by Tanya Huff
The chair felt real. The green and blue checked dressing gown felt real. The sound of heavy footsteps dragging chains up a flight of stairs, however...
She turned as a familiar translucent figure burst through the door.
"In life," he howled, approaching the chair, "I was your informant Tony Foster!"
Because it seemed like the safest reaction, Vicki sat back down. "You're not dead, Tony."
Tony stopped and pulled a script from the pocket of his Darkest Night show jacket. "I'm sure that was my line," he muttered, flipping pages. "It's not like I ever wanted to be in front of the cameras, oh, no, I want to direct but what do I get... Ah. Here it is. In life I was your informant, Tony Foster. That's what it says." He shoved the script back in his pocket and grinned at her. "Can I go on?"
"Why not?" Eventually, there'd be a punch line and maybe then she'd figure out what was happening.
"I have come from beyond the grave to warn you."
Now they were getting somewhere. "Warn me of what?"
He held up the end of the chain wrapped around his body. About every fifteen centimeters was a classic lunch box. Although it was hard to see them clearly, Vicki recognized Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, and Starsky and Hutch as well as assorted Star Wars, Star Treks, and superheroes. "The chain you bear was as long and heavy as this when I left Toronto and it has grown longer and heavier since."
"I'm dragging lunch boxes?"
"They're metaphors. Each box represents—Hey!" Tony pulled a bit of the chain around to look more closely at the lunch box. "Cool. The old Batman television show. Do you know how much one of these things is worth, mint?"
"Do I care?"
"Right. Do you care? That's the problem." He cleared his throat and took up his declamation posture again. "Each box represents a family commitment you blew off."
"Okay." Vicki folded her arms and frowned. "My mother died, was brought back to life, and died again. That's about all the family commitment I've had in the last few years."
"And what about Mike Celluci? I mean, he's not my first choice, but you two are tight."
"How tight Mike and I are is none of your business."
"Friends are my business!"
"I thought you were a TAD on a crappy television show.'
Tony threw back his head and howled. Lights flashed. Thunder crashed. Omnious music played. "Why do you not believe in me, O Woman of the Worldly Mind?"
Still frowning, Vicki stared at him. The music stopped. The thunder faded. The ambient light steadied. After a long moment, Tony shrugged, looking sheepish.
"Listen, Vicki..." Adjusting his chain, he sat down on a second chair that had appeared as his butt descended. ". . . sometimes you get family, sometimes you make family; you know what I mean? Like Neil Simon said, no man is an island..."
"Paul Simon. And that's not what he said."
"Whatever. What I'm getting at is even Dracula had those babes in the basement. Just because you're a member of the bloodsucking undead doesn't mean you should cut yourself off from human intercourse." He paused. Frowned. Started to snicker.
"You're laughing because you said intercouse, aren't you?" When Tony nodded, she rolled her eyes. "What are you, twelve?"
"Sorry."
"Just get on with it."
"Fine." Standing, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed. "You have one chance to escape my fate."
Vicki opened her mouth and closed it again, strongly suspecting that any questions about said fate wouldn't be answered anyway. At least not coherently.
Tony stared at her suspiciously for a moment then continued, "You will be visited by three ghosts..."
"You have got to be kidding me."
His shrug set the lunch boxes clanking. "Yeah, surprised me too. I'd have bet you were more the It's a Wonderful Life type."
"Get out."
"Expect the first when the bell tolls one!"
Before she could ask What bell? or even What part of get out do you not understand? he was gone.
Wondering just how high Mike's blood alcohol level had been and how he'd gotten it there before she fed on him this morning, Vicki blinked and found herself in an entirely different scene, lying inside the closed red brocade curtains of a huge four-poster bed. A quick glance under the covers. She was wearing blue flannel pajamas printed with dancing polar bears. Since she didn't own pajamas matching that description, or any pajamas at all for that matter, she was beginning to get a little concerned about just who was supplying the imagery.
A bell, and it sounded like a big one, tolled once.
