The Usurper's Crown Read Online Free PDF

once amused and grim. Before Ingrid could recover herself, he asked, “How long has this haunt plagued your sister?”
    Ingrid opened her mouth and closed it again. She had absolutely no desire to speak of this to a total stranger. In truth, she had no desire even to remember it. She felt her mind scrabbling for explanations that were other than what had happened. She knew she could give in to them quite easily. There had been tricks of shadow and moonlight. Grace was simply more ill than anyone had realized. She needed the doctor again. She needed a rest. That was all.
    The only problem with any of those thoughts was that Ingrid knew they were all lies. “About two months,” she made herself say. “Why did you burn her shawl?”
    “The ghost touched it,” said the man as if it were the simplest reason in the world. “If it was not destroyed, it could be used as a talisman against her.”
    Ingrid felt her throat tighten. “Grace touched the … ghost.” Say it. Call it what it is. It is ridiculous. It is impossible. It is also the truth .
    The man nodded, all trace of the smile gone from his face. “I thought she might have.”
    Ingrid brushed Grace’s hair back from her cheek. Grace did not stir at all, even as Ingrid stroked her shoulder and arm. “Will she be all right now?”
    “No,” said the man matter-of-factly. “I am afraid after this she will be much worse.”
    The answer sent a stab of anger through Ingrid, but she suppressed it. “What must be done, then?”
    The man turned his eyes from her, back toward the flames. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wish very much that I did.”
    “I see.”
    They sat in silence for a moment. The man appeared to be ready to stare calmly into the fire until Kingdom Come, but Ingrid felt no such composure. Part of her was frightened and angry about this stranger and his pronouncements. Part of her was already shivering from imaginings of what Papa and Leo would do if Grace were caught out. Then there would be the scenes with Mama, and then if Grace got much sicker … Mama might not send for the doctor again, not after last time.
    Yet another part of her was still reeling with disbelief at all that had happened, and desperately seeking a way to deny it, but here she was, in the slowly dying night, and here was Grace all unconscious beside her. She knew a hundred ghost stories, of course. She had entertained all her siblings as they were growing up with stories of drowned men, sunken ships, strange lights, and seers who predicted disaster. She’d heard the men speak of mystic dreams, and of the Indians with their hosts of goblins, the Windego, the Bear Walker and Nanabush. These were part of her world, like Lake Superior surrounding her island home, but not this, this, thing that laid claim to her sister.
    “Who are you?” she made herself ask the man. She had to root herself in the here and now. She could not let the coming daylight lull her into disbelief.
    “My name is Avan.”
    The name struck a chord with Ingrid. She had heard it from her father and Leo. He was a new man, come up for the fishing season. He was good with the boats. That brief statement from Papa was like a soliloquy of praise coming from another man. Leo had thought he was a Finn, although he had been vague about his origins. Papa had gone out with him two or three times now.
    The realization should have been reassuring, but it was not.
    “What brought you out so late?” asked Ingrid.
    “Luck,” he said, poking at the ashes with a long stick, tucking the remains of Grace’s shawl deeper into the coals. “I could not sleep for too much thinking. I walked along the shore, and I saw you and your sister, and the ghost.” He paused, watching the sparks and smoke rise from the damp wood. “That was brave, what you did. It should have worked, but I fear your sister has given this dead man too much.”
    “But you were able to drive him, it, off. I saw a knife.”
    “You did.” Avan