The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand

Author:Cynthia Hand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

TIME STARTED TO FLY. THIS is the part where, if my life were a movie, there’d be a montage, and you’d see Ethan and me on a series of dates all throughout that fall: tasting our way through the delights of Chelsea Market, wandering the High Line slurping Popsicles, watching Shakespeare in Central Park. The trees started to turn red and the air finally cooled. At least once a week Ethan and I met at the left lion and wandered the city together, almost always outside, away from the reach of Dave’s prying cameras. It was nice, being with Ethan. It was more than nice. It felt . . . normal. Like I was a normal girl, instead of a dead one. I was alive.

It was also complicated. I wanted to be with Ethan, but what did that mean for Christmas? For the Project? For me?

These were questions I didn’t know how to answer. I just knew I had to keep seeing him.

Then one day I was in a meeting that was going just fine until Dave said, totally out of the blue, “Oh, I almost forgot,” and took a photograph out of his folder and slid it to the center of the table. “I think she might be Ethan’s Belle.”

The Belle was my job, not Dave’s. So I was understandably surprised.

“What?” I grabbed the eight-by-ten and pulled it toward me. It was a surveillance photo from one of Dave’s cameras. It was a bit grainy, but you could still tell that this girl was gorgeous. She was wearing a white Badgley Mischka gown that made my breath catch, with a high front and a swooping back, a jeweled belt at the waist. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a simple, sleek ponytail. Clean, minimal makeup. A breathtaking beaded handbag.

“Where is this?” I asked.

“A fund-raiser Ethan attended last week,” Dave answered.

Well. I was of the opinion that you should never wear that kind of dress to a fund-raiser—not in white. Too bridal. And Ethan was meeting a girl at a fund-raiser last week? I’d seen him two days ago, and he had never said anything about it.

My stomach did this weird twisty thing.

“Who is she?” Boz asked.

“I was hoping Holly could tell me,” Dave said. “I only know that when she showed up at the dinner, Ethan began to act strangely. Like they had a history.”

A history. I swallowed.

“I haven’t seen her in Ethan’s head before,” I said. I was reasonably sure, anyway. Not that I had been looking very hard yet for the Belle. I wasn’t too eager to see memories of Ethan with another girl, even one who broke his heart. I guess that was because the Scrooge was usually still secretly pining away for the Belle. Which was what made her such an effective tool on Christmas.

I coughed. “So far it’s been like you said: Ethan’s got a different girl at every party. But no one special. No ex-girlfriend.”

“Maybe I’m wrong.” Dave smiled vaguely. “It was just intuition on my part, nothing solid.

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