CHRISTMAS EVE. MY HANDS STARTED shaking every time I considered all of the ways that the night could go wrong. The first and most obvious way: Ethan could recognize me. All this time I’d tried to act like that wasn’t a possibility, but it had been a danger I’d posed to Ethan’s future the moment I stepped into the New York Athletic Club and showed him my face. Still, like I’d told Stephanie when she’d asked about it, the costume was pretty extreme. And I was planning on shining a lot of lights in his eyes.
“You’ve got some puffiness,” remarked Leigh, the hair and makeup lady, as she painted an extra layer of concealer under my eyes. “Have you been getting enough sleep?”
I was getting no sleep, but that didn’t matter, because I didn’t need sleep. I reset every morning. But I had been doing that crying-into-my-pillow thing for the past two nights. Because it was really over now with Ethan. But it was the right thing, I’d decided. Inevitable. Victoria and Ethan had always been running on borrowed time.
Marie, who was in charge of costumes for the entire project, bustled into my dressing room with two huge garment bags draped over her arm. “Great job with the hair this year,” she said when she saw me. “It’s always a work of art, isn’t it?”
It was. Leigh had curled my hair and braided the top of it into an elaborate crown, letting the rest fall around my shoulders. Then she’d sprayed my hair with something that made it look white and glittery under the lights. She stuck in tiny sprigs of leaves and holly here and there, like I was a sparkly wood nymph that had wandered out of a snowstorm. For my makeup, she’d covered my face and every exposed part of my body with an opalescent foundation that made me as pale as a marble statue come to life. She’d painted my eyebrows and lids with a layer of shimmering silver, and left my eyelashes bare. As a last step, she’d dusted a final coat of shimmery powder on my cheekbones and lined my lips with a soft, natural pink.
I looked like a totally different person, like a little girl and simultaneously like an ancient primitive force—ageless and ethereal.
“You’ve outdone yourself,” I said.
Leigh smiled. “I could never outdo myself, darling.”
Marie hung the garment bags on separate hooks on the wall, and then unzipped one of them and drew out my dress. It was gorgeous—at least I’d always thought so—made of overlapping layers of a semitransparent fabric that looked silver in some lights and so white in others that it almost hurt your eyes to look at it. I took the hanger from Marie carefully and went into the adjoining bathroom to put the dress on.
“Careful of your face,” Leigh called through the door as I slid the dress over my head. “You don’t want to smear.”
“In six years, have I ever messed up my makeup?” I shot back.
“No, so don’t start now,” Leigh said merrily.
I came out (unsmudged, I might add) and Marie started to orbit around me, fastening the ties in the back and fixing the way the fabric draped around my body. Then she went to the table in the corner and opened a large black box. Inside was a belt that looked like it was made of stars. Even in the relatively low light of the dressing room, it gleamed and twinkled.
A knock came at the door and Stephanie stuck her head in. “Hey. Boz wanted me to see if you’re—oh!” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, that’s beautiful! You’re beautiful, Holly. Wow.”
“That’s why they pay us the big bucks,” Leigh said wryly as Marie finished fastening the star belt around my waist. “Oh, wait . . .”
It was a joke I’d heard before, more than once. Leigh worked that joke in every year, for fun. And I’d heard the same joke from Steph, I realized, not so long ago. I met her eyes. She was wearing a black cashmere sweater and gray jeans with black boots. Her long blond hair was twisted into a simple chignon. Like she’d actually taken my advice about her wardrobe. I wanted to tell her that she looked nice, but I resisted the impulse. We hadn’t found much to say to each other since the incident with my Havisham folder, but I preferred the awkward silence to her lame attempts at an apology.
It would take only a few words, a smile, and we could be friends again. She hadn’t told me things. I hadn’t told her things. She’d used me like I was a science project. But I’d used her, too. I knew that. Me being mad at her was wildly hypocritical. But Stephanie’s internship was almost over. She was leaving. So there was really no point.
“What did Boz want?” I asked her.
She seemed to realize that she’d been staring at me, and glanced away. “He wanted to see if you were ready.”
