A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.

Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.

Chapter 8 - Spirited

10 Days 'Til Christmas:

"You're here, where you should be. Snow is falling as the carolers sing, la la la la lah. La la la la la lah!"

I sang the song absently and hummed the parts I wasn't sure about while my Christmas playlist played low in the background, and I reviewed the latest passage I'd typed up.

"Bella."

"Yeah?" I replied distractedly.

"I know this is neither here nor there…"

At the uttering of the now-familiar refrain, I looked up from my screen at the ghost of-

No.

No, I'd stopped thinking of Edward Masen as a ghost over the past few days. For the most part. Definitely other than for when he went around doing crazy shit like popping in and out of places or lifting objects into midair and leaving them to float there. At that point, I couldn't very well avoid the fact that he was a ghost, could I?

The thing was, unless he was doing one of those supernatural things, he didn't look or act like a ghost or like what I'd been warned over the years to look out for from ghostly apparitions. Even the literary experts – Dickens, Shakespeare, King, etc. – got it wrong. And don't even get me started on ghost movies. They had no clue!

Which was where I would now come in. I, Isabella Marie Swan, was writing the first-ever first-person interview with a ghost.

First of all, there was no shrieking or shrill screams. Nor did green ectoplasm trail behind Edward's footsteps – thank the Lord Almighty, or else that might've brought on the piercing shrieks and screams from me. Neither did white sheets go missing or float from room to room. He didn't levitate, nor was he transparent or shimmery. In fact, Edward looked like your average guy – where average here only meant that there was nothing incorporeal or spectral about him.

Because Edward was anything but average.

He was over six feet tall – well above a typical, average man's height. And though he had a lean frame, his broad shoulders, the crisp shirt that tightened rather impressively around his biceps, and the hairy, sinewy forearms that peeked through when he folded back his shirt sleeves all hinted at an athletic build under that three-piece suit. Why, more than once, I'd found myself wondering what I'd find if I-

Ahem. Never mind what I'd found myself wondering.

Edward had an abundance of lush hair on his head, too, a shade that couldn't be described as brown or red but rather a rich in-between, like copper. His jaw was so angular that I made myself crack up sometimes, if I was bored, by picturing his jaw actually cracking nuts for me like my own personal brand of nutcracker.

Seriously, the saying 'It broke the mold' could've been invented for Edward's jaw. The rest of his features followed the same classical lines of masculine perfection because Edward Masen was possibly the most gorgeous specimen of a man I'd ever seen.

There, I'd said it. Or written it. And how un-feminist was that?

But he was more than his good looks. Over the past few days, I'd discovered that Edward had a dry sense of humor. He was smart and a quick learner, even if the cantankerous and broody fucker in him still made occasional appearances. Sometimes, we'd be in the middle of a conversation, or he'd be helping me tackle a project around the house, and suddenly, he'd grow quiet.

But, I was beginning to learn the topics that set him off, and I rarely took offense anymore. In those moments, I'd recall that, regardless of everything "average" about him, Edward Masen was not an average…man. He'd been taken from the world in his prime. He'd left behind a pregnant girlfriend. A close cousin. A stash of cash.

He'd never met his child.

So, who could blame him for quiet introspection or sudden bewilderment after everything he'd been and not been through?

At our first interview, Edward had provided me with this and more in a "Prologue," as he called it. It was a summary of the events that led up to his unfortunate death – although the moment of his demise itself, he couldn't recall. In my opinion, this, at least, was a blessing.

The following night, I'd thanked him for his frankness by sharing my own prologue-of-sorts – a tale involving a wealthy, bigoted great-aunt, her determined yet dissatisfied great-niece, and a deep bowl of mashed sweet potatoes.

Then there were the parts we'd rapidly skipped over by unspoken agreement.

Over the past few nights, I'd barely slept because whether we wordlessly and/or mutually agreed to ignore those parts, for now, they were out there, and why had I seen his green eyes in my mind's eye, even before I bought this house? Who was the dark-haired woman he saw in his mind, a century ago, seated next to him in this house? How could any of it be possible?

Along with these internal musings, I had a novel to write and a home renovation going on. All of which were why I was only catching the minimum number of nightly zzzs required. There was simply too much to do, too much excitement…too many conversations with a man who'd lived through World War One, through Prohibition, through the passing of the nineteenth amendment and through changing sexual mores. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve, only I wasn't a kid, and every day now felt like Christmas Eve.

And…I was pretty sure Edward felt somewhat similar, if not the same, about our interactions. Yeah, yeah, he pretended to complain about my presence in this house, in his house, as he still saw it. But he'd been alone for a long time. And…I liked to think we were more than interviewer and interviewee cohabitating in the same Victorian. I wanted to think we were becoming friends.

Although why he haunted the house was one of the many questions that kept me awake at night.

Anyway, back to this evening.

Edward and I were seated across from one another at the kitchen table, with just enough distance between us to ensure the freaky, dizzying – yet undeniably enjoyable – zing that struck me whenever we ventured too close, behaved itself. I planned to look it up when I had some time, to see if Google had a clue about what that zap might be. But what would be the proper wording for a search like that?

What does it mean when you get too close to the incredibly good-looking ghost you're interviewing, and sparks literally fly?

Ahem. Yeah, I'd have to give that search some thought.

Besides, after how wrong Dickens, Shakespeare, and M. Night Shyamalan had gotten their lore, I wasn't sure I trusted the info out there.

So, despite the necessary distance between us, when Edward hesitantly interrupted and I looked up, I was struck anew by the vibrancy in his eyes. Their emerald sparkle contrasted with the evening view through the windows behind him – a night set aglow by a full moon, by a blanket of sparkling snowflakes falling softly over the Olympic Range…and by those eyes. He was languidly relaxed, with an elbow resting on the table and his arm bent so that his hand cradled that rugged jaw. Clearing my throat, I forced myself to focus.

