. She didn’t know how anyone could have seen this coming. “So, you’re a ghost?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“Certainly not!” Margo reared back, offended. “I am a spirit. A ghost is a thing that was once alive and is now dead. I have never been alive nor dead. I am a spirit; it’s quite different.”
Without thinking, Casey leaned forward and poked Margo’s knee. It was solid.
Margo raised her eyebrows.
“Sorry,” said Casey. “Just checking something.”
“I can take incorporeal and physical form.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Perk of the job. Next.”
“So, you show people the errors of their ways?” Of course she’d heard the stories of spirits who went around fixing people—everybody had—but they were just stories, like myths and legends…weren’t they?
Margo squirted cream from a can directly into her mouth and replied, “My colleagues and I are charged with performing interventions upon humans whose actions are deemed detrimental to both them and to society at large. We all of us have a responsibility not to be twits. Anything else?”
Casey steeled herself. “Are you here for me?” she asked tentatively. She was admittedly a bit tetchy around Christmas, but she had her reasons and surely it didn’t warrant supernatural involvement.
Margo was watching her like a fox eyeing a chick.
“No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think I’m here for you.
The dossier I received for tonight was for a millionaire dog groomer called Dereck.
He was the final straw. Usually, you can rely on animal lovers not to be arseholes.
When the pet people start going parsimonious, the world is truly screwed.
You’re not a dog groomer called Dereck, are you? ”
“No. I’m Casey Smith.” She pointed to her lanyard. “Store Replenisher.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Good to meet you, Casey.”
“Likewise. I think. What will happen to Dereck if you don’t perform his intervention?”
Margo waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I left him a PowerPoint. I’m not completely irresponsible.”
“No, of course not.” Dereck’s in for a weird night, she thought to herself, and then remembered that she was drinking a latte with a spirit.
“Although,” Margo went on, “the way I’m feeling at the moment, I really don’t give a shit about Dereck or his soul.”
“Right,” said Casey. “Why is it do you think that I can see you?”
Margo leaned back in her chair and studied Casey. “That I cannot answer. Have you been visited by spirits before? Ever seen a ghost? Recently had a near-death experience?”
“Not that I know of.”
Margo shrugged. “Then you are an anomaly.”
“Is that bad?” She didn’t see how it could be good.
The floor around them was slowly filling up as freshly dug root vegetables materialized out of thin air.
“It is what it is,” Margo replied cryptically. “You are clearly a pessimist.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You expect the worst. Right off the bat, you ask if it’s bad that you can see me, not ‘Ooh, that’s amazing!’ or ‘Wow, what a gift.’ ”
Casey narrowed her eyes. “It doesn’t feel like a gift right now.”
“That’s because you’re a pessimist.”
“Right.” Casey frowned and drank some more excellent coffee. “And you’re here because…”
“I’m on holiday. And hiding. A hiding holiday.”
“Hiding from who?”
Margo circled her arms. “Everyone. The whole shebang, including my colleagues.”
“Your colleagues being”—she couldn’t quite believe she was about to say this—“the Spirits of Christmas Past and Future?”
“Pam and Felicity, correct. Pam is Past and Felicity—Fliss for short—is Future.”
“By that reasoning, shouldn’t you be called Priscilla or Prudence Present or something?”
Margo blinked slowly and said, “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”
“I am!” Casey protested. In truth she was wondering if she might’ve been hit on the head by a falling piano on her way to work and this was all playing out in her head while she lay in a coma. “Okay, so why are you hiding from Pam and Felicity?”
The spirit chewed her lip and then sighed. “Do you ever just feel worn down, Casey? Like no matter what you do, it’s never enough?”
Casey had regularly felt both of those things, especially in her last relationship, but she wasn’t about to divulge this to a hallucination, no matter how good their coffee, so she said, “Now who’s the pessimist?”
Margo glared at her. “I have optimist’s fatigue; it’s quite different.
I’ve spent centuries showing miserable, miserly humans the error of their ways.
I’ve almost never had a failure—don’t talk to me about Mussolini—and yet for every person who sees the light, there are a million more misanthropes lining up to take their place.
It’s soul destroying. And I would know! It’s all me, me, me when it should be us, us, us.
I’m tired of helping ungrateful selfish people.
What’s the point? Let them choke on their bitter pills and die alone, I’m done with them.
My mojo is kaput.” She eyed Casey. “There’s something going on with you too.
You have the aura of a depressed squirrel.
What is it? Maybe we can commiserate together; you know how much misery loves company. ” She waggled her eyebrows.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Casey. “There’s nothing going on with me.”
Margo tilted her head and in a soft, menacing voice said, “You know, it isn’t wise to lie to a spirit.”
Casey gulped. “It’s a long story.”
“Then it’s lucky we’ve got time on our hands.” Margo offered her a chocolate-coated Viennese whirl from a biscuit tin that Casey would swear wasn’t there two minutes ago and said, “Please elucidate.”