Xmas Spirit (12 page)

“You’re just jealous that I’m alive and you’re not. Maybe that’s why your eyes are so green,” Charlotte quipped, running her hands all over her face, arms, and legs. “Body envy!”

The hurt in Prue’s eyes was obvious and Charlotte felt bad about saying something so insensitive, but she resented being criticized, being called out on her fantasies. Prue was tempted to spill everything. To explain to Charlotte how much her return to Hawthorne could mean for them all, the people she loved, or did once. But Prue remembered what Mr. Brain said and decided to go another route, one that might yield better results.

“What about Eric?” Prue asked. “Are you willing to just write him off?”

“Eric? I don’t see him anywhere. Do you?”

This time the visible hurt was in Charlotte’s eyes. Prue’s tone softened.
You get more bees with honey
, she kept telling herself. Trying to stop herself from strangling Charlotte with her own two ghostly hands. “It was just a lover’s quarrel. Not something to change your whole death over.”

“Not for you, maybe,” Charlotte argued as she headed for the front door. “But as far as I’m concerned, Eric is dead to me. You all are!”

“You realize, since you are now alive, I could kill you?” Prue said, her voice trembling in anger.

“And you realize that since you
are
dead, you can’t kill me? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some shopping to do,” Charlotte said, quivering in fear as Prue’s eyes turned to a fiery red.

Prue pulled her cloak up over her head and the black smoke began to grab and engulf her like hundreds of arms from lost souls from the other side. Prue rushed Charlotte, who was now coiled up in a ball to protect herself on the ground, and then slammed into her, all the smoky hands latching on to
her, pulling at her, and then finally disappearing through the window.

“Scary Christmas to all,” Prue said as the hands grabbed and her voice moaned into the icy darkness. “And to all a good fright.”

Scarlet arrived home and bounded upstairs, loudly, hoping to interrupt whatever illicit activity might be going on in Petula’s room. It was even more nauseating being so close to a sacred holiday. Petula and Damen were undeterred, judging from the noise spilling out from behind her bedroom door and oozing out into the hallway. It was impossible to ignore. She wasn’t sure if it was sex going down or enhanced interrogation. Possibly both, she considered.

“Sick,” Scarlet said as she passed and then abruptly stopped to eavesdrop, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Tell me!” Petula commanded.

“Don’t break, dude,” Scarlet whispered to herself.

Petula’s charms were too much to resist, even for a football team captain.

“Okay,” he said.

“Come on, Damen, grow some Christmas balls, for God’s sake,” Scarlet mumbled.

“The Wendys are going to model tonight at this expo in town.”

“Model?” both Kensington girls said simultaneously.

A look of envy crossed Petula’s face.

“For money to buy you a gift,” Damen explained vaguely. “See-through caskets. Buried alive or something.”

Scarlet recalled her conversation with The Wendys earlier, hoping for a clue about what might be up.

“Amazing!” Petula shouted, wiping a single tear from her eye. “They are going to sacrifice their lives for me? How festive.”

We should be so lucky
, Scarlet thought.

“It’s just for a minute,” Damen corrected. “Besides, I’m sure they’ll find some sucker to do it for them anyway.”

“Charlotte,” Scarlet whispered, confirming her suspicions.

“What do you have to do?”

“I’m working the graveyard shift,” Damen said, the smile on his face viewable from space. “Lowering them into the hole.”

Petula quickly gathered herself and returned to the matter at hand, turned on by the gossip even more than she was by Damen.

“Hmmm,” Petula considered, running through the latenight shopping hours at all of her favorite stores. “There better be time for you to spend that money on me.”

“Everything is open late,” Damen said, hope in his voice. “I just wanted to be able to afford something special for you.”

Petula melted.

“Oh, my Santa Baby!”

Scarlet stuck her finger down her throat, trying her best to vomit, and snuck away.

“Just keep it between us, though?” Damen asked, pulling Petula in close to him once again. “I told The Wendys you wouldn’t find out.”

“Pinky promise.”

Scarlet and Petula entered the Kensington kitchen almost simultaneously.

“You seem pretty relaxed,” Scarlet observed, referencing Petula’s traditional Christmas Eve freak-out. “Did you manage to pry the details out of Damen?”

