The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

pot. “I hardly believe it myself. If not for seeing you earlier in the shed, and your appearance now … though you are not exactly here , are you?”
    He furrowed his brow and stepped around the cage to sit beside me.
    The cushion dented beneath his weight and I wondered upon the strange physical rules binding him. A bucket, when tossed his direction, couldn’t touch him; yet he affected things around him to some degree.
    “What do you mean, not here?” His voice lowered, tentative.
    I looked him in the eyes, their light shadowed by thick, dusky lashes. “You are dead … a spirit without a form. A ghost .”

Chapter 3
    Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Chinese Proverb
     
    “A … ghost.” My guest looked on the verge of either amusement or hysterics. It was obvious he thought me mad.
    I glanced at his boots, noticing for the first time that something was clumped and dried upon them. It seemed familiar, though I couldn’t place it. “What is that?” I asked. It looked like blood, but was too thick. “Some sort of mud. Where is it from? Such an odd color.”
    He scraped his right heel with his left. “Color?” As if an afterthought, he glanced at the wavering fire. “No. Everything is varying shades of gray. Even the flames.”
    I shook my head. “There must be some sort of visual boundary between your realm and mine.”
    “My realm and—?” His mouth tensed to a line. “Not this death madness again. I’ve woken up in a bloody sanatorium.”
    “I agree it does feel like one. Considering I'm as deaf as the night is dark. Yet here I am conversing with you,” I clamped my lips shut, sealing them tight to prove my point, with or without using my tongue .
    He launched himself off the cushion and stumbled backward several steps, staring at me in repulsion. “Stop doing that! It is you that is a ghost. You're haunting me!”
    Aria ruffled her feathers and opened her bill on a screech that I couldn’t hear. Worried her tantrums might bring Enya running, I draped her cage with the silken cloth used to settle her to sleep at night while still keeping my finger on the flower’s petal.
    “No, Sir Hawk.” This time, I moved my lips. “I can hold and touch things.” I rolled the flower pot at my sternum. “You cannot.”
    “You're daft.”
    I stood. The throw’s fringe tickled my toes. “All right. What happened to your gloves?”
    He shook his head. “I dropped them.”
    “Then find them.”
    His gaze jerked around the room, desperate. “But … they fell. Right there.” He gestured to Aria’s cage. “Somewhere beneath.”
    I stiffened my chin. “They were only real while you wore them. Once you took them off, they vanished—ceased to exist.”
    He glared at me. Unbuttoning his jacket, he shrugged out of the sleeves and draped it over his elbow. Then, holding my gaze, he pulled off the cravat. His shirt lapels folded open to reveal a strong chest with a slight furring of dark hair.
    I’d never seen a man’s naked chest before and looking away proved a very difficult task.
    “Interesting,” he baited. “It appears my clothes are still here. You're playing me for a fool.” The cravat dangled from his fingers like a white flag of surrender, a stark contrast to the challenge in his voice.
    I’d been holding onto the pot and the flower for so long, my hands were falling asleep. “Let the jacket and cravat fall free of your touch.”
    He narrowed his eyes and released them. We both watched the clothing vanish the moment it met the floor, all but the pocket watch inside his jacket. It stayed intact and hit the rug with a thump I felt in my feet.
    Why didn’t it disappear, too? Perhaps it being made of metal played a role.
    He started to tug his shirt from his pants, staring at the place on the floor where his jacket and cravat should have been. He studied my face. “Show me how you did that.” He began to work his wrists free from his ruffled sleeves.
    “You would do well