Read Audrey Claire - Libby Grace 01 - How to be a Ghost for Free Online Page B

ghosts?
    “Come on,” he ordered. “I have just a few hours before morning, and I like to use my time wisely.”
    I followed him across my lawn to his and onto the pathway to his door. Unlike my landscaping, which in an effort to make it more homely, I had added a birdbath and wild flowers that didn’t need my help to grow, Ian’s lawn was military in its precision. One of the young men in the neighborhood came out to mow it weekly, and Ian left an envelope with the boy’s payment in his mailbox.
    Not that Ian’s home and lawn was not nice. Ian kept everything in pristine order and good repair. He just didn’t go out of his way for more. I supposed that was the way of bachelors, and figured his interests lay in other areas.
    Ian paused on the walk and began mumbling something. I drifted closer to try to pick up words, but they were nothing I neither recognized nor could describe. Odder was the reaction I felt in my being while he spoke. Nausea stirred in my stomach. My head spun. An odd vacuum pulled at me from behind, and while I had an urge to turn to see if a black hole had opened, fear kept me facing forward. Then out of the blue, the sensations were gone as if they had never existed.
    “Come inside,” Ian said, and I had a flash memory of him asking me to tell him to come inside my house.
    “Did you have to invite me for me to be able to cross the barrier?” I asked, following him into a dark foyer.
    His eyebrows rose. “No.”
    “Oh.”
    I glanced around, but I couldn’t see much. Ian neglected to turn on the lights, but he moved through the house with ease, avoiding a table in the hall, which held a few neatly stacked envelopes. He scooped them up on his way past and circumvented a couple of white leather couches in the living room and a table between them. At first I did the same and then snapped out of it. Habit, I guess.
    Ian opened a door on the far side of the living room, and I realized he had, or the previous owner had, built on another room. He strode a few steps in and then seemed to recall something. He stepped toward the door before I could enter and flipped on the lights. A space a few feet smaller than the living room came into view. I gasped in awe at the walls filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. A mahogany desk dominated a center spot, and to its left a globe sat in a hardwood stand with a walnut finish.
    I moved farther into the room and spun slowly, enjoying the atmosphere of what was no doubt Ian’s sanctuary when he wanted to shut himself away from everyone. This must be the place he had been when he said my screaming disturbed his reading. Then I frowned, scanning the walls. There were no windows here, and the room was situated on the opposite side of the house from mine.
    I walked to the nearest bookshelf and scanned the titles, a broad spectrum that ranged from Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy to Star People to History of the World written by Sir Walter Raleigh.
    “I think I might go crazy if I didn’t have the sun shining in,” I commented, “but this room is simply lovely. Jake would get a kick out of exploring the books, even if he doesn’t understand everything written within.”
    Ian strode over to his desk and sat down behind it. I watched as he scanned the contents of one of the drawers, and he brought out what looked like a pamphlet, yellowed with age. He read a page or two, and when I didn’t know what else to say, I blurted what occupied my mind.
    “I didn’t know you were gay.”
    If I wanted a reaction from this solitary man, I got one. He surged to his feet so fast, his chair overturned. He sneered at me. Those eyes I thought had glowed in the dark burned me with their intensity. Oh, Ian McClain could most certainly see me. I was sure of it. But how?
    “I am not gay ,” he bit out between clenched teeth.
    “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s not a big deal if you were—”
    He reiterated his claim,