“Which details?”

“Your gift? You know? The one you practically threatened his life over?”

Scarlet didn’t let on that she already knew from eavesdropping, and Petula downplayed it, not wanting to share the info she’d garnered with Scarlet. Info Scarlet had already pieced together. It was a passive-aggressive cat-and-mouse game they frequently played with each other.

“Oh, that. Not exactly. It’s a big secret, apparently,” Petula said, lying through her fake white teeth. She was preoccupied, barely giving her answers a moment’s thought, double-checking a list so long it scrolled at the bottom.

“You know, one day he is going to figure out he doesn’t need to take that crap from you and leave you for another girl,” Scarlet teased.

“Like who?” Petula said, not even bothering to look up. “You?”

Petula belted out a shrill, witchy laugh as humiliating as any Scarlet had ever heard and returned to her list.

Scarlet gleefully prepared for Petula to go nuclear as she loudly snapped the arms and legs off the gingerbread man Petula had just finished baking. She loved pressing her buttons. Didn’t matter if it was Christmas or her birthday. Scarlet and her sister shared the same genetic mean streak; it just came out in different ways.

“Brains!” Scarlet said, eating the gingerbread man’s head. “Gingerdead man!”

“Can you keep it down over there?” Petula agreed, barely acknowledging Scarlet’s zombie-like behavior.

“Have you taken a sedative or gotten a lobotomy or something?”

“Huh?”

“What are you
doing
?”

“Oh, I’m going over my Christmas list to Santa.”

“You mean Mom,” Scarlet corrected.

“Party penalty!” Petula shouted. “Don’t ruin it for me.”

“Ruin it? If you get even one tenth of the stuff on that list, you could start your own online store.”

“Not a bad idea,” Petula said, returning her attention to the scroll. “I’ll have to put The Wendys on that, if they survive.”

“Survive?” Scarlet asked coyly.

“Don’t tell anyone, but Damen said they are going to be buried alive at midnight to raise money for my present. It might be dangerous. I’m going to surprise them and show my support by turning up.”

“To help?” Scarlet asked, touched that a morsel of humanity seemed to have survived drowning in her sister’s blackened soul.

“No, to give interviews,” Petula said. “It’s being filmed. Not to mention, cameras will be everywhere if there is an unfortunate accident. And hot cops and firemen.”

“That’s the Christmas spirit for you,” Scarlet said, chomping down on a few more cookie arms and legs.

“Hey! Christmas cannibal,” said Petula, finally noticing Scarlet’s cookie abuse. “You’re hurting him!”

She had more sympathy for a cookie, Scarlet noted, than for her closest friends.

“I just can’t believe they’d do anything remotely dangerous for you—or anyone.”

“I know,” Petula said, gathering a few of the gingerbread crumbs on her fingertips and bringing them to her mouth.

“Gotta run,” Scarlet said. “Don’t eat too many of those. You
might get fat.”

“Scarlet!”

“I’m sorry, I meant stay fat.”

Petula promptly spit the gingerbread goo out of her mouth and into a napkin. Her famous holiday chew-and-spit diet. She could taste anything she wanted without the calories.

“By the way, what did you ask for for Christmas?” Petula probed.

“What’s the difference? I never get what I want anyway.”

“Better not pout,” Petula replied. “You can have all the stuff I don’t want.”

“Just like every year,” Scarlet mumbled. “I’m the only sister I know that gets hand-me-downs with the tags still on them.”

10
Last Christmas

Present Tense

Holiday shopping is a race to decide which will give out first: your wallet or your feet. From the post-season closeouts to the pre-Christmas blowouts that begin earlier and earlier each season, the strain on your bank account, your patience, and your body is tested nearly all year round. The key to success and sanity is pacing. Choosing to run it as a marathon or sprint is ultimately up to you.

Prue returned to the compound
looking exhausted and grim-faced. Dejected.

“Anything?” Pam asked, her voice bolstered by a faint flutelike sound.

“No,” Prue said. “It’s bad.”

“It’s bad here, too,” Pam advised, pointing off in the distance to the Dead Ed kids, once joyfully preparing for the holidays but now scattered around, looking useless, like wrapping paper the day after Christmas.