All things considered, the sudden soft illumination through the red brocade wasn't much of a surprise.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," she muttered, sitting up and pulling the curtain back. On the far side of the room, she could just barely make out a figure in the center of a blazing circle of light. "Turn it down!" she snarled, one hand raised to protect sensitive eyes.
The light dimmed. "Better?"
"Henry?"
Glowing only slightly, Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, romance writer, ex-lover, and vampire walked toward the bed. He was wearing...
"What the hell are you wearing?"
Henry glanced down and smoothed the velvet skirt of his coat. "These are my Garter Robes. I have to say that I'm impressed by the condition they're in given that I haven't worn them in four hundred and seventy years."
"You look like..."
He bowed, right leg to the front, ass in the air, and his poofy hat nearly sweeping the floor. "A Tudor prince?"
"Yeah all right, that too." She sighed and dragged a pillow up against the headboard so she could lean back in comfort. "So what's going on? Tony told me I'd be visited by three ghosts."
"I am the first."
"No way."
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
Vicki snorted. "Well, they got the past part right."
"Not my past, your past."
She snorted again. "Then you should be wearing a mullet and leg warmers. Either way, I'm not playing."
"This isn't a game, Vicki."
"And it isn't a dream." Arms folded over the dancing polar bears, she scowled up at him. "Because we don't dream. So what is it?"
"That's not for me to say. I'm here as a guide, nothing more."
"And if I refuse to be guided?"
His eyes darkened and his smile became a scimitar slash across his face.
She felt her own Hunter rise to answer his. Lips drawn back, she threw herself out of the bed, propelled by the territorial imperative that declared vampires hunted alone. How dare Henry show up in her subconscious—or wherever the fuck they were—and challenge? "You think so? Bring it on!"
Henry stepped forward to meet her and, as they made contact, the room and the bed swirled away. When their surroundings came back into focus, they were standing on one side of a familiar room, tucked in between a green vinyl recliner and an artificial Christmas tree. A little girl, about five years old, sat cross-legged on the floor gleefully cheering on the battling plastic robots set up on the coffee table.
"Oh, my God, that's me!"
Henry pulled his cloak from Vicki's loosened grasp. "I told you—Christmas past."
"I loved those robots!" Stepping forward, she knelt at the end of the table. "Now this is what I call a toy with no socially redeeming value."
"Vicki! Uncle Stan's here."
The young Vicki jumped to her feet shrieking, "Grandma!" and raced for the kitchen leaving the red robot lying on its side, fists flailing, plastic feet paddling the air. Unopposed, the blue robot headed for the edge of the table.
"My grandmother always stayed with Uncle Stan's family at Christmastime," Vicki explained. She could almost hear Henry wondering how she'd gotten from her uncle to her grandmother. "If Uncle Stan's here, Grandma's here." She reached for the blue robot only to have it fall through her palm and bounce under the couch.
; "This is the past," Henry reminded her. "Shadows of things that were; you can't affect it."
"Which makes me think we're here in order for it to affect me." Still on her knees, she twisted around to face him. "If I'm supposed to get in touch with my inner child, you might as well take me back right now. My inner child is at a boarding school in Uruguay."
"Ah." He nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Well, we can't go back until we've seen everything. There are rules."
"Rules? You tricked me to get me here." Rolling up onto her feet, she took a step toward him.
Henry shrugged. "You're a little predictable."
"And you're a..."
A babble of voices cut her off. Her mother led the group into the living room, closely followed by her Aunt Connie holding baby Susie and trying to keep three-year-old Steve from racing straight for the tree. The last time Vicki'd seen her mother, she'd been a rotting reanimated corpse, murdered and brought back to life as part of an insane science experiment. Infinitely preferable to see her young and laughing, even if the home highlight job made her hair look horribly striped.
Young Vicki came next, walking backward, holding her grandmother's hand and listing everything Santa had brought her.
"Oh, my God, I'm wearing a Partridge Family sweatshirt."
