How To Bring Your Love Life Back From The Dead (10 page)

“We’ll be closing soon,” the older
librarian, Lara said, poking her head in. She was sweet and all
grandmotherly—much more so than any of the grandmothers in the
Franklin family.

“I’m still okay to stay after-hours,
right?” Hopefully. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. If
she couldn’t see him after a day that had seemed to stretch
endlessly with wanting to be with him, she might do something
desperate. Breaking in and entering.

Lara nodded, smiling.

The vise around Ana’s heart
loosened. She tried not to sigh in relief. She could stay. She
could see Shane. Tonight.

“You’ve been busy today,” Lara said.
“I hope you’re finding what you’re looking for.”

No. Not really. But if Lara didn’t
know about all the books missing pages, she wasn’t about to bring
it up and chance not being able to stay. Ana cleared her throat.
“Are there other books on my own family’s history outside of what
is in here?” Most of the missing pages had been in her own family’s
genealogical accounts. After she was done here in the library, Ana
would casually bring up the missing pages.

Lara’s smile widened. “Isn’t it
fascinating to trace one’s roots?”

Ana tried to manufacture a look of
fascination. “Err. Yes.” Her family had always stepped on the less
fortunate to get to where they were, and they showed around their
bank statements more than pictures of their kids,
but…sure.

“Well, your family may have some of
their own books. I seem to remember your great, great grandfather’s
journals were withheld from the collection.”

His journals? Those would probably
have missed this censorship wave that seemed to have wiped out all
records of Shane. She would definitely check into that.

“Has this collection received any
newer additions—in regards to historical records?” Ana
asked.

Lara’s calling was clearly meant to
be that of a librarian. She looked nearly giddy at the question. “I
think we did have something come in from an estate.” Analise
followed her to the local history section where Lara pulled out a
book. “It might be slightly salacious. It’s more about the town’s
dabbling in witchcraft and the occult—along with a few crimes
of…passion that were related to that.”

Salacious. Lara was a woman after
her own heart. Salacious had been the word of the day about two
weeks ago. Salacious—indecent; sexually suggestive;
sensational.

The title of the book was “
A
History of Dark Deeds in Seaside
.” With a name like that, Lara
might be right. It also might be worth showing Jenny even if it
said nothing about Shane Blythe. Jenny liked salacious. Well—as
long as Ana didn’t use the word “salacious.”

“Was there a lot of belief in
witchcraft back then?” Ana asked.

“You’d be surprised how
superstitious people can be. There were a number of accounts of
hexes and séances if I remember right. Some of the other librarians
fought having it included in the history section, but even a town’s
history with the occult—its emotional history—is history in my
opinion.”

She left Analise there with the book
which Ana took to a chair to peruse. There were distant thuds as
doors were shut to the outside world. Lara wasn’t wrong about the
book’s scandalous tales. It appeared the city’s founding fathers
had been an extremely superstitious lot.

Lara’s voice startled her. “If you’d
like, I can make an exception for you and allow you to check out
that book, since you’re Charles Franklin’s great, great
grandchild.”

Ana bit her lip. She was planning on
taking the book with her, for sure. “I’d still like to stay for a
bit. I might need to cross reference with other books.” It was as
good a ploy as they came for staying here after everyone left. Ana
needed to stay to see Shane. Her temperature was rising every
second. She hadn’t been this excited for Christmas when she was a
child. It was only through a supreme effort she wasn’t checking the
clock or staring out the window willing night to fall and the moon
to rise. Minutes had been hours since she’d arrived.

Lara shrugged, but nodded. “You’ll
remember to make sure the latch catches on the
backdoor?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

With a wave, she left, and Ana was
alone again in the room—the room where a ghost would soon appear.
She glanced up at the window and sighed. It might be a while. She
turned another page and buried her nose in a story about someone
hexing someone else’s cow.

She was still here. His exultant
feeling only grew as he gained form. Ana was back again in the
library. Normally, he eased into being slowly, and he only
materialized so he could gain access to the books to try to
discover what had happened to him. Tonight, Shane slammed into the
physical plane so quickly, he stumbled in front of his painting
where he always gained form at night.

Maybe it was egotistical that this
was where he appeared—in front of that giant display of himself.
That painting—the painting that he loathed and wished Charles had
never commissioned, let alone ensured the damn thing was
immortalized forever in this wretched room. It mocked him.
“Here, Shane, remember when you existed? Isn’t it sad that you
don’t anymore? Hah!”

Someone was having the final laugh
there, and he’d always believed in a merciful creator. Perhaps this
was hell, and his torment was nearly his size; an oil painting that
was framed, and impervious to malicious spirits. He was his own
Satan. If he could destroy that thing—maybe then he could rest in
peace.

Plus, it looked nothing like him.
Nothing.

The painting of the sheep beside it
looked more like him—which triggered a weird memory from his
daytime self that he was grateful was ephemeral. It was just as
well he couldn’t talk during the day—though that might lower the
public’s interest in ghosts if they found out how rock dumb they
were during daylight hours.

