The Afterlife of Holly Chase

  “Yes?”

  “Are you quite done with your own personal conversation, and ready to tell us about what you have planned for Ethan’s journey into the past? Tell me you have something—anything—that you can use with this Victoria Scott.”

  The moment had arrived. I lifted my chin. “No,” I said primly. “There’s nothing on Victoria Scott.”

  Boz actually scowled. “How can that possibly be true? We have to have a Belle.”

  “It’s not Victoria Scott. She’s not important to this story.”

  “How can you say that?” Dave asked incredulously. “Ethan falling in love at this critical juncture is incredibly important. It could change everything we think we know about him.”

  “For once, I agree with Havisham,” Blackpool boomed out. “Ethan can’t fall in love. He can’t feel love. Not anything true. He’s not capable of loving another person. To love, you have to think about more than just yourself. You have to consider the well-being of someone else. From what I understand, Ethan hasn’t considered anyone but himself in a very long time.”

  I tried not to scowl, but I was suddenly furious. I was getting so sick of Blackpool casting his doom and gloom around the office like so much tragic confetti. Of course Ethan could feel love. Ethan was much better than all the hardened old geezers we’d worked on in the years I’d been at PS. Way better. At least he had some time left to live his life. If he lived; that is, if we succeeded in our mission. At least he was still young and had something to live for.

  “If he’s so bad, then why are we even bothering to try and save him?” I snapped.

  The room fell silent.

  “I suppose we all deserve a chance to be saved,” Blackpool replied coolly. “Even if we don’t take it.”

  God, he was passive-aggressive. It made total sense that he used to be a Scrooge, too. “Did you take it?” I asked. “I guess not, right, because you’re here.”

  Mic drop.

  Dave scratched his beard. “But we’ve noticed distinct changes in Ethan since this Victoria person came on the scene. Surely that’s important.”

  I cleared my throat. “I think we’re missing the point. Whatever this thing with Victoria is, she can’t be his Belle. The Belle is part of the Scrooge’s past—a reminder of an opportunity he missed out on. She’s the ‘Ms. Right’ that he blew his chance with. Victoria, on the other hand, is Ethan’s ‘Ms. Right Now,’ if you get what I’m saying. She’s his present, not his past. So she’s not his Belle.”

  “Okay. Let’s say that you’re right,” said Dave. “Are you suggesting that Ethan has no Belle? Have we ever had a Scrooge without a Belle?”

  “Never,” Boz said softly.

  “Oh, he has a Belle,” I argued. “It’s just not Victoria.”

  “You think it’s that girl he saw at the benefit?” Dave asked. “The one in the white dress?”

  “No, because she’s not his past, either. But I do have a theory.”

  I nodded at Grant, who turned on the television monitor at the front of the room and then messed around on his laptop until a scene began to play. It was a recorded memory that I’d sifted from Ethan last week.

  “Our mistake was getting focused on Victoria Scott. We know that the Belle doesn’t have to be a romantic connection, but when we found out about Ethan dating somebody, that was the conclusion everybody jumped to,” I said. “But we were wrong. Watch.”

  In the memory, Ethan was sitting in the dining room of the penthouse, completely alone at this giant gleaming table. A maid set a plate down in front of him and stood back, waiting for him to dismiss her. He took a knife and cut himself a bite of steak. He put it in his mouth, chewed, and then he scowled.

  “I said medium rare.” He took a napkin and spat the meat discreetly back into it. “This is medium. It’s pink in the center, not red. It’s overcooked.”

  The maid went pale. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll tell the cook.”

  “Tell her she has twenty minutes to make me something edible.” Ethan pushed his plate away from him with a disgusted expression. “Make that fifteen.”

  “Yes, sir.” She hurried off.

  Dave clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Poor woman. It’s not her fault.”

  “The meat was overcooked,” said Blackpool.

  “Shh,” I admonished them. “This is where it gets good.”

