Good Spirits by B.K. Borison - 4

H alfway down the cobblestone street that leads from the Annapolis State House to the harbor is an empty storefront. Unassuming, it’s tucked right between an ice cream parlor and a maritime shop. The windows are lined with faded brown paper and the awning hangs at an angle, the green material torn like someone reached up and attempted to rip it down.

People pass by without a second glance, ignoring the dusty windows for the promise of candy farther up the street. This time of year, everything smells like butterscotch and cocoa. Hot fudge. Crushed velvet and fresh pine.

I go just as unnoticed as the empty window I’m bound for, tucking my chin into the collar of my coat as crowds of holiday shoppers drift around me. I step off the sidewalk and a woman barrels into me, her shoulder slamming into mine, a bright red bag with gold trim almost taking me out at my knees. I grip her arms to hold her steady and she gives me an embarrassed, unfocused smile before chirping an apology and rushing off to join her friends.

She won’t remember me. She won’t ever think about me again. With the exception of my assignments and the handful of ghosts that occupy this town, no one has looked directly at me in more than a century. People keep a natural distance, moving past me like a river runs around a rock. There’s a sixth sense buried somewhere in their head that tells them I’m something else, to keep away. I’m not from here or there, but another place entirely. Another time. I wait and I listen and I watch as the world grows and shifts around me, never moving anywhere myself.

If I were a morose man, I’d call it a half-life.

As it stands, it’s just my afterlife.

The door at the abandoned store creaks as I open it, a bell on a tidy red ribbon announcing my arrival. For a long time, someone thought it would be a good idea to have the office access point in the towel section of a Bed Bath & Beyond. The Beyond a reference to the Great Beyond , I guess. But there was an incident with a Poltergeist and a beanbag chair in the shape of a cheeseburger and the mortals started asking questions. Now a more subtle approach is taken.

The room is bright with sunlight despite the shabby, deteriorating facade, a wide skylight stretching across the length of the ceiling. A massive yew tree splits through the tile floor in the middle of the room, its gnarled and knobby branches reaching up. Two comfortable chairs sit at its trunk and a large mahogany desk fills the space behind it, situated intentionally in front of a single door.

“Nolan!” A small woman with sleek blond hair waves to me from behind the reception desk, bracelets dancing up and down her wrist. She has jam on the front of her shirt and a half-eaten pastry on the corner of her desk. “What a surprise!”

The man standing patiently in front of her desk turns halfway, a worn cowboy hat tucked under his arm. He gives me a nod and I lift a hand in greeting. I don’t recognize him, but that’s not unusual. I sometimes think there might be more spiritual beings in this town than people.

Betty, the receptionist for as long as I can remember and probably a time longer than that, too, gestures toward one of the chairs. “Let me help this gentleman and I’ll be right with you.”

“Take your time. It’s not a bother.” I drop down in one of the seats and stretch out my legs beneath the tree. “I’m comfortable waiting.” I busy myself with watching the clouds through the skylight while she finishes up her low conversation with the wayward cowboy. Sitting in this room always makes me feel like I’m wedged at the bottom of a kaleidoscope. Muted, blurry colors and hushed sounds.

Harriet’s house made me feel that way, too, but with more enthusiasm. A Christmas kaleidoscope.

The candy canes. Her wild, almost-sentient hair. Those reindeer pajamas. I’ve never seen pajamas so ridiculous in my life, and that includes the time I haunted a man who thought it was appropriate to wear a spandex one-piece to sleep.

Were they a gift from someone? A joke? Did she buy them for herself?

What a strange, whimsical woman. A right pain in my ass, too.

The door behind the desk opens and shuts, and my attention darts to Betty.

“Nolan.” She beckons me forward, a jelly tart held primly in one hand. “I’m ready for you now.”

She takes a gargantuan bite, crumbs raining down the front of her blouse. Her eyes close in rapture.

I stare at her. “Are you sure? If you need a moment alone, I could come back—”

“No, no.” She finishes the rest of the tart, cheeks bulging. “A little mess with the inn on Church Circle,” she explains, words muffled by pastry and jam. She swallows and presses her fist to her mouth. “Reed is having a bit of trouble with his assignment. There’s a new owner and she insists on burning sage in the upper rooms. It displaces him every time, and he has nowhere else to go.” She gives me a tight smile. “But enough about that. What can I help you with? I don’t usually see you so early in the holiday season. How’s your assignment going?”

