Ghostlight Read Online Free PDF Page B

bell-bottoms and some kind of bead necklace.
    Her father.
    She was entirely certain, even though there were few photos of Thorne Blackburn available today and certainly nothing like this candid shot. The one most people used was Blackburn’s publicity photo that showed him in full mystic regalia.
    But there was no doubt. This was him. This casual, laughing stranger was her father.
    And the child must be—her.
    A fury so strong it could only be hatred possessed
Truth Jourdemayne’s consciousness with the force of an onrushing train. How dared the man in the picture seem so normal, as if he were any young father happily playing with his infant daughter? Didn’t he know what he’d done—what he was going to do?
    Truth’s skin crawled as though Blackburn were here with her in the room, and the fact that he had once held her tenderly in his arms seemed unforgivable. She set the photograph back on the dresser top gingerly, and set the framed picture of her mother on top of it as if she could hold down thoughts of Blackburn as easily.
    Why would Aunt Caroline keep a picture like this? Truth wondered.
    â€œI never wanted you to hate him,” Aunt Caroline had said. An ugly suspicion was growing in the back of Truth’s mind, waiting patiently but with gathering momentum for the moment it could break through into her consciousness; the prerational certainty that psychics called clairsentience —the ability to know what you couldn’t possibly know, a perception that baffled the restraints of space and time.
    Oh, knock it off! Truth told herself fiercely. Ten minutes more and she’d be seeing ghosts. Now where’s that damned whatever-it-is?
    The box was on the bed.
    It was a white cardboard box—the old, heavy, glazed kind that good stores used to use—and stamped on the lid in silver was the logo of the now-defunct Lucky-Platt Department Store.
    Hesitantly, Truth raised the lid. The box was filled with crisp, white tissue paper—and with more. Truth wondered what grisly legacy Thorne Blackburn could have bequeathed her.
    No, not Thorne Blackburn.
    â€œSomething I have been keeping for you; some of Thorne’s possessions … These things cannot be left
around for just anyone to stumble upon once I’m dead; no matter your feelings you’ll have to take them now … . Call it Thorne’s legacy to you … .
    â€œI never wanted you to hate him.
    â€œBut there is no more time … .”
    A ring, a necklace, and a book.
    She picked up the ring first. Its weight almost made Truth drop it again; it was far too large for her, big enough to cover her longest finger from knuckle to knuckle. It was set with a flat oval of lapis lazuli as big as a peach pit, deeply and intricately carved with some sort of design Truth couldn’t quite make out. The stone was set in what must be a full Troy ounce of yellow gold, soft enough to be pure, cast in the shape of a coiled serpent that had red-enameled letters cut into its scaly flesh and tiny winking rubies for its eyes. There were other rubies studded about the ring’s bezel—not cabochons, but whole, dark red spheres like beads of blood. The ring had a Greek inscription on the inside of the band, along with a date. Both were meaningless to Truth.
    The necklace was a magnificient thing: dark golden amber beads the size of walnuts, long enough to hang halfway down her torso. It’s the one he’s wearing in the picture … A symbol dangled from it, a thick, heavy pendant of enameled gold in an eye-bewildering tangle of curves and circles and peculiar symbols. Both the ring and the necklace seemed theatrical, ceremonial, as though freighted with the weight of a vast store of purpose and intention.
    Blackburn’s ring. Blackburn’s necklace. His legacy to her—as preserved by Aunt Caroline. For her.
    Why had Aunt Caroline kept these things for her? Why had she brought her here to give