Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast Read Online Free PDF Page B

okay, man?”
    â€œBetter now,” I say. “You?”
    â€œShe came after me on prom night,” he explains. “I’ve been trying to run her out of our town ever since.”
    Our town. Ben is Spirit. I’m Spirit. God knows Sonia is Spirit.
    Ginny was the new girl again, this time with a new name.
    â€œI tried to warn her off,” Ben adds. “I tried to scare her off. I went to my family for help, but nobody believed me. She didn’t seem like a vampire, you know?”
    â€œYeah, I know.”
    What happened here will stay with Ben for a long time. He isn’t the kind of person who can destroy someone else, even something else, without it weighing on him. I know how he feels and then some.

    It’s been two weeks since that night, since the last time I noticed any sign of Sonia. I already miss her. I’m sorry for
having doubted her goodness, and I’m glad that the monster who killed her will never hurt anyone again.
    Ben and I burned Ginny’s and her parents’ bodies (heads too) behind my barn. We buried the axe, which he’d taken from the mayor’s office, near my uncle.
    â€œCome spring, you might sprinkle some wildflower seed on the graves,” he said. “I mean, they were human beings once.”
    I said I would and made a mental note to sprinkle seeds on Uncle Dean’s grave too.
    The next day Ben fibbed to his aunt Betty that the Augustines had packed up and left in the middle of the night for some six-figure job that the mayor landed up north. Ben explained that Ginny told him her dad was too embarrassed to own up to running out on the town after all his big promises. He claimed that’s what their spat in the ticket line had been about.
    Betty repeated the story the next day at the beauty shop, and it’s become common knowledge since. The deputy is circulating a petition to put his own name on a mayoral ballot. I signed it last week.
    Turns out, Ben’s not a bad guy. His granddad, Sheriff Derek Mueller, had been the vampire hunter who originally chased the Augustines out of town back in the day. The sheriff had passed on what he’d seen, what he’d learned, to Ben so Ben would know what to do if the homicidal undead ever swung back through town.
    Ben has decided to work at the Old Love and save up for college. Apparently, being a good athlete by Spirit standards isn’t necessarily the same as being 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 home-town 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!”
    â€œSonia,” 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