Xmas Spirit (21 page)

“We were dyin’ here without you, spirit sista,” DJ rapped.

Charlotte was overwhelmed.

“Hope it was worth it,” Prue said, punching Charlotte in the shoulder.

“I think it was,” Charlotte confided. “They cried for me. Even Petula and The Wendys.”

“Maybe you were right about them after all,” Prue said, hugging her. “But no more tears, okay? It’s Christmas!”

Prue flew off to join the others to welcome the happy day. Pam was last but not least to greet her.

“Things weren’t the same around here without you,” Pam whispered, holding her friend tight.

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte whispered in return.

A kindly voice, not Pam’s, replied.

“Don’t be.”

“Mr. Brain?”

Brain walked slowly over to Charlotte and put his arm around her.

“How was your trip?”

“Happy to be back. Home.”

Brain returned her knowing smile.

“Sometimes we have to step away to appreciate what we already have. We need to relearn what we should already know. Sometimes we don’t know we love someone until we lose them.”

Charlotte nodded.

“What made you come back?” Pam asked.

“Yeah, I was so sure we’d lost you,” Prue added. “And everything else.”

“Who could resist this?” Eric boasted, running his hands all over his spectral self.

“Eric!” Charlotte scolded, her ghostly cheeks taking on the slightest tinge of red.

“All of you,” Charlotte replied. “I was so busy trying to relive the past that I was forgetting about now.”

“Christmas
present
,” Virginia said with a smile.

“The best gift you can give to anyone,” Brain said. “Yourself.”

“To keep moving on,” Charlotte opined, “I guess you need to just keep moving on.”

“Exactly,” Brain agreed.

“I don’t need to talk about Hawthorne stuff anymore,” Charlotte said apologetically.

“Fine with me.” Eric smiled.

“You knew she’d make the right decision,” Pam said to Brain. “That’s why you didn’t intervene.”

Brain smiled and wished them all a merry Christmas as he returned to his studies.

“All is as it was before,” he said.

“No,” Charlotte disagreed with a smile. “It’s better.”

The choir of voices rose to a crescendo and a single star rose brightly in the heavens, obscuring all the rest and shining a golden beam of light on the compound.

“Dance?” Eric asked.

“I’d love to,” Charlotte said.

They took each other’s hands and whirled around and around to the glorious sights and sounds above.

“
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
,” the angel voices sang.

“Funny how that winch broke down right then. Exactly when our eyes met,” Charlotte said to Eric as they had their Christmas waltz.

“What winch?” Eric replied, the smile in his eyes almost as bright as the star shining down upon them.

“You were bringing me back . . .” Charlotte began.

“Even if it killed you.”

“My man,” Charlotte cooed. “How sweet.”

“But it didn’t kill you. You did that.”

“I know. Poor Damen,” she mused. “I hope no one gets in trouble.”

“They won’t.”

“How do you know?” Charlotte asked hopefully.

“Because it never happened.”

Eric twirled her around again to laughs, cheers, and best wishes from the Dead Ed kids. As the midnight bells rang out announcing Christmas, Eric leaned in for a kiss and Charlotte suddenly tensed up.

“Oh no!” Charlotte cried. “I didn’t have a chance to get presents for everyone.”

“Yes, you did,” Eric said.

Eric got his kiss, and the happy couple split up to wish glad tidings to all their friends.

“Seriously,” Pam asked confidentially. “Why did you come back?”

“Love. Simple as that,” Charlotte explained. “I guess I needed to leave to realize that it really is a wonderful afterlife.”

“Did you get what you wanted this year?” Eric asked.

Charlotte held him close to her, kissed him under the
supernatural mistletoe, and whispered in his ear, “Yes. I have all that I’ll ever want.”

Epilogue
Yulogy

Wrapture

Few things are more depressing than the aftermath of Christmas. Gifts opened, leftovers eaten, and return receipts organized. Shredded paper, ribbons, boxes, and bows, delicate keepers of yearlong secrets, litter our floors and carpets, discarded like yesterday’s newspapers—collateral damage from the explosion of yuletide joy. Christmas is a time when we exchange tokens of love, but the only gift that lasts forever, that truly makes our spirits eternally bright, is the one that comes without the need for wrapping: love itself.

Scarlet and Damen had nodded off
in front of the fireplace at the Kensington house, waiting for the clock to strike midnight on Christmas Eve.

“I just had the craziest dream,” Scarlet said groggily.

“That Saint Nicholas soon would be here?” he said, and grunted, still half asleep himself.

“Funny, but no.”

“Well then, about what?”

“Just this thing.”

“What thing?”

“Something I’ve always wanted for Christmas,” Scarlet explained, walking over to the Christmas tree. “I go and visit it at the pawnshop every year, in fact.”

“It’s still there?” Damen asked. “Like an orphan?”

“I guess no one else wants it,” Scarlet said. “But I love it.”

“So why didn’t you ever get it?”

“It’s just not the kind of thing you buy for yourself.”

“So that was the dream? You were looking through the window like Tiny Tim?”

“No. The dream was that I got what I wanted, but so did everyone else in town. All the people who felt different. Outsiders. Invisible. Everyone who never got what they wanted because no one knew them well enough to find the perfect gifts.”

“Like a dark wave Santa?”

“Yes,” she said.

Damen pointed over at the clock on the wall and noticed the big and little hands pointing vertically upward, about to meet on the twelve.

“Look,” she said. “It’s snowing!”

“Perfect timing,” he said.

Damen reached for the remote and pressed
PLAY
. The warm and wistful strains of “The Christmas Song” filled the room as he bent beneath the branches of the Fraser fir and picked up a box, a tag with Scarlet’s name on it hanging from the bow. He handed it to her.

“This is from you?”

“I guess it is,” Damen said.

“Oh Damen, no,” she said nervously. “I haven’t even wrapped your gift yet. We fell asleep and . . .”

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

Scarlet took the box and held it for a while before tugging gently at the ribbon. It loosened and fell away to the floor as
the music swelled and the fireplace crackled. The scent of balsam wafted through the room.

She lifted the lid slowly, teasing herself, peeking under it tentatively. There it was, the Christmas gift of her lifelong dreams. The black cat that Petula had taken away from her, returned.

“How did you know?” Scarlet whispered, throwing her arms around him in love and appreciation.

“I guess you could say,” Damen said coyly, “it was the Christmas spirit.”

THE END?

Also by Tonya Hurley

ghostgirl
ghostgirl: Homecoming
ghostgirl: Lovesick
The Blessed

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2012 by Tonya Hurley

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