"No problem. What's up?"

Edward gave the snacks I'd set between us a perusal.

"Is it or is it not accurate to assume that…nowadays, mashed beans such as the ones you're currently consuming are somehow considered a delicacy?"

I quirked an eyebrow. "This is the question that occupies your thoughts right now."

"Very much so, yes."

For a moment, our gazes held. Then sighing, I shook my head and muttered. "I may have overestimated his intelligence. First, they're called garbanzos," I added more loudly. "Or chickpeas if you can't say it the other way."

"Mashed garbanzos or chick peas," Edward repeated, though, by the smirk he wore, I suspected he'd heard my muttered comment. "And your sotto voce, Miss Swan, is nowhere near as sotto voce as you seem to think."

With unrepentant laughter, I bit into a crunchy, hummus-infused celery stick. When I used it to point at him, he glared at it as if I'd threatened him with a poisonous snake.

"Edward, hummus has been around for thousands of years. Just because your ethnocentric generation may not have known about it doesn't make it a novelty. I swear, sometimes you sound like my Aunt Gigi," I scoffed.

"Your Aunt Gigi," he nodded blandly, "the dead aunt you may or may not have accidentally murdered via a bowl of sweet potatoes."

"The very one. Why don't you just try it rather than glaring at it?"

Ignoring my suggestion, he moved on to my drink, picking up the bottle.

"Kom-Booh-chah," he read, exaggerating the middle syllable.

I smirked at him. "I see what you did there."

"I thought you might like that," he snickered.

It was the first time I'd heard Edward snicker, and the sound brought an undeniably warm smile. Meanwhile, he rotated the bottle and read the ingredients label. When his striking emerald eyes met mine again, his were wide and round.

"Why the hell would anyone willingly drink this? It sounds like a science experiment gone awry."

"Give me that." I plucked the bottle away from him, meaning to teach him a thing or two about the health benefits of Kombucha to gut health. In my haste, a few droplets tumbled over the bottle's rim and splashed onto the floor.

Edward sucked his teeth. He quickly snatched up my napkin and crouched down to wipe up the spill.

"I certainly hope this isn't corrosive," he muttered.

"How the hell would I drink it if it was corrosive?"

Craning my neck like a giraffe, I watched him from the other side of the table. There was something…interesting about watching him wipe down the floor in his three-piece suit, with his shirt sleeves rolled over his hairy forearms, scrubbing so hard to get those few drops of Kombucha off the wood floors that his biceps strained under his shirt. In fact, it was so interesting that my eyebrows rose, and I bit my lip.

"I've got to say, your generation's taste in food and drink baffles me."

"Says the man whose generation used to mix drinks in the bathtub," I replied vacuously.

So caught up in the interesting sight was I that my stupid reflexes failed me when Edward's head shot up. Startled, I overcompensated as I flew back, and the chair toppled backward.

"Whoa!" I squeezed my eyes shut and waited to make contact with the floor.

My backward descent stopped suddenly. I opened my eyes and found myself horizontal, though about an inch from the floor. A pair of green eyes hovered above me.

And there went that heat.

In the next moment, my chair was upright. Edward was back in his seat across from me. He shot me a somewhat flustered, exasperated look.

"What just happened?"

"What seems to happen often with you, Miss Swan."

"Oh, shut up," I chuckled. "But thanks."

For a few moments, we just smiled at one another.

"I'm definitely going to have to research…that," I said.

He offered me a slow nod in reply.

OOOOO

The bed banged rhythmically against the wall.

Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!

Green eyes hovered above me.

Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!

"Yes, yes, yes!"

Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!

My eyes popped open.

Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!

"What the-"

I gasped when I realized what it was, then sat straight up in bed. Outside my bedroom window, the morning glittered after last night's falling snow.

Bang, bang, bang!

"Fuck!" I spat. Throwing back the warm covers, I jumped out of bed and hastily donned my red terry robe.

Bang, bang, bang!

"Coming, coming!" I called out, throwing open the bedroom door. I sprinted barefoot to the staircase, giving a startled, backward jump when I looked down and found Edward at the bottom landing. His flustered gaze met mine.

"Now, don't trip down the stairs, but there's been someone at the door for the past ten minutes."

I rolled my eyes and ran down the stairs. "No shit, Sherlock, and you could've come and woken me!"

"Come into your bedroom? While you slept?" he asked, as if I'd invited him to enter the third dimension of Hades. "I couldn't do that."

"Whatever. Get out of the way so I can pass by without that mind-swoon-thingy striking me!"

"Oh," he said, only then appearing to remember it and briskly stepping away from the landing just before I reached it and rushed past him.

"Did you say mind-swoon-thingy?" He laughed heartily behind me.

Bang, bang, bang! "Hello?" The person on the other side of the door now called out impatiently.

"Eff you, Edward," I yelled back. "Coming, coming!"

My hand shot forward to pull open the front door and went right through the doorknob.

Gasping loudly, I pulled my hand back and just…stood there, heart racing in stunned bewilderment.

Bang, bang, bang! "Hello!" The person on the other side shouted again while I remained frozen.

"Bella?" Edward called from behind me. "What's wrong?"

Ignoring him, I slowly moved my hand to the doorknob again, sighing in relief, then internally laughing at myself when my palm made easy purchase with cold brass.

'I need a good night's sleep, minus heavy questions and dirty dreams,' I thought to myself as I pulled the front door open, just as the woman on the other side prepared to knock again.

"Miss Hale." I smiled and panted, moving aside and gesturing the scowling, professional furniture restorer forward. "I'm so sorry. I overslept. Please, come in, come in."

A/N: Thoughts?

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