Marie hurried over to the other garment bag and lifted out a white fur robe that she settled around my shoulders. It was soft and warm and would protect me from the chills of the Time Tunnel. More important, it would hide most of my face in its hood. I lifted my feet one at a time as Leigh slid on a pair of silver slippers, which were surprisingly comfortable to walk in. I straightened my shoulders. The costume always made me feel powerful. There was just a raw energy to it, like when I was wearing it I became some mythical being made of light.
“Oops, almost forgot the lamp,” Leigh said. She opened another black box—this one hat-sized—and set the headpiece carefully on my head. It was like the headlamps that miners wear, capable of shining like a halo all around my head or focusing like a spotlight. The controls for it were hidden in the folds of my robe.
I winced as Leigh drove a few bobby pins practically into my skull to hold it in place, and then drew the hood up and over my head.
“Okay, let’s do this.” I walked slowly and carefully down the hall toward the Go Room. People lined the corridors to watch as I passed by, whispering and staring.
Steph trailed behind me, as usual, but she didn’t talk.
“Ah, Havisham, how glorious,” exclaimed Boz when he saw me. “You’re a vision. Literally.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“So they tell me. I’m ready.” I buried my still-trembling hands in my robe and glanced around the room. It was, as always at this point in the Project, crowded. Almost every single employee of the company was required to be here. There were people milling all over the place, fussing over last-minute details, but there were also just your average bookkeepers and pencil pushers, here to see the show.
And there was Dave in his green velvet robes, his head adorned with a laurel of green leaves and his beard decorated with tiny starlike flowers. He looked younger than he actually was right now—it was part of the magic of the night for the Ghost of Christmas Present to appear young when he first arrived and slowly seem to age as the night wore on. How they pulled off that effect, I didn’t know, but as he traveled with Ethan his face would become wrinkled and his beard would go silver and grizzled.
I’m the Ghost who will show you the way the world truly is, he’d said to me that night when I was the Scrooge. Underneath this facade you’ve built for yourself.
Uh, thanks, but no thanks, I’d answered. Freak.
He’d laughed at my insult. Well, come with me, Holly Chase, and get to know me better. And through knowing me—and I will admit that I am an oddball—you might actually come to know yourself.
He turned and smiled at me. “Last time,” he whispered.
I may have choked up a little at that. I was going to miss Dave. There’d never be a Ghost of Christmas Present like Dave was—the gentle giant who’d always been so kind to me.
“Good luck,” he said.
I reached out and squeezed his hand. “Good luck to you, too, Dave.”
I got a flash of Dave standing in his dressing room, his face young the way it was right now, his arms around Steph. She was wearing the same clothes she was wearing tonight. Dave was rubbing her back like she was cold. And then he kissed the top of her head.
Dave let go of my hand. I gasped and stared up into his eyes. I didn’t understand. Dave and Steph? But I thought she was with Grant.
“Everything is not always as it seems,” Dave said.
No kidding, I thought. It was kind of gross, the idea of Dave and Stephanie. Dave was nice, but he was so old. And dead.
“Places!” came a voice over the loudspeaker. Boz had apparently moved into the control booth and was ready to go.
“Godspeed, Holly,” Dave said, and moved quickly away from me to take up his position on the other side of the room.
“Places, please,” Boz called. “Marley to the Transport Room.”
I turned and nearly bumped into Ethan Senior on his way to the door. He looked frightened, his eyes wide and a bit glassy, like he was drugged or something. Sometimes Marleys looked pretty funky. They were often in various states of decay—Yvonne and her stitched-up neck wound came to mind. But old man Winters had been cremated.
He was thin and pale, his face almost colorless but otherwise normal. Except that he occasionally started smoking—not like cigarettes, but himself, his clothes, his hair. Every now and then smoke would start to rise off him like he was smoldering. I kept waiting for him to burst into outright flames, but he never did. He was wearing a three-piece Armani suit with chains draped over it, and they clanked against each other when he moved.
“Hello, Mr. Winters,” I said. Where was Tox? I wondered.
He grabbed at my sleeve. “Tell me the truth,” he demanded, his voice like a growl. “How can this possibly save him? I don’t know how it can. He never listened to me when I was alive. Why should he listen now?”