  “Well, that was a move straight out of Grandfather’s playbook,” came a voice, and Ethan turned to see Jack standing in the doorway.

  “Hey, Jacqueline,” he said, because no one who knew her ever called her that, and he knew it would bug her. “What’s up?”

  “Way to be a jerk to the hired help,” she commented.

  He went back to looking at his phone. “I don’t tolerate incompetence.”

  She took a seat next to him. This time her hair was a bright orange, like a living flame dancing off her head. She even had a tattoo on the inside of her wrist now—a Sanskrit symbol or something. She smiled at him. “Nice to see you, too, little brother.”

  “What do you want, Jack?”

  “I was in the neighborhood and came to see if you wanted to get some dinner. But I can see you already have that covered.”

  “I can get the cook to make something for you,” he offered. “Although I can’t promise it will be any good.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  He looked up and saw her disgusted expression. “Oh, come on,” he scoffed. “She’s a cook. She should know how to—I don’t know—cook, don’t you think?”

  “She’s a person, Ethan. It wouldn’t hurt you to give people a little bit of grace.”

  “Grace is for screwups.” Another one of his grandfather’s zingers.

  “Nice,” she said wryly. “You make me weep for humanity. Seriously.”

  He sighed. “So that’s what you’re here for? To give me another ‘be kind to your fellow man’ lecture? Because there’s a morals and ethics class we’re forced to take at my school, and I can assure you, I’m getting an A.”

  She shook her head sadly. “I’m done giving lectures. I just hope you’re happy with the life you’re choosing here.” She stood up. “I know my way out.”

  “So, what, you’re just going to leave now? Until the next time you want to stop by and take the moral high ground?”

  Her lips pursed. “There’s not going to be a next time, Ethan. I’m not going to come back here again. You’ve changed. I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  He scoffed. “Me? You’re the one who changes your look, like, every fifteen minutes. You freak.”

  She gave a sad smile. “Call me if you decide to grow a soul.”

  I nodded at Marty again, and he paused the video. “You see? This is the breakup scene. She even says some of the lines straight from the Scrooge script. Jack is Ethan’s Belle.”

  A murmur went around the room.

  “Jack is Ethan’s Belle,” Boz mused. “Well, it makes a certain bit of sense. Of course there’s no rule that it has to be a romantic entanglement.”

  “Right?”

  Dave looked uncomfortable with the idea, but after a minute he said, “But I still think we need to figure out what’s going on with Victoria Scott.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Did I ever mention that Dave, in spite of being the nicest guy at the company, could be, like, mule stubborn?

  “I think Havisham is correct in saying that this Victoria person is not important,” Boz said. “She was probably just a passing fancy to our Ethan.”

  Blackpool nodded. “I don’t see a real future for Ethan involving anyone named Victoria. But who knows? Perhaps he does have a certain amount of love in store.”

  He looked at me. He was messing with me now; I was almost sure of it. First with the part about how Ethan was incapable of love, and now that he might have love in his future? What was Blackpool playing at? And—for, like, the hundredth time—what exactly did he know? If he was aware tha
t I was Victoria Scott, he still hadn’t told anyone. Maybe he just didn’t care. One Scrooge or another, a success or a failure, maybe none of this mattered to Blackpool. He was serving out a prison sentence, like I was. Doing his time.

  Or maybe, just maybe, in spite of all of his grouchiness, Blackpool was on my side.

  “It’s settled, then,” Boz said. “We focus on Jack. What else do you have?”

  I rattled off the exact dates, times, and locations of the three stops I’d be making into Ethan’s past: a moment with his dad from when he was a kid, the Christmas party with his mom, and the breakup scene with Jack. Then my part of Ethan’s night would officially be over. For the rest of the night I’d be forced to watch from the sidelines.

  “Very good,” Boz said when I finished giving him the rundown. “Excellent job, Team Lamp. So then we’ll move on to Act Two. Copperfield.”

  Dave stood up. “So, like Holly, I begin with a brief introduction, and then . . .”