But none of that mattered anymore.
His little library mouse was back again—and she must have come back
to see him or she would have left by now. She was so engrossed in a
book while tucked into a corner chair that she didn’t notice him.
Her right hand was worrying her lower lip while her left hand
turned the pages. He wanted to kiss that luscious mouth of hers
again and nibble on that lower lip of hers. He wanted to nibble all
of her, but his energy wouldn’t allow an in-depth perusal of her.
Besides, for the first time that he could remember, he was just as
interested in exploring a woman’s mind as her body.

“Hello,” he said, causing her to
jump, but then a slow smile spread across her face as their eyes
met.

She catapulted out of the chair, and
he barely forced solid form when she dove into his arms. His energy
was draining rapidly, but he didn’t care as she pressed kisses
across his face while standing on her tip-toes. Even though she
thought she was tall, he was over six foot. Her mouth found his,
and her fingers pressed against the back of his head to deepen the
kiss. When her tongue brushed his, he reconsidered his supposition
about this being hell.

He tightened his arms.

Ana kissed like a harlot—he was in
heaven.

In his experience, while alive,
women hadn’t been this openly amorous. He could only applaud what
women’s liberation had done for kissing, even as he wondered how
liberated Ana was in other ways. For once, he didn’t feel in
charge. In fact, his brain felt decidedly mushy. He wanted her so
bad he couldn’t think straight. It was every bit of her too which
his energy levels wouldn’t cooperate with.

Reluctantly, he pulled back, saying,
“I think we should slow down and talk.”

Had he ever said such a
thing?

No.

Who was this strange new person who
wanted to find out everything about Ana and not just what she
looked like without her clothes on? Although, the thought of Ana
naked on the library floor was certainly an appealing visual to
entertain. Still, he did want to talk—just talk. This wasn’t like
him at all. Was it possible for a ghost to become
possessed?

Ana’s mouth looked swollen and soft,
but she nodded and dazedly slid from his arms, walking back toward
the chair. In relief, he shifted to a less energy-draining form and
followed, sitting in a nearby chair. He glanced at the book she was
reading.

“You’ve chosen some interesting
reading,” he said, smiling. He’d brushed by that book several times
and been tempted to move it from the history section, perhaps even
throw it out into the main library to be shelved with other dross
and scandal rags. It had always seemed a waste of his precious
energy however.

Ana wrinkled her nose. “Actually, it
is. Did you know that Seaside had its own version of the Salem
Witch Trials to a lesser degree? It was spear-headed by my great,
great grandfather, Charles, after he killed a
practitioner.”

The realization that she was from
that Franklin family shocked him. Clearly, she knew of their shared
history because she was watching his face. “When was this?” he
asked. He certainly didn’t remember Charles killing someone, and
Charles had always been fascinated with the occult—indulgent even.
No, this book was nonsense. There was no way. Charles had been
self-absorbed, but a murderer? No.

Ana pointed to a date on the page.
“It was a month after you die—uhh—disappeared.”

He nearly smiled at her horrified
expression, but while death wasn’t really a laughing matter before
you died—it was even significantly less funny after. He focused on
the page where she was pointing. Well. Look at that. He hadn’t seen
that in any book, but he’d already discovered the history of the
town had been thoughtfully modified by someone. Initially, he’d
assumed it might be Charles, pulling out pages that didn’t agree
with him. But, many of the books were too recent for
that.

The top of the page she was pointing
to had a large pendant on a necklace. It was a segmented
moon—belonging to the woman Charles killed, Agnes Weatherby.
According to this book, which must have been buried deep in
someone’s collection, she’d even been unarmed and killed from a
single bullet wound to the heart. Charles had never missed with a
gun, and he was fond of shooting. Why would his old partner kill a
woman? An old woman?

“Did it say why he killed her?”
There must have been a reason. If it had even happened…. Were they
allowed to print it if it hadn’t? Who knew in this modern
world?

Maybe he should have looked through
that book instead of mocking it. He already wanted to snatch it
from her hands and flip through it searching for some mention of
his death. Eventually, Ana would ask how he died. No way in hell
would he admit he hadn’t the foggiest. Shane hadn’t discovered a
single printed sentence regarding his death or conjecture about his
disappearance.

People visiting the library had
whispered for months after he’d disappeared. The preacher’s
daughter had talked about him a good while longer....
Unfortunately, he only vaguely remembered those conversations even
back then as they’d all occurred during the day for the most part.
No one worked nights in the library until the 1980s. By then, he’d
been long since forgotten as a person. If not for the caption below
the painting, which had only been added after Charles’s own death,
his name would have melted into history itself.

Ana tilted her head, frowning at the
book. “It says that he claims she’d tried to kill his child, my
great grandfather, but everyone insisted she wasn’t known to be
violent. In fact, they said she’d always wanted a child herself.”
She gestured at the book. “Anyway, the event touched off a major
purge of the city. Everyone associated with the supernatural in any
way fled to neighboring cities.”

His throat felt dry and ragged as he
tried to force out the question that was plaguing him. “Does it
mention me?” he asked finally. It might have sounded egotistical if
he’d put more force behind it, but it sounded plaintive and
pathetic. He’d never been one to display weakness and this
certainly felt so.

Ana glanced up at him, searching his
expression for something. He lowered his gaze to the book. It was
strange having someone care about him. It hadn’t happened for over
a hundred years. She did care about him, though, it was written all
over her face. She had a face as easy to read as the book in her
hand.