Ghostlight, p.10
Ghostlight, page 10
“Usually just a matter of flipping a circuit breaker,” Caradoc said, “which is our resident technojunkie’s purview”—Gareth bowed where he sat, grinning—“but sometimes the whole area goes.”
“If you can’t see the lights down in Shadowkill when you look out the third-floor window, give up,” Gareth said. “It means the power’s out all over Shadowkill Township and probably northern Dutchess County as well.”
Light giggled, a silvery, elfin sound. “I like storms,” she confided shyly. Truth smiled back.
“So do—” she began, but broke off as the lights flickered again to the accompaniment. Truth put down her fork.
“I’ve really enjoyed the evening, but I think if it’s going to storm I’d really better get going,” Truth said firmly. She’d have enough trouble finding the Bed-and-Breakfast in the dark without having to find it in the dark during a storm.
“But Truth! Surely you’re staying?” Irene said incredulously.
“There’s plenty of room,” Gareth added.
“I was hoping you’d accept my invitation to write your book here,” Julian said, “but even if you will not, surely a night’s hospitality would not be too much? I’d hate to send someone out to find an unfamiliar destination in weather like this.”
“He’s right. You wouldn’t send a knight out on a dog like this,” Caradoc said, smiling his crooked smile.
At that moment the lights went completely out, and there was a deafening slap of thunder, followed by a spatter of raindrops flung like pebbles at the dining room windows. After a moment’s pause there was laughter and scattered applause, led by Julian.
“You see, Truth, the Old Gods smile on our wish that you remain,” Julian said out of the darkness. There was a scuffling and a scrambling, and then Truth heard the sound of a match being struck.
By the light of both candelabra—some two dozen candles—the dining room was surprisingly bright.
“The lights are all out,” Light said, marvelingly.
“Who wants to go check?” Gareth asked.
“You do,” Donner told him, crossing to the sideboard and handing Gareth a single candlestick. Grinning in good-natured defeat, Gareth lit the candle from one of the candelabra and walked out, shielding the flame with his free hand.
“More wine?” Ellis asked, filling his own glass. Truth shook her head and he shrugged.
“Why doesn’t he use a flashlight?” Truth asked Julian.
“Batteries have a way of going dead at Shadow’s Gate,” Julian said. “It’s easier to use candles than to struggle with them. I’m afraid that your watch’s battery will require replacing rather soon as well.”
Well, that’s something I can check, Truth thought determinedly.
“I think you would be wise to accept Julian’s invitation,” Michael said to Truth. “Your luggage is already inside, is it not?”
“Yes. Certainly,” Truth said. It was an odd question, though—why had Michael thought she’d come with luggage?—and Michael had been one of the last to appear in the parlor tonight. Had his absence been spent searching her room?
Any more paranoia and you’re going to start believing in UFOs and assassination conspiracies too, Truth scolded herself.
“Let’s call it settled,” Julian said firmly. “I can’t possibly let you leave tonight; it would be far too dangerous. Irene, dear, I think the coffee must have brewed, but you’d probably better use a thermal carafe instead of the silver tonight to keep it warm.”
“Just like old times,” Irene said happily, going off to the kitchen in a swirl of candlelit spangles.
“I’ll help