8
Death of a Bachelor
BEN’S GAZE FELLon mine as soon as I said his name. His eyes were dark and wide and—confused. The slightest crease between his eyebrows deepened as he recognized me. “M-Miss Day?”
I slammed the door closed.
Oh, no. Ohno, no, no.
This wasn’t happening. I didn’t see anything. It was a trick of the light. It was my overworked brain. It was—
“Florence?” Mom called from the parlor. “Who is it?”
“Um—no one,” I replied, my hand curling tighter around the doorknob. The faintest outline of the figure still stood in the doorway, shadowed in the stained glass. He wasn’t gone. I closed my eyes, and let out a breath. Nothing was there, Florence.
No one was there.
Not your dad, and not the crazy-hot editor who was mostcertainlynot dead.
I opened the door again.
And there Benji Andor stood as he had before.
Ghosts didn’t look like they did in the movies—at least from my experience. They weren’t mangled, flesh rotting off their bones. They weren’t pale as if some unfortunate actor had a bad run-in with baby powder, and they didn’t glow like Casper. They shimmered, actually, when they moved. Just enough to make them look a little wrong. Sometimes they looked as solid as anyone living, but other times they were faded and flickering—like a lightbulb on its last wire.
Benji Andor looked like that, standing on the welcome mat to the Days Gone Funeral Home. He looked like how his memories remembered him, the night in Colloquialism, his dark hair neatly gelled back, his suit jacket fitted to his shoulders, his black slacks pressed. His tie was a little askew, though, just enough to make me want to straighten it. My gaze lingered on his lips. I remembered them, the way they tasted.
But now he was—this man was—
The spring wind that rattled through the dead oak tree didn’t mess up his hair, and the light from our foyer didn’t sit right on his face, and his shadow was gone. He shimmered, slightly, like a holograph in glitter. I reached out toward him, slowly, to touch his chest—
And my hand went through him. It was cold. A burst of frost.
He stared down at my hand in his sternum, and I whispered just as he cursed—
“Fuck.”
9
Dead on Arrival
“FLORENCE?” MOM CALLEDfrom the parlor. “Is everything okay over there?”
I blinked, and Benji Andor was gone. I quickly drew my hand back and rubbed at my fingers. They tingled from where I’d touched—and gone through—him. He wasn’t really here. He wasn’t really dead.
I was losing my goddamn mind.
“Florence?” Mom put a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped in surprise. She gave me a worried look. “Are you okay? Who was that at the door?”
I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest to warm my cold hand. “No one—I’m fine. It was, um—someone ding-dong ditched.”
She squeezed my shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I reiterated, and tried to shake off the encounter. Benji Andor wasn’tdead.I’d just groveled in his office yesterday.Kissedhim last night behind the bar. He couldn’t be dead.
He wasn’t.
But if my mother was good at anything, it was seeing right through my lies. “You saw one, didn’t you? A ghost.”