"You're very cute."
"I'm five," Vicki snorted. "Even I could manage cute at five."
Last into the room came her dad and her Uncle Stan, conducting a spirited argument about hockey in general and the recent Toronto/Boston game in particular. Her dad, a lifelong Black Hawks fan, was loudly declaring that the Leafs' recent win had been pure luck. Her Uncle Stan, who really didn't care either way but liked to wind her dad up, was declaiming the superior firepower of the Toronto team.
"Weird," she said softly as her father scooped up her cousin Steve just as he was about to climb the tree, "I thought he was taller."
"You were five."
"I haven't been five for a long time, Henry."
Time kindly compressed opening yet more presents and the singing of Christmas carols led by Vicki's no longer decomposing mother. As the sun set, the whole family sat down to a dinner of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, frozen peas, and brown-and-serve buns.
"Good lord," Vicki muttered as the canned cranberry sauce was passed around the table, "could we have been any more middle class?"
"You look happy."
Waving an enormous drumstick, young Vicki was teaching her younger cousin how to make a dam out of potatoes so the gravy didn't touch the vegetables. She did look happy, older Vicki had to admit, but then, it didn't take much at five. "Are we finished here?"
Henry nodded. "Here, yes. Time to move on." He raised a hand and their surroundings wobbled slightly, then came back into focus.
Vicki rolled her eyes. "Wow. They clearly spent a fortune on the special effects. And in case you didn't notice..." She waved a dismissive hand at the table. "...we didn't go anywhere."
"We moved two years forward."
"Golly gee. Nothing's changed."
And then she noticed the empty place at the table.
"My grandmother..."
"Died," Henry said softly.
"She was old. People get old and they die." Even to her own ears, she sounded angry.
"She was surrounded by people who loved her, right to the end. There are worse ways to die."
Vicki remembered the way flesh felt tearing under her teeth, the rush of blood into her mouth, the feel of a life as it fled. "Yeah, well, you should know."
Henry made no response, but then what could he say? Takes one to know one. Too trite, however true.
The scene shifted again. This time, although the food hadn't changed, there were only two people sitting at the table.
"Your Uncle Stan just didn't feel right coming this year," Vicki's mother said as she spooned mashed potatoes onto a plate. "Not with your father so recently... gone."
Ten-year-old Vicki muttered something that may have been, "Sure," and slapped margarine onto a bun.
"Wow. You lose one, you lose them all." Vicki folded her arms.
"They were the closest family your mother had and they never came back for Christmas after your father..."
"...ran off with the whore half his age. Yeah, tell me something I don't know, Henry, or move on, because if you're the only thing around here I can affect, I'm about to."
His eyes darkened but before Vicki could react, the scene shifted.
There wasn't anything especially Christmas-like about Linda Ronstadt except that "Desperado" was blasting from the speakers at the police Christmas party. This was the party after the family party—a staff sergeant from 52 Division sat slumped in a chair wearing the bottom half of a Santa suit, three couples shuffled around the dance floor, a group of old-timers were scaring the piss out of a rookie with exaggerated stories of Christmas suicides, and everyone had been drinking. Heavily.
"You're on the dance floor," Henry shouted over the music, breaking into her search.
"Oh, no..."
It was that Christmas party.
Grabbing Henry's arm, she leaned toward his ear. "Let's go."
"Oh, come on, you look cute. Both of you."
Unable to help herself, she followed his gaze to one of the three dancing couples. Her younger self wore a navy blue sweater with white snowflakes embroidered onto it over a very tight pair of acid wash jeans with ankle zippers tucked into a pair of black and silver ankle boots. Fashion being slightly kinder to men, Mike wore black jeans, a black dress shirt, and a red lamé tie.
"Oh, my God."
"At least you weren't in leg warmers. I remember the eighties," Henry added when she shot him a warning glare. "And trust me, the 1780s were worse."
