Haunted Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

scholarship material. Facing down the undead has grown him up a lot.
    He doesn’t know what I am, not yet, but he took it well when I explained about Sonia. I hope that when the day comes, when he realizes I’m not just another hometown boy, he thinks back on what happened and gives me the benefit of the doubt.
    Tonight after the Ghostbusters save New York City, I thank Ben for a good night’s work, lock the front door behind him, and once again hear Sonia singing “To Know Him Is to Love Him.”
    When I look toward the voice, I see Sonia herself for the first time. She’s taken over one of my jobs, wiping down the concession counter, like it’s no big deal.
    Sonia is a see-through figure in a uniform not much different than the one Ginny wore, except that Sonia’s includes a red vest with a gold patch that reads “Love Theater.”
    I didn’t realize she was still here. I don’t get it. With Ginny gone for good, why stick around? “Sonia?”
    She raises her face, and I see the dimple, the laughing eyes. “Cody!”
    “Sonia,” I say in case she didn’t understand what happened, “your murderer has been destroyed. It’s over. You can move on now. You can, uh, go into the light.”
    Sonia tilts her head. “It wasn’t all about justice.” Her voice has a hollow quality to it. “Tell me, Cody. Do you believe in love at first sight?”
    Staring at her, God help me, I just might. I read on the Web that the more you believe in a ghost, the stronger your feelings for them, the more substantial they become.
    With each passing second, Sonia appears more solid, more alive. And I have to admit, in some ways, we would be perfect for each other. We’re both tied to this old theater, we’ll both be teenagers forever, and we’re both dead. Even better, I don’t have to worry about physically hurting her. No flesh. No blood. No problem.
    This could become more than the hope of love. It could become the real thing. But there’s something she has to be told first. She may not know what happened at my uncle’s ranch, but I thought she’d figured out what I am from the bottle of blood in the office mini fridge. I guess Sonia didn’t realize what the liquid was or maybe in her ghostly state, some details are fuzzy.
    “Sonia,” I begin again as she floats toward me. “There’s something you should know. I’m a monster, the same kind of monster —”
    Her cool fingertips press against my lips, and in her gaze, I see complete understanding, total acceptance. “No,” Sonia says. “You’re not.”



UNTIL THE NIGHT I WAS TAKEN , demonically infected, the guardian angel Zachary watched over me. Now, I watch over him.
    It’s not your average long-distance relationship. Romantic entanglements between humans and angels are rare, archaic, and discussed only in hushed tones.
    A romantic entanglement between a guardian and one of the murderous undead had been unprecedented. Then we fell in love.
    One of the consequences of Zachary’s “slipped” status is that, though
not
fallen, he’s earthbound, limited to corporeal form, and banished from the ethereal plane.
    Therefore, he’s banished from me as well . . . at least for the foreseeable future.
    Meanwhile, Zachary will continue to devote himself to counseling neophyte eternals, those who might embrace redemption like I did.
    Assuming the monster lying in wait for him around that thorny bush doesn’t pluck out his eyes, claw out his throat, and rip his glorious muscled body to bloody pieces.
    Zachary is immortal. He wears a gleaming holy sword with a gold hilt, a weapon forged in heaven. His blood is as toxic to an eternal as holy water. Yet he’s no stronger or faster than a mortal man. He can still be brutally injured. He has been in the past.
    Far, far, far above, I’m curled in a plush wing chair in a tropical lobby of the Penultimate, the way station for ascended souls immediately outside heaven. I’m one of hundreds of thousands, gazing down on loved ones,