Read Online The Ghost and The Graveyard (The Monk's Hill Witch) by Genevieve Jack - Free Book Online Page A

how I felt when he read his poem, something about ravens circling the sun.”
    Logan winced.
    “What? It was dark and romantic. We ended up in bed together.”
    His eyebrows shot toward the ceiling.
    “Don’t judge, okay? We had a thing. I’m telling you, it was like love at first sight.”
    The ghost spread his hands to the sides, palms up. “How could I judge? I don’t even have a body. I’m in no position to tell you what to do with yours.” He chuckled, and the sound was infectious, burrowing into my breastbone and buoying the memory with the lightness of social acceptance.
    “Actually, you’d be right to think it was too fast. I should’ve waited. We graduated and, as you might expect, Gary couldn’t find a job. Not a huge market for second-rate poets, unfortunately.”
    “Go figure.”
    “He moved in with me. I’m not sure when things headed south. I think he felt emasculated because I was paying the bills. Eventually he said he couldn’t go on the way things were and that he wanted to start his own business, a nonprofit bookstore that would take in donated books and sell them to fund literacy programs. It sounded like a worthy investment. So, I gave him every cent in my bank account and my credit card number for start-up expenses. Handed it right over.”
    “Let me guess, no bookstore.”
    “Nope. He took out the maximum cash advance against my card and split with the money. I never saw him again.”
    “And you couldn’t claim he stole it because…”
    “I’d given it to him. No contract. No loan papers. I trusted him in every way with every part of my life.”
    Logan frowned and folded his hands across the table, an all-too-human movement that made it hard to remember he wasn’t alive. “You can’t blame yourself for loving someone, Grateful. I may not know who I was in life, but I do remember that there are some things that just happen to you. That’s why they call it falling in love. You fall. It’s an uncontrollable act of gravity that has nothing to do with choice and everything to do with fate.”
    “You’re pretty smart for someone without a brain.”
    “Ha, ha. I have a brain. It’s just decomposing wherever my body happens to be.”
    I giggled, but the thought made me gag a little. “But see, I caused him to steal my money. It was the blonde paradox.”
    “What the hell is the blonde paradox?”
    “I’m blonde, right? And sort of look like Barbie. Well, that attracts men because their caveman brain thinks I’m more fertile. But then they assume I’m stupid due to societal stereotypes about blondes and ironically become less intelligent in my presence. It’s like my looks are toxic to a healthy relationship.”
    “Let me get this straight. You think that because of the way you look, men are drawn to you primarily for sex and then treat you like crap due to the same good looks.”
    “It’s science.”
    “I think it’s bullshit.”
    “Really.”
    The level of concentration necessary for whatever he was thinking about must have been steep, because he flickered at the edges. Silence stretched out between us. By his expression, he was turning something over in his mind, trying to think of something to say. I crossed my arms over my chest and braced myself for a judgmental commentary.
    Finally, he said, “You know what your problem is?”
    “My house is haunted and I’m broke?”
    “No. Your problem is that you’re still angry at Gary for what he did. But instead of turning that anger outward—toward Gary, where it belongs—you’ve focused it inward and convinced yourself that what happened was your fault.”
    I rolled that around in my brain. “Gary’s gone. What are you proposing? One of those letters where you write out all of your angry feelings and then never send it?”
    He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “I think I have a better idea.”
    * * * * *
     
    I poured myself a glass of wine and tried to wrap my head around what I was about to do. Logan had