  He stopped and glanced down at his notes. He still seemed on edge, which was weird because Dave was usually a pretty laid-back guy. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Then I’ll take him to see Dent and his mother—our Cratchits—and then the homeless man on Sixth Avenue, and then on to his grandmother’s for the Christmas party.”

  Good luck getting Ethan to feel sorry for the homeless, I thought. Seeing as how he basically blamed a homeless man for the death of his father.

  Dave frowned. “That’s all on my end.”

  “Then he’ll be passed along to me,” Blackpool said as Dave sat down. “I don’t make polite introductions. I’ll take him straight to the school, where he can see his classmates cleaning out his locker. Then the Denton house with the heartbroken mother losing her job. And then the mortuary on Eighty-First.” He smiled. Blackpool always liked that part—showing the Scrooges their own deaths. I bet he loved that look of pale terror on their faces.

  “And then we make him sleep, and get him back to his room, no later than four a.m.,” Boz filled in. “Good. It sounds like everything’s in place.”

  Even thinking about Christmas made my heart beat fast. So much was riding on this one night. In some ways it felt like my entire life (or my entire afterlife, that is) had been leading up to this Christmas with Ethan. Which was silly. This Christmas was just like any other, I tried to tell myself. I just happened to be in a secret relationship with the Scrooge.

  Boz surveyed the room like the captain at the helm of a ship. “Let’s go get Christmas ready.”

  We all flooded out into the hall and headed off toward our separate domains as Past, Present, and Future.

  Steph trailed right behind me, talking, of course. “I’ve got a pile of work orders for you to sign when you get a minute.”

  Ugh, paperwork. “Do you know what the status is on the GCP costume? I haven’t seen it around yet.”

  “They delivered your costume this morning. Do you need to try it on, make sure it still fits?”

  I gave her a sharp look.

  “Oh, right,” she said sheepishly. “Of course it still fits.”

  “I always have to try it on for the costume department,” I said. “They like to change it a little bit every year—add some flair. Call Marie—her number is in my contacts—and she’ll set up the time.”

  “Okay, boss,” Stephanie said. “So about these work orders . . .”

  “And make sure that Grant’s got that lag fixed from last year. That was a bit of a disaster.”

  “Oh, I think he’s got it fixed. He said—”

  “Make sure,” I said. “There’s no room for error here. Just imagine what would happen if we got Ethan into the Time Tunnel and then it shorted out.”

  She nodded. “Right. I’ll make sure. So, the work orders—”

  I stopped so quickly she bumped into me. “Okay, okay. The work orders.” I grabbed the stack of folders from her hands and started flipping through them.

  “Wait, those aren’t the . . .” she started. “The work orders are . . .”

  “What’s this?” I held up a thick manila folder. It had the word HAVISHAM printed in black marker along the edge.

  “Oh. That. It’s . . .” She obviously didn’t know what to say. Stephanie wasn’t a liar, not like me. The minute she tried to think up a lie her blue eyes got all buggy and her voice failed her and she kept licking her lips like the idea of telling a falsehood left her all dried out.

  “This is my file,” I said. Obviously. The one that I’d found on Dave’s desk. I’d been so wrapped up in Ethan for the past few months, I’d forgotten all about it.

  “I was just doing some research,” Stephanie said.

  “On me?”

  Her mouth opened and then closed again. She knew. She’d probably known all along, and she’d just wanted to hang out with me in order to—I don’t know—study me or something. My brain cycled through all the questions she’d asked me over the past few months: questions about my death, my life, my past relationships, the way I thought about things. It all made sense now.

  “Holly—” she tried.

  I handed her the folder and turned away.

  “Wait, Holly.” She grabbed my arm.

  I looked at her coldly. “So I was, like, what, an independent study for you? A psychology experiment? A test subject?”

