Characters: Tracey & Atwell Locale: Bannerstone Date: 10 December Warnings? A little trash talking never hurt anyone.
Though sorely tempted to spoil Atwell’s Christmas present by putting it on to dance, Tracey favored the more generous portions of her spirit and elected instead to play an old favorite.
While the ghost moped in the garden, reciting Yeats, no doubt, Tracey recovered the gramophone from the attic and carried it with no small measure of effort down the winding stair to the second floor landing, and down then the less precarious but decidedly more cluttered main stair to the ground floor.
Though his life had been long over before the height of the American musical, if there was anything true in the Davis line it was a tendency to indulge the family ghost. Tracey's grandmother, who had scandalously courted a Muggleborn, had left behind a slew of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland records, all of which Atwell had squirreled away when she had outgrown the interest, and the boy.
Just as this was not the first holiday Tracey spent without corporeal company, so it was not the first with Bannerstone serving as a makeshift Holiday Inn.
Displacing back issues of Witch Weekly and mugs quarter-filled with red wine, Tracey deposited the gramophone on the parlour table and slid the 1942 record out of its pristine sleeve. Without a barre, she began to stretch at the window sill, stockinged foot tracing through the accumulated dust.
It did not take long for Atwell to drift through the fireplace, an earthly color granted his cheeks by the blaze.
"Virginia Dale was a tramp, you know."
For a spirit that could not move on to the next plane of existence, Atwell looked exceedingly bored with the world of the living. Knowing him better despite his vain assertions, Tracey grinned.
"Don't be jealous, Atwell," she teased, humming as she arched back, creating a teardrop space between her body and her arm as it extended to her ankle.
"I'm hardly jealous, girl," Atwell scoffed with a self-important shake of his head. "Astaire was a Scorpio."
With a laugh, Tracey improvised a few steps away from the window, limbs fluid. In her movements there was the play of her formal training, her clandestine love of the Muggle stage, and nights in the smoky, secret clubs of London. The blend was strangely complimentary to Tracey's trim figure, an unrestrained joy in the dance that was rarely seen in her instruction.
When the chorus came 'round, Atwell and Tracey both launched into harmony, neither of them very well but with enthusiasm enough to make up for any deficiency in skill.
"They'd both have gone for me in my navy silk suit," Atwell continued, tripping a few steps himself.
Tracey pressed a kiss to the top of her hand and waved it in Atwell's direction, which was what she had done since she was a very small girl in light of being unable to kiss the ghost's cheek.