“He listened,” I assured him. “Believe me, sir. He heard everything you said to him.”
“Marley to the Transport Room,” Boz repeated over the loudspeaker, more urgently this time.
“You’re the past, aren’t you?” the old man asked, leaning close to me. “You know Ethan.”
He smelled like lighter fluid and old people. I nodded. “I know Ethan.”
“All right.” He let go of me. “All right, I’m coming!” Tox appeared at his side and started to pull him toward the door, practically dancing with eagerness to get Mr. Winters where he was supposed to be.
“Come on, old timer,” she said. “It’s time for you to show us what you’ve got.”
“Be quiet,” the old man muttered. “Let’s just get it done.”
It happened the same way for Ethan that it had for me. It all started with three knocks on his bedroom door.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Ethan was out of bed in a flash. “What the—” He crossed to the door and flung it open, but found nobody on the other side. He looked around wildly, prowling from room to room—there was no one, not in the entire house. He was alone.
Still, he made a point of locking his bedroom door that time before he settled back into his bed.
I felt so sorry for him as I watched from the monitors in the Go Room, knowing that he was about to get the ever-living crap scared out of him. I’d been there, done that. I remembered the way the inside of my throat had tingled after Yvonne had shown up in my bedroom and I’d done all of that hysterical screaming.
To Ethan’s credit, he didn’t scream or shout or anything. When he sat up again and saw his dead grandfather standing at the foot of his bed, he simply froze. He didn’t make a sound.
Mr. Winters stepped forward. “Hello, boy,” he said gruffly.
Hello, darling girl. I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering.
Ethan didn’t answer.
“I said hello,” Mr. Winters insisted. “It’s polite to speak when you’re spoken to, boy. Do you hear me?”
Ethan’s back stiffened. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled out of habit.
“Good. I don’t have much time with you.” Mr. Winters straightened his tie. “They won’t give me more than a few minutes. So you have to listen now and listen good.”
“But you’re dead,” Ethan said almost stupidly.
“You noticed that, did you?” The old man laughed and then coughed. “Yes. I am dead. All my money and power couldn’t stop me from dying, could it?”
“What do you want?” Ethan still hadn’t moved. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head.
Mr. Winters sat down at the edge of Ethan’s bed. “There’s so much that I want,” he said. “But it’s too late for me now. I’m here to talk about you.”
Ethan stared at him mutely. The old man stared right back, his eyes narrowing.
“You don’t believe I’m really here, do you?”
“No, sir,” Ethan said hoarsely.
The old man clapped a hand down hard on Ethan’s shoulder. “So you think this is a dream?” His bony fingers dug into the bare flesh near Ethan’s collarbone until Ethan flinched. “How’s this for a dream, then?” He squeezed harder. “How’s this?”
“Okay!” Ethan burst out finally. “Okay. Stop.”
“You believe me now?”
“Fine, I believe you. But what are you doing here? You’re dead.”
“Yes. I’m dead, and I’m also damned,” Mr. Winters said more quietly, releasing his grip from Ethan’s shoulder. “I’m doomed to wander around this pathetic excuse for an afterlife, watching the world pass me by. Watching, always watching. Never doing anything, ever again. Just watching. Seeing all that I could have done.”
He stood up and crossed to the other side of the room, his chains dragging on the carpet behind him. “I was a fool,” he said mournfully. “And now I’m paying for it.”
Ethan swung his legs over the side of the bed like he would get up and go to his grandfather, but he stayed where he was. “What do you mean, you’re paying for it? What’s with the chains?”
The old man picked up a length of the chain and held it out. “I made these,” he said. “I couldn’t see them at the time, but I was forging them, link by link, all my life.” He smiled, showing brown, decaying teeth. “Do you like them? Do they look comfortable to you?”
“No, sir.”
“You should pay attention, then, because you’re working on your own set of shackles.” The old man dropped the chain and pointed a knobby finger at Ethan. “Don’t you know?”
