Page 48 of The Dead Romantics

I glanced back at the graveyard. The moon was so full and so bright, I could see from the gates to the far wall, and all of the off-white mausoleums and gravestones in between. “No, I don’t see anyone—wait. Are youscaredof ghosts?”

He stiffened. “No.”

He said thatwaytoo quickly.

“You are! Oh my god,you’rea ghost.”

“Supernatural things upset me.”

“I promise nowittle ghostieis going to hurt you, Benji Andor,” I teased, “and if any of them do, they’ll have me to contend with.”

“You can punch ghosts?”

“No, but I’m a really bad singer. Unleash me with a microphone on any of your enemies and they’retoast.”

He snorted a laugh. “Good to know.” Then he took a deep breath and said, “No, I don’t go back on my word. This isn’t turning out how I expected but—things rarely do, don’t they?”

It sounded like he was referring to his own predicament. He couldn’t have been much older than I was, and he was dead. He had plans—everyone has plans, even if they don’t realize it. Even the ones who go because they think they don’t have plans. There’s always something that comes up.

I wondered what he regretted, what parts of his life he wished he’d done differently.

I wondered if my dad had any regrets when he went, too.

“Then c’mon.” I nodded my head toward the graveyard, and looped my leg back over the wall. “Live a little.”

“Yes, well, would that I could.”

“Probably wrong choice of words. See you on the other side!” I pulled the rest of myself over and dropped down onto the grass. I was only 55 percent sure that he’d follow me—was he really such a stickler for the rules? He wasdead. “Just walk through the wall, my dude,” I called over to him. “You’re aghost—”

A moment later, he stepped through the wall and shivered. “That feels so weird,” he complained, dusting invisible lint from his crisp button-down shirt. “I don’t like it. It tingles. In weird places.”

I headed up toward the path that looped the whole cemetery, and called back to him, “You’re a terrible ghost.”

“It wasn’t as though I applied for this role. What if we get caught?”

“IfIget caught,” I corrected, “then I’ll run. You’re a ghost. No one else can see you.”

He caught up in a few quick strides, and fell into pace beside me. Lee never did that. He always expected me to match his. “Right,” he said, “about that. I have questions.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll try to answer them.”

“Can you summon ghosts?”

“No.”

“Do you exorcise them?”

“No. Like I said earlier, most of them just want to talk. They have good stories. And they want someone to listen.” I shrugged. “I like listening—don’t give me that look,” I added, sensing his gaze on me, as if he was trying to puzzle me out. As if I had surprised him.

He quickly looked away. “Is this... post-living part of your life a family business?”

I laughed at that. “No. My family owns the funeral home in town, but only me and my dad can see spirits. Ghosts. Whatever you want to call them—you. I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with the funeral parlor? Who knows.”

“Is that why you left? Not to be too forward,” he added quickly, realizing that, in fact, itwasa little too forward. “I just... picked up on it. People are surprised you’re home.”

“I guess they would be.” For a few steps, I mulled over the question. What to tell him, and what to leave out. Though, what was the point of lying to a dead guy? “When I was thirteen, I helped a ghost solve his own murder. Before that, the whole mediator thing was kind of a family secret, but when your town paper writes ‘GirlSolves Hometown Murder with Ghosts,’ it kind of blows that out of the water.”

“So you became a local celebrity?”

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