My assignment is a disaster. She believes nothing I say and insists on maintaining her innocence. Oh, and she demanded I come here and speak to my manager.

I scratch at my jaw. “I’ve run into a bit of a hiccup,” I hedge. “I was hoping to discuss it with Isabella.”

Betty’s face twists in sympathy. “Did your assignment try to sage you?”

“No. There was no sage involved.”

“Those cheap candles from the psychic over in Waldorf?”

“Not those either.” A good thing, too. I heard the headaches from those candles last a decade. “Just hoping for a moment of Isabella’s time, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Betty gives me a knowing look. “Well,” she says, brushing the remainder of the crumbs from her skirt. “You know Isabella.”

I do know Isabella. I’ve known Isabella since the day I dropped into her tidy office, bewildered and still soaking wet from the ocean I drowned in. She took one look at me, arched her eyebrow, and said, Why are you looking at me like that?

Like I chose to fall overboard in the middle of a winter storm.

Delicacy is not a quality she possesses.

“I’d like to see her all the same.”

Betty picks up the phone on the edge of her desk and taps out three numbers. Another pastry magically appears right next to it, like the universe or fates or whatever it is that governs this world knows she needs the fortitude.

“It’s your funeral,” she tells me.

I give her a small smile. “Wouldn’t be my first.”

She snorts a laugh. “Make sure you hold on to that sense of humor when you see Isabella.”

I hear the lazy buzz of a dial tone, a sharp voice, and then a pause as Betty explains the situation. The pause goes on for several uncomfortable seconds. Even the tree behind me rustles its leaves in agitation.

Betty returns the phone to its cradle with a wince. “She’ll see you now.”

I don’t move. “Is she mad?”

Betty knits her fingers together on the desk. She opens her mouth, closes it, then tries again. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

I sigh. “That’s a yes.”

“Best just to wait and see,” she offers. She gestures behind her at the closed door. “You know the way.”

The nondescript door behind Betty’s desk leads to an equally uninspiring hallway, the natural light swapped for the glow of fluorescents. Neatly labeled doors line either side, each office perfectly spaced at even intervals. I make note of them as I pass.

Phantoms, Ghouls, Malevolent Spirits on the left. Guardian Angels, Cupids, Conscious on the right.

Harriet’s voice drifts back to me. This is all very organized.

If she only knew.

I wasn’t joking about the staff meetings. There are quarterly reports, too. A benefits center I haven’t quite figured out how to utilize and a summer picnic we’re always expected to attend.

The door to Possessions rattles ominously as I pass it. A water cooler drips in front of Grim Reapers . I pass Poltergeists and a heated argument drifts through the door, the thick drawl of an accent rising in volume and drifting away again. I wonder if that’s where the cowboy from the lobby disappeared to.

Holiday Spirits is at the very end of the hall, marked with a dark wood door and a shiny gold handle. There used to be a jolly sprig of mistletoe over the door. I never could figure out why Isabella ripped it down.

I knock twice to the vague tune of “Jingle Bells,” hoping to curry a little favor.

It doesn’t do the trick.

“Enter,” echoes a voice from within.

I poke my head through the door first, cautious of entering fully. Isabella is already frowning, the severity of her expression somehow heightened by the blinking reindeer headband she’s wearing. Leave it to Isabella to make novelty Christmas headwear intimidating. Her dark hair is tucked neatly behind her ears, her tan skin smooth and unblemished. Sharp cheekbones. Dark, knowing eyes.

Rumor has it she died just before her twentieth birthday and was too angry over her early death to properly move on. She started in the Department of Déjà Vu, but transferred to Hauntings and Spirits sometime in the late fifteenth century. She’s been head of Holiday Spirits ever since.

Her office is just as sparse as the rest of the department, except for her desk and the bookshelf behind it. Every inch of available space is covered with snow globes of various sizes and shapes. Some are mid-flurry and others are completely still. She’s holding one with an obscure city skyline in her hands, small white snowflakes drifting lazily across the glass.

She places it to the side as I pull the door shut behind me.

“Nolan,” she greets me evenly.

“Isabella.” I dip my chin. “Always a pleasure.”