Both younger Vicki and younger Mike were obviously drunk. He leaned forward and murmured something into her ear. She leaned back, one hand slipped between their bodies, then she grinned and mouthed, "Where?"
"Forget it." A hand against his chest kept Henry from following the couple off the dance floor. "I know how this ends and we're not watching."
One red-gold eyebrow rose. "Why not? Are you ashamed?"
"For Christ's sake, Henry, we had sex in a stall in the women's can. I'm not proud of it." But she couldn't stop herself from grinning at the memory. "Okay, I'm not ashamed of it either but we're still not watching."
"We could..."
"No."
"Fine." Linda Ronstadt gave way to ABBA. "It seems that after the disappointment of your childhood, you learned how to celebrate Christmas."
She stared at him in disbelief. "Is that why we're here?" When his eyebrow rose again, she started to snicker. "This is the best whoever is in charge of this farce could come up with? I get drunk and done up against some badly spelled graffiti? That's their idea of a merry Christmas?"
"You didn't have a good time?"
"I had a great time." Laughing now, full out. She hadn't laughed like this in... actually, she couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed like this. A quick sidestep took her out of the path of the staff sergeant in the Santa suit as he staggered off to empty his bladder, bang on the wall between the cans, and yell at the younger them to keep it the hell down. "I had a great time at least twice," she gasped, forcing the words through the laughter. "I always have a great time with Mike if you must know, but that's not the point."
Henry was looking a little pouty and that was funny too. "Then what is the point?"
"That this is stupid." Wiping her eyes with one hand, she waved the other at the cheesy decorations and the drunk cops. "If you've got nothing better than this, you might as well call it a night! Oh, my God..." She'd almost got herself under control but the opening bars of the DJ's latest choice set her off again. "...he's going to play 'The Time Warp'!"
Snarling softly, Henry raised a hand, the party faded, and they were back in the bedroom again.
Vicki collapsed on the bed. "Thank you. I don't think I was up to watching that." Aft
er a few final snickers, she took a deep breath and sat up to find Henry staring down at her. "You're not finished?"
"Just one more thing." His eyes darkened. "Michael Celluci was the best thing that ever happened to you, as much as it pains me to admit it. He has always accepted you for what you are—opinionated, obnoxiously competitive, and emotionally defensive—and has loved you anyway. He has given you a place in his home and his heart without ever asking that you cease to walk the night. All he asks is that you spend Christmas with his family and yet your fear continually denies him this one thing."
"And it's going to keep denying him." Gripping the comforter with both hands, she kept herself from rising to answer the challenge in his eyes. "That way there's no danger of my skipping the shortbread and snacking on Aunt Louise."
"That's not what you fear."
"Cousin Jeffrey then."
"I have seen four hundred and seventy Christmases, Vicki. I know your fear."
"You know Cousin Jeffrey?"
"Vicki..."
She snorted. "You know your fears, Henry. You don't know mine."
"I know..."
"No, you don't."
"Our kind..."
"Nope."
He was going to lose control any minute, she could see it in the way he'd subtly shifted his weight. His age made the whole one-vampire-to-a-territory imperative— not to mention the one-vampire-to-a-completely- cracked-fantasy—both easier and harder to overcome. "You can be the most irritating person I have ever met," he snarled and vanished.
Vicki pulled her fingers out of the holes in the comforter and the mattress beneath and raised them over her head. "I win."
Although it didn't, unfortunately, appear that she could go home yet.
Three spirits, Tony had said.
"Next," she sighed.
Right on cue, lights blazed under the door in the wall to the left of the bed. She could hear music. Pink. "Get the Party Started."
"I wonder what happens if I just sit here?" she asked no one in particular, folding her arms and shifting her weight more definitively onto the bed.
The music got louder, the world blurred, and Vicki found herself standing in the open doorway. Across the room, sitting in a familiar tacky Santa's Workshop, wearing a familiar tacky red velvet suit, nearly buried under piles of brightly wrapped packages, was Detective Sergeant Michael Celluci.