Ethan shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
Mr. Winters sighed, which came out as a wisp of smoke. “I wasted my life, boy. I put all of my effort into the wrong endeavors. I valued the money—the little meaningless pieces of printed paper and the investments and the property I came to own—over all else. I let the good things slip through my fingers, and what was I left with when I died? Nothing. Nothing and no one.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Ethan argued. “You built an empire. People are still talking about you—the things you did, the way you managed your holdings, your ruthlessness, your genius. You were a brilliant businessman.”
The old man coughed. “A businessman. Yes. I was a businessman. But my business should have been in loving my family, shouldn’t it? It should have been in improving the state of my city, of my country, of the world. I should have been giving back, but instead all I did was take and take with greedy hands. And now look at me.” He raised his arms again and strained against the chains that confined him. “This is my punishment, and it’s what I deserve.”
Ethan was shaking his head. “No.”
There hadn’t been a lot of love lost between the two of them. I knew that better than anybody. But Ethan had respected his grandfather. He’d seen the value of how the elder Ethan Winters operated in his life. In the end, he’d wanted to be like him; he wanted to be better than him, even. But now here was this sad old man before him boohooing about love and bettering the world and talking about hell like it was an actual thing.
Mr. Winters approached the bed again. “I’ve been watching you. It’s the worst part, the endless watching. You are making all of the same mistakes.” He sat down next to Ethan. “But now I’m here to warn you, so that you can stop all of this now. You still have a chance to make things right again.”
“What chance?” Ethan asked.
“You’re going to get a visit tonight from three spirits.” The old man jumped up again, restless, and started to pace back and forth across Ethan’s huge bedroom.
“Wait,” said Ethan, his eyes narrowing. “Three . . . spirits?”
He was trying to remember the story. He’d seen it before. He knew it, just like I had known it. He frowned. “Like, ghosts? Like you?”
“Not like me. You listen to them, boy. Do what they say,” Mr. Winters said urgently. “They’ll help you.”
Ethan sat back against his pillows and scoffed. Maybe he could believe that his dead grandfather was somehow resurrected, but no way was he going to believe in three spirits sent to reform him. “Oh, come on,” he said with a laugh. “What is this? This is not real. How is this happening?”
The old man rounded on him, went straight at him faster than I thought he’d be capable of moving. He grabbed Ethan by the ear and twisted it until Ethan yelped in pain.
“Are you telling me what’s real, son?” he asked. Then he seemed to remember himself. He released Ethan and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want you to see. Before it’s too late. You must see.”
There was the gleam of tears in his eyes.
“You look so much like your father,” the old man murmured, almost to himself. “I loved him, I did. I lost him, but no one can ever tell me I didn’t love him. I loved you too, in my way.”
Ethan was holding one hand over his ear. He stared up at his grandfather incredulously.
Smoke was beginning to roll off Mr. Winters, starting at his feet and working up his body. In moments the smoke filled the room. He coughed.
“Expect the first Ghost at one o’clock,” he rasped, turning toward the bedroom door, which was the transport back to the company.
“Wait,” Ethan said.
“One o’clock, boy,” the old man repeated wearily. “Pay attention to what they say.”
“Havisham to the Transport Room,” came Boz’s voice over the intercom. “Havisham to the Transport Room. Prepare for Act One.”
Stephanie touched my shoulder lightly. “Should we, uh, go now?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
My stomach was doing backflips as we made our way down the hall toward the Transport Room. Grant and Marty were waiting for us, grinning the way they both always did on Christmas, like this whole thing was just so unbearably exciting that they couldn’t even. Marty handed me the earbud (not the transducer, but just my regular earbud) and Stephanie helped me put it in my ear through my arrangement of hair. We ran a quick test to see if it was working. It was.
“Go kick some Scroogy butt,” Marty said as I stepped up to the Portal.
I smiled weakly. “Right.”
“You’ve got this,” Steph said softly, like somehow she knew how much I was secretly freaking out.
Bang bang bang went my heart against my rib cage. I nodded curtly at Grant to signal that I was ready. I’m ready, I told myself. I’ve never been so ready.
Time to do my thing.
I turned the knob then, and walked through the glowing door.