Chapter 23 - Holly the Gift of Spirit
– March 22, 2027
The funeral is small and wrong.
Holly Rowan Holiday is laid out in the pack clearing under the cedar tree, wrapped in the same bomber jacket she wore the day she walked into first period like she owned the world.
She's seventeen.
She should be opening presents, not lying on a stone slab with coins on her eyes and Elowene's cedar shavings in her hair.
Malik sits on the ground beside her, knees pulled to his chest, trumpet case clutched like it's the only thing keeping him breathing.
Vera stands behind him, arms crossed so tight her knuckles are white, staring at nothing.
The pack circles in silence: fifty-three coyotes minus eight.
Mom and Dad stand with me.
Seras's flames are gone; she hasn't lit a single spark since the ridge.
I step forward because someone has to.
**Celeste (voice cracking):**
"Holly came here looking for a place that still fought back.
She found it.
She gave everything to keep it standing."
I place the copper coin she used to spin on her knuckles onto the slab.
**Celeste:**
"She told me once that dying young was only tragic if you never got to choose what you died for.
She chose us."
Malik finally looks up.
His eyes are red, but dry.
**Malik (barely a whisper):**
"She hated the cold.
Said it made her curls frizz."
Vera's voice breaks the silence like a gunshot.
**Vera:**
"She was supposed to teach me how to drive stick this summer."
Seras makes a sound like a sob that never quite arrives.
Remy's hand finds mine, fingers ice-cold.
I kneel, press my forehead to Holly's cold hand.
**Celeste (whisper):**
"I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough.
I'm sorry the symbols aren't permanent yet.
I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
The bloodstone pulses once (gentle, almost maternal).
Dacia's voice, softer than I've ever heard it:
**Dacia:**
*She is not gone, child.
Only waiting.
The valley keeps its own.*
A wind moves through the cedar that has no business moving in December.
Holly's bomber jacket flutters.
For one heartbeat, the clearing smells like cinnamon and gunpowder and the particular laugh she had when she was about to do something reckless.
Then it's gone.
We burn her at dusk.
Malik plays a slow, perfect rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" on his trumpet while the flames rise green and gold and copper.
Vera throws the first handful of dirt.
I throw the last.
When it's over, Malik speaks for the first time since the ridge.
**Malik:**
"She always said if she died, we weren't allowed to mope.
She wanted a party."
Seras lights a single flame in her palm (small, steady, the first since the battle).
**Seras:**
"Then we give her one."
We go to the Ohio Club basement.
Al Capone and the boys are already there, ties loosened, pouring ghost-gin into real glasses that somehow hold it.
Frankie raises a toast.
**Frankie:**
"To Holly Holiday.
Best damn redhead we ever met.
The Choir learned the hard way: you don't mess with the Romau kid's people."
Al himself lifts a glass.
**Al (quiet):**
"Kid had style. And she has one hell of a voice.
She'll fit right in here on That Stage."
The ghosts drink.
We drink.
Malik plays again (something fast and New Orleans, the kind of song that makes dead men dance).
Vera laughs once (sharp, broken, real).
Remy holds me while I cry into his shirt until there's nothing left.
Ten pieces down.
One war won.
One friend gone.
Holly's bomber jacket hangs on the back of a chair in the basement now, sleeves too long, never to be filled again.
But her laugh echoes in the jazz every time the record spins. She comes up on stage in the Speakeasy
And somewhere in the mist-space, Dacia shows me a new Vinča symbol.
It looks like curling fire and a crooked smile.
The sign for **remember**.
I copy it in blood until my hand bleeds.
I'll copy it every night for the rest of my life if I have to.
Because Holly Rowan Holiday died so the rest of us could keep choosing to live.
And I'm never letting the world forget her name.
The Girl Can Sing
, March 31st, 2027**
The Ohio Club basement has never been louder.
It's almost midnight, and the living are upstairs counting down with champagne and Auld Lang Syne.
Down here, time stopped meaning anything in 1933.
Al Capone leans against the bar, cigar glowing like a tiny red moon.
Frankie Yale is pouring ghost-gin that somehow never empties.
The boys are laughing in that rough, eternal way dead gangsters have when they know they won.
And on the little stage that wasn't there last week, Holly Rowan Holiday is singing.
She's wearing a 1920s copper-flapper dress that shimmers like real fire, curls bigger than life, bomber jacket slung over the piano like she just walked in from 2027. And She has that ghostly glow with a smile so lively.
Her voice is smoke and honey and every reckless thing she ever was.
**Holly (crooning into a microphone made of moonlight):**
"Bye-bye blackbird…
Nobody here can love or understand me…
Oh, what hard-luck stories they all hand me…"
Every ghost in the room is staring like she hung the moon.
Al actually has tears in his eyes (real ones, silver and impossible).
When she hits the bridge, the piano starts playing itself (some long-dead jazz cat who never left the bench).
Holly locks eyes with me across the room and winks.
She's dead.
She's radiant.
She's exactly where she belongs.
Between songs she hops off the stage, barefoot on the sawdust floor that smells like gin and gunpowder, and punches Frankie Yale in the arm.
**Holly (grinning):**
"You said the afterlife would be boring, Yale.
Liar."
**Frankie (rubbing his arm, delighted):**
"Kid, you sing like that every night, I'll take boring and burn it."
Al pulls her into a side-hug, careful, like she's made of something precious.
**Al (quiet, proud):**
"You're family now, Red.
Hot Springs keeps its own.
Forever gig, if you want it."
Holly looks over at me, Remy, Seras, Malik, Vera (all of us crammed into a booth that definitely shouldn't fit five living teenagers and one very alive ghost).
**Holly (voice soft, just for us):**
"I'm okay, guys.
Better than okay.
I get to sing for the hardest crowd in history, and nobody ever tells me to turn it down."
Malik's hand finds the empty space where her shoulder used to be when we sat together.
Vera raises her glass (the one she hasn't put down since the funeral).
**Vera (hoarse):**
"To the best damn redhead in any century."
We drink.
Holly hops back on stage, spins once so the dress flares like living flame, and launches into "Ain't Misbehavin'" like she was born to it.
The boys cheer.
The ghosts dance (slow, careful, like they're afraid she'll vanish if they step wrong).
I lean into Remy and feel the tears come again, but they're the good kind this time.
**Celeste (whisper):**
"She's really home."
**Remy (arm tight around me):**
"Yeah.
Downstairs counts."
Midnight hits upstairs.
Down here, time doesn't matter.
Holly finishes the song, bows with a flourish, and the entire speakeasy loses its mind.
She catches my eye one last time and mouths two words I'll carry forever:
**Thank you.**
I mouth back:
**Thank you for choosing us.**
The piano starts again.
Holly Holiday sings like the dead have all the time in the world.
And down here, under the streets of Hot Springs, they do.
Forever gig.
Forever family.
The girl with the copper curls found her stage.
And every night from now on, when the living go to bed, the ghosts get the best show in town.
Holly Rowan Holiday, resident redhead of the afterlife, singing for Capone and the boys until the sun burns out.
Some deaths aren't endings.
Some are just encore after encore after encore.