When Ghosts Come Home Novels & Stories

The brooding young man had been sprawled out on my cushion, leisurely dragging in and puffing out smoke—so delicately, so exquisite, like he owned the place. Made me wonder, how the fuck had this man continuously gained access into my home with all of the amped up security? A Ghost. Through and through. I stepped forward, shutting the front door behind me, my eyes not once deviating from the hunk of a man. "It has been less than seventy two hours, Ghost, and you can't bring yourself to stay away?" He rose to his full height, his strides towards me calculated, animalistic, haunting. "That was a mistake."

It's been ten years since I followed my fated mate, Grace Murphy, into the human world. Her childhood friend, Fred Williams, is dying. His one last wish? To experience marriage. Grace said yes. She told me she wanted to give her wedding to Fred. I didn't cry. I didn't fight. I just smiled, slid the ring off my finger, and handed it back to her. She brought Fred home and said she wanted to give him a home. I said, “Okay,” softly, and stepped aside—clean, neat, no fuss. She wanted to take Fred to Hawaii—the honeymoon destination I'd been dreaming about for years. I still helped her book everything, calm and composed. The day she boarded that plane, I finally answered the summons from my pack.

Those eyes lifted and locked on mime and the glass instantly stopped moving. “The dead has no business with the living, Riven Cole,” he said, voice low enough that only I heard the tremor under it. “We don't tend to corpses here.” I crossed the distance, my boots leaving wet prints on sawdust, then I placed my hands on the counter and said in a low voice, “Then pour one for a ghost.” The room seemed to respond to my words like they heard me, a hush spreading round. I heard a chair scraping the ground and seconds later, someone in the back muttered “traitor”.