Kiss And Dwell Read Online Free PDF Page B

said, waving them on. And she was. Now that the burning had stopped and she had the letter in hand, she was all set to take on this assignment, help some ghost find his or her way home, then return to her life in progress. And if she was lucky, return to Pierre Comeaux sometime in the not too distant future.
    She ran her finger beneath the edge of the envelope and listened to the soft crack of the paper giving way as it opened. Then she withdrew three pages from inside. The first was her grandmother ’ s letter on her usual pale purple stationery. Placing the two plain white sheets in her lap, Monique unfolded Adeline ’ s request. A cut lace border created a scalloped edge around the page and instantly reminded Monique that this piece of paper had somehow traversed the boundary between the living and the dead and, in the process, provided her another chance to communicate with her feisty grandmother. “ Hello, Granny, ” she whispered, then laughed when she saw the big blank space in the center of the page.
    Adeline Vicknair had passed on when Monique was ten. During the decade when they ’ d both lived on this side, Monique had made it no secret that she wasn ’ t enamored with the family duty of helping spirits. She ’ d told her grandmother on plenty of occasions that she ’ d do it if she had to, but she wouldn ’ t like it, and she wanted to know as little as possible about the ghosts that she helped .
    Thankfully, GrandmaAdeline had taken her granddaughter ’ s comments to heart, as evidenced by the empty ‘ Reason for Death ’ section on the page. She knew Monique didn ’ t want to know how the ghost died. She simply wanted to get the job done and get back to her life.
    Taking a deep breath, Monique read the information at the top of the page.
    Name of Deceased—Ryan Chappelle .
    Monique had a female customer at her salon whose name was Ryan; she also had two male customers with the same name. She wondered whether this ghost was male, as she ’ d suspected earlier. Not that it mattered. She ’ d do her job, either way, and then she ’ d hope she wouldn ’ t be summoned for, oh, a good year. In her dreams .
    She ’ d never gone more than three weeks without Grandma Adeline “ doing her thing. ” Monique let her eyes roam to the remaining information, written in her grandmother ’ s swirling script, at the bottom of the page.
    Requirement for Passage—Learning to Love.
    Monique blinked, squinted at the words, then frowned. Learning to love? What did that mean? Her previous assignments had been basically the same. They were all relationship problems and typically involved the same directive. Forgive spouse .
    Hug mother. Tell a child that he or she was loved. Tell a parent that he or she was loved. Something along those lines. But learning to love? And did that mean that the ghost Monique was about to be saddled with for however long it took for her to sort the problem out, usually a couple of days, was some kind of non-loving, uncaring weirdo?
    “ Come on, Granny, what were you thinking? ” she asked, as a loose shutter flapped
    smartly against the side of the house. Monique turned to stare at the window generating the noise and wondered if her grandmother was able to do that from up there.
    Probably.
    “ Okay, ” Monique said with a sigh, “ I didn ’ t say I wouldn ’ t do it. I ’ m just a little surprised you sent this one my way. ”
    Twisting back around on the settee, she flipped the purple page over, placed it on the armrest, then moved to the second sheet. As usual, it listed rules for dealing with the spirits. Monique could recite them by heart, but she was required to read the pages in their entirety before her assignment officially began.
    She paused when she got to the no-touching rule. When had it been added? The first few guidelines seemed extremely professional, then the last one appeared to have been tacked on at some point over the years. She wondered which of her