Haunted Love Read Online Free Page B

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    “I was going to tell you,” Ginny says, her voice pleading. “When your profile showed up on the system, I thought it was a sign.” Her shoulder jerks, struck by the ghost. “I want the kind of love that lasts.”
    The system. “Love That Lasts.” She’s talking about the blood dealer’s matchmaking service. Ginny must have the same supplier.
    “Sonia!” she screams. “Don’t you have anything better to do? You were a loser in life, and you’re still a loser now. I told you this town would be mine someday!”
    “Murderer!” Sonia replies. “Katie, murderer!”
    So, Ginny was the one who killed Sonia. Sonia was never trying to scare her off, to protect her from me. When Sonia said “murderer,” I wasn’t the one she was talking about. Ginny had been Katie, Katherine, the girl whose body was never found.
    From her crouched position, Ginny lunges at Ben as a swath of blood appears across her torso, staining the white shirt. She knocks the axe from his hand and kicks his boots out from under him. He’s no match for her.
    Ginny can’t fight Sonia, but she could tear Ben apart.
    “Let me help him,” I say, and the ghostly force dies as quickly as it rose. I vault over the concession stand, snatch the axe from the carpet, and stand between them.
    For a moment, I see the hope in Ginny’s eyes. Unlike Ben, she knows that I’m one of her kind. She’s already admitted that she wants me. She’s already called me her “hero” twice. I slowly shake my head, leaving no doubt about my intentions.
    “You wouldn’t,” Ginny breathes as reality sinks in. She’s been beaten by me, Sonia, and Ben together. Her voice is resigned. Her last words are: “Daddy had such big plans.”
    I sever her head with the blade and, shaking, drop the axe handle.
    After a stunned moment, Ben climbs to his feet and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, man?”
    “Better now,” I say. “You?”
    “She 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.
    “I 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?”
    “Yeah, 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.
    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.
    “Come 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