Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One Read Online Free PDF Page A

for me, anyway , Xhea thought. There was little that could touch a ghost.
    Blind, Xhea dropped the last few feet to track level. Her normal sight needed no light, and shapes were easy to discern when cast only in gray. Yet enough of her payment lingered that she saw only black. She fished a small flashlight out of her jacket—kept there for such occasions—and shone the beam around her. The tunnel was cool and damp, smelling of mildew. The only sound was a slow and distant dripping.
    “Why didn’t you take the elevator? It could have taken us home.”
    “This is my home,” Xhea said, voice hard. She stalked down the tunnel, gravel crunching underfoot, swinging the light back and forth more quickly than was warranted. If she could have run and left the ghost behind then, she would have.
    Wen’s words returned to her: You’re callous with the souls in your care . It wasn’t the ghost’s fault that she was here; probably wasn’t her fault that she was dead, either. For all that Xhea scorned the dead girl for the soft life she’d lived, wouldn’t she herself leap at the chance for that life? To live in a Tower; to never have to think about where she was going to find the next meal, or how to gather enough food to get her through the winter, or store and protect clean water, or keep herself warm.
    Xhea forced herself to slow, then turned to meet the ghost’s confused gaze. “I don’t have any magic,” she said. Voice steady, as if the admission brought no shame.
    “But I thought—didn’t my father transfer renai to you?”
    Her father. Xhea pushed away that piece of information with a shake of her head—it was safer not to know. How could she explain that she just wanted the payment for the high, the way it lit her vision with color and eased the pressure of the darkness that seemed to coil deep within her? The money was useless to her, burning away to nothing.
    “I meant, I don’t have any magic. Not even a magical signature.” She might have said that she didn’t have a head for the shock in the ghost’s reaction.
    “But that’s not possible,” the dead girl—Shai—protested. “Everyone has magic. It’s the power of life . No one has none.”
    Xhea spread her hands wide. “Yet here I am.”
    “No, you must be mistaken. Maybe you don’t have enough magic to spare—maybe you don’t know the spells—but everyone has a magical signature just by being alive.”
    “Everyone,” agreed Xhea, “except me.”
    “Then . . . why did my father give you money?” The ghost’s voice faltered, and her face, briefly so animated, fell again. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Who are you? Why am I here?”
    “Ah.” Xhea turned away. “The great questions in life.” What could she possibly say? It had been a bad idea to even try. Just talking to the ghost made her feel weary.
    Xhea had a small room just off the main tunnel, a maintenance space reached by a short flight of stairs. The door, unlocked, creaked open at her touch, and a quick sweep of the flashlight showed no disturbances. It was a crash space, little more, but dry and familiar for all that, with extra clothes, a collection of books and coins and trinkets too dirty or broken to be worth selling, and a pile of blankets in the corner as a bed.
    She fell into the pile without pulling off her overstuffed jacket or rain-damp clothes. She burrowed into the blankets’ softness and held the kaleidoscope against her chest for comfort. Her head felt as if it were caught in a tightening vice, and the headache’s pounding promised worse to come before morning.
    “I don’t understand . . .” the ghost began again.
    “Not now,” Xhea said. Her payment was almost gone. There would be time enough to talk in the morning, discuss the mysteries of life, or the reality of her death, or whatever else the ghost wanted to ramble on about.
    “It’s just that . . . well, I—”
    “Not. Now.”
    She turned the kaleidoscope over and over as she