AN: Alright, it's looking like three chapters instead of two. Not because of length; I just liked where the break came. Enjoy, treat me to a review if you've got a minute. Make my Christmas. :)


"Nothing I do could ever make you happy, Annie!"

It wasn't true. Mitchell made Annie happy, of course he did. Loads and loads of happy. Happy, happy, happy, that was Annie Claire Sawyer, to a T.

Except that it wasn't. Not today. And Annie should have been happy. She loved the snow, loved the holiday season and all its cheer. It was the one time of year when people could be counted on to be lovely to one another. Strangers could greet each other on the streets with warmth and perform all the little acts of kindness that, to Annie's mind, should be common occurrences year round.

Only, Annie wasn't a part of that world anymore, was she? She couldn't bump shoulders with strangers and stutter half-laughing apologies afterward; She couldn't exchange smiles and pleasantries in Christmas-clad shops smelling of gingerbread and holly. Instead, here she was, frozen in the house where she died, packed away like Mitchell's sad little tree in its sad little box.

Because that's all that she was now: A dead thing, presenting an illusion of life.

After a time, Annie rose from her huddle below the mail slot. She drifted into the kitchen. Mechanically, she took down a box of mixed Tetley teas and filled a kettle with water. Steam sang, and she poured a measure into a pink ceramic mug, then selected a teabag at random. George found her a half hour later, spilling ghostly tears into a frigid cup of watery Earl Grey.

George stomped snow across the checker-tiled foyer and peered into the kitchen. "Annie? What's wrong?"

Annie snuffled and dunked the Earl Grey. It was just an automated movement her hand made, up and down, sliding the bag up the side of the mug, down again. "George, I've done something awful." She looked up with such an expression of guilt and misery that George feared a dead body must be stashed somewhere in the house. He glanced toward the ceiling, wondering where Mitchell was, whether he was busy running damage control along the knife-blade edge of some looming catastrophe.

"He's not here," said Annie, reading his thoughts. She released Earl Grey into his cold bath. "George, I was terrible to him." She burst into a fresh wave of tears. "I - I sent him away, and I shouldn't have, he hadn't done anything wrong. He was so hurt, I could see it in his eyes, but I still couldn't stop myself! It was all just so stupid, I was so stupid..."

"Slow down, Annie. What happened?" George sat down and wrapped Annie's shaking shoulders into a one-armed hug.

Annie explained about her first snow tradition and how she had sent Mitchell out to buy a Christmas tree, even though she could see how tenuously he had been clinging to control. Dangerously, stupidly, selfishly, she had brushed his feelings aside in her desperation to foist a cheer on the house that she didn't even feel. Then Mitchell had innocently made his grievous faux pas of coming back carrying an artificial tree, and everything had come crashing down in the most painfully ridiculous manner.

"He even had a fair point," Annie hung her head. "He said that since you'd done in the live tree we had last year -"

George groaned. Christmas Eve the preceding year had fallen two nights before the full moon. George had been showing all his usual wolfy signs, sniffing out day-old milk, complaining whenever Mitchell turned the stereo above a whisper, and generally testing the tensile strength of his vampire housemate's nerves. Later that night, George rose for a midnight ramble to relieve his bladder. For some reason eschewing the bathroom, George had instead dropped trou in the living room and addressed his need to the Christmas tree. His stream hit a bobble head elf dangling from the center branches, then arced over the string of lights. The lights, overlarge, vintage bulbs, purchased from a secondhand shop at Annie's insistence for their nostalgic appeal, unfortunately predated even the most basic safety requirements of indoor bulbs. The resulting shock woke George most rudely at the same time a small fire was incited n the boughs of the tree.

George's resounding shrieks brought Annie and Mitchell flying downstairs, where they found George alternately beating flames with a throw pillow and gesturing in wild outrage at his crotch. Although groggy, Mitchell had presence of mind enough to douse the electrical fire with an extinguisher rather than water, and they all spent Christmas morning in hospital with George while he recovered from the unfortunate shock to his manhood. After much hushed discussion in the hospital room, the three could only surmise that, with his sense of smell in such a heightened state, George had caught the fresh, strong scent of live pine coming from the living room and, half-asleep in a dream state, wandered into an imaginary forest to relieve himself in the arms of nature.

Annie's magnificent tree, once the hidden masterpiece of Totterdown, if not all of England, spent the holiday alone, in a state of singed disgrace.

"Yes, moving on," George cleared his throat with an aggrieved tic of his head.

Annie explained what she hadn't been able to say to Mitchell before. "I'm the fake tree, don't you see?"

"How do you mean?" George creased his brow.

Outside, snow swirled thickly against the window panes. Annie shook her head sadly. "I'm an illusion, I'm nothing. Just a tacky imitation of life."

George began to see, perhaps better than Annie herself. "And Mitchell?"

Annie furrowed her brow. "What do you mean?"

"Is Mitchell nothing? Just a tacky imitation?"

"Oh!" Annie's eyes opened wide. That the same logic could be extended to Mitchell had not occurred to her. Once George pointed it out, she felt terrible and hoped Mitchell hadn't made the same connection. It would have hurt him further. "But it's more than that, George. Mitchell can talk to people. He can touch them. It's different for him."

"I thought you were doing better with that now."

"I - I can't be seen again," the ghost whispered. "I went out yesterday to empty the bins and a man fell off his bicycle he was so shocked. The bin bag must have looked like it was floating. So I dropped it and popped back inside before he could pick himself up and look again. At least I remembered not to use the door." She chuckled dismally. "Mitchell would have been proud."

"Mitchell would have understood, Annie. You could have told him."

"Oh, I know, George! That's what makes it so much worse!" Annie went to stand at the window, arms wrapped around herself. The window was a sheet of white. "I was just so bent on feeling sorry for myself that I tore him down with me. Oh, George, he could be anywhere right now, and the way he looked when he left... George, I'm very worried."

George was already getting his coat. "I'll find him, Annie. I'm sure he's fine. He's likely just holed up in a pub waiting out the snow."

Annie gave George a weak slip of sun then turned back to the window. "I'm sure you're right. But I won't be able to stop worrying until I see him back home and I can apologize."


George was not sure that Mitchell was fine. He had seen his vampire friend on bad days; nothing was more disquieting than when Mitchell was poised at the outer limit of his humanity. On those days, Mitchell might easily fling himself into the void and luxuriate in every grisly second of free-fall.

The New Found Out had seen neither hide nor unkempt Irish hair. George had expected as much; the pub was not among Mitchell's usual hangouts. For an hour, George fought through icy winds, following a string of likely watering holes for several blocks before admitting defeat and returning home with stinging eyes and chapped cheeks. Annie met him at the door, a grim question in her eyes. George shook his head and shrugged, gagged into momentary silence from the cold in his throat. Annie's face fell.

"Annie, this doesn't necessarily mean anything bad has happened," George began once he could speak. "Mitchell's been at this for a while now. We should trust him. He can control himself." George tried to chase the note of doubt from his voice.

Annie nodded. She walked to the open door, hugging herself against a cold she couldn't feel. Across the street, the wind tore a wreath from a door. "Alright. He'll be fine. He'll come back after he's cooled down, that's just how he is. I can accept that. I trust him." Annie spoke calmly, surprising George. "But in the meantime," she said, stopping George before he could shuck his rigid coat, "will you bring the tree in?" She pointed to a rectangular hump in the snow.

George smiled. "He'll like that."

Annie forced a cheery expression. Her stomach contracted into a knot. "I hope so," she said.