  Her hand dropped away from me. “Well, at first of course I was curious about you. You’re unique. A failed Scrooge—do you have any idea how rare that is? So yes, I was thrilled to be able to study you. But after a while—”

  I let out a sharp laugh that hurt somewhere in my chest. “I actually thought you were my friend.”

  “I am—”

  I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’m already over it.”

  I went back to my office. She followed me, of course. Because it seemed like I was never going to be able to get rid of her.

  “Holly, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” I sat down at my desk and stared out the window. Snow was falling outside. God, I hated snow. I wanted to move to Bermuda.

  “I know you must feel—” she tried again.

  “We all have our games, right?” I said, waving off her lame attempts to explain herself. “You were just playing yours. It’s my fault, really, for thinking it could be anything else. People lie. It’s what they do.”

  “I am your friend,” she protested. “I really am.”

  “Great. You’re my friend,” I said tonelessly. “So where’s this paperwork you need me to sign?”

  She sighed and sorted through her jumbled papers for a minute. Then she laid three work orders on my desk in front of me. I scribbled my signature at the bottom of each form.

  “There you go.”

  “Thank you. Can I get you some coffee?” she asked in a wavering voice. “I was thinking of making a run to that shop you like.”

  I looked up at her. “Just do your job, Dorrit. I don’t need anything else from you.”

  Her head dropped. “Okay.”

  She turned to go.

  “How long is your internship, by the way?” I asked before she reached the door.

  “My internship?” She turned back.

  “Are you only supposed to work here for this one year?”

  “Oh,” she answered. “Yes. This one year.”

  “So it’s almost done, then,” I pointed out.

  “I guess it is.”

  “Can I offer you some professional advice?”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “You need to rethink your wardrobe. I mean, look at you.”

  She stared down at her outfit. She was wearing a bright red sweater with a Scottie dog on the front and a black skirt and black cable tights and red flats.

  “You look like a ninth grader,” I observed. “How old are you, nineteen?”

  “Almost twenty,” she squeaked.

  “It’s ridiculous. You’re working at a prestigious business in New York City. Dress like it. Otherwise no one is ever
going to take you seriously. Oh, and get some new glasses, too. Those are terrible.”

  She swallowed and nodded shakily. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you spend the rest of the day helping Marty set up those cameras we’re going to use,” I suggested. “I don’t need you here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I parroted. “Off you go, then.”

  It was only after she’d left that I allowed myself to cry.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THREE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, SEVENTY-TWO hours before the big night, I took Ethan to the Angelika. It would normally have been too risky, since it was indoors and Dave could feasibly access any indoor security camera in the city, but earlier in the evening I’d used my Hoodie to go around the theater and disable all the cameras. Now they were experiencing “technical difficulties.” So Ethan and I were off the grid. Plus, the Angelika was across town from Ethan’s usual haunts and the company would never think to look for him there. According to his schedule, he was playing racquetball at the club. And Dave’s team had relaxed a lot since we’d officially decided to stop looking for Victoria Scott.

  “This is the best theater in Manhattan,” I told Ethan as we climbed the steps to the ticket booth. “It’s kind of old school and classic, and it always plays the best films. The smaller films that nobody else bothers to see.”

  Ethan paid for our tickets. To my dad’s movie, of course. It was still playing there once a week.

  “This is nice,” he commented as we went inside, where there was a charming café set up with little wire tables and chairs, like something you’d see on the streets of Paris. “But it’s out of the way, don’t you think? There’s got to be a good movie theater farther uptown.”

  “But they have the best scones here.” I pointed up. “And look.”

  The ceiling had been painted to resemble a blue sky just before sunset, the clouds all touched with gold. Right in the middle hung a large crystal chandelier that had been highlighted with strips of blue neon so the whole thing gave off a kind of electric-blue vibe. I loved that chandelier.

  “It’s cool,” Ethan said. He seemed uneasy for some reason. Or maybe he was picking up on how nervous I was. “I’m glad you could finally go out again,” he said after we loaded up on freshly squeezed lemonade and scones. “We’re okay, right?”