She hums, dragging one blood-red nail across the edge of a different snow globe. “You’ve either set a remarkable record or you’re here to irritate me.” She pauses. “Which is it?”

I clasp my hands behind my back. “I have not set a remarkable record.”

Her lips purse. The reindeer headband alternates between red and green.

Red. Green. Red. Green.

“What’s with the headband?” I ask. I’ve never seen her in so much as jaunty earrings.

Her face darkens. “The executive team thought I needed to show a little more holiday spirit. For team morale. Did you come here to ask me about my headband?”

“No, I—”

“The holiday potluck, perhaps?”

“Not that either. I was wondering if—”

“I presume you were wondering about something if you’re here. In my office. At the start of the holiday season.” She leans back in her chair. “Spit it out, Nolan.”

I clench my jaw and then release it. Safe to say the headband isn’t lifting any spirits today. “Am I currently involved in a training exercise?”

Her frown is a slash across her face. “What?”

“Is there a training exercise happening that I’m not aware of?”

Isabella stares at me for so long, I contemplate disappearing back through the door. I eye her warily.

“What’s today’s date, Nolan?”

I inspect the bookshelf behind her. In the middle of all the snow globes is a small, square calendar. DECEMBER 2 practically glares at me from over her shoulder.

“It’s the second day of December.”

“Correct.” She lightly touches her headband and the flipping colors switch to a steady red. It casts her face in sharp angles and shadows, the deep crimson of her lips looking a little too much like blood for my liking. She really could work in Malevolent Spirits if she wanted. I have no idea why she’s never transferred.

“And do you think,” she continues, “that on the second day of December—the very start of our busiest season—I’d orchestrate a training exercise?”

I shove my hands in my pockets, properly chastised. “No.”

“Are you in need of training, Nolan?”

“No?”

“That sounded like a question.”

“No,” I say again, making sure I clip the edge of my answer. “No, I am not in need of training.”

“You’ve been a ghost for over a hundred years. I should think not.” She taps her headband again and the blinking resumes. “Why are you here asking me about training exercises? Don’t you have work to do?”

“That’s why I’m here. There’s something wrong.”

Isabella stares at me.

“With my assignment,” I clarify. “What do you mean?”

“She’s …” Chaotic. Messy. Honest. “Young.”

“Age doesn’t define character, Nolan,” she says, dismissal in her tone and in her face. “You’ve had younger hauntings than her.”

“I know. But something feels off about this one.”

Like a book out of place on a shelf. A single note out of tune. A rope frayed in the middle. There’s something different about Harriet York, and I can’t put my finger on what it is.

“She’s nice,” I tack on awkwardly, trying and failing to articulate the bizarre conversation I had with Harriet last night. “My assignments … they’re not usually nice.”

A bit obsessed with candy canes and an irrational choice of bedwear, to be sure, but there was something about her that seemed genuine. Authentic. She told me she’s a good person and I—

I think I believed her.

That hasn’t happened before.

Isabella looks bored. “And you came to this astounding assessment of her character from one conversation?”

I scowl, some of my restraint fading in favor of frustration. “Haven’t you told me repeatedly to trust my gut?”

“You don’t have a gut,” she says, dry as a bone. “You’re dead.”

“There’s something about her that feels different.” Familiar, almost. Out of place, maybe. “I don’t think she’s meant to be haunted. I’d appreciate it if you could check if there’s been a mistake.”

Isabella’s lips flatten. She picks up another snow globe—a harbor this time, with a lighthouse in the middle. She shakes it with a graceful twist of her wrist and white obscures the glass. When the snowflakes settle, the lighthouse is wrapped in twinkling lights. A faint glow from the lantern within flares and then dims.

“I’ve been here for thousands of years, Nolan. I’ve seen every past, present, and future you could possibly imagine. I’ve seen things you couldn’t even begin to understand.” She looks up from her snow globe, her dark eyes serious. Tired. It’s the most human I’ve ever seen her.

“Mistakes aren’t made,” she says. “Not here. Not with this. You have your assignment for a reason. It’s up to you to figure out why.”

The heartbeat I don’t need begins to pound out an uneven staccato in my chest. There’s a threat in there somewhere. Or, at the very least, a warning.

“And if I don’t?”

Isabella twists the snow globe again and the light abruptly goes out. “Then you’ll face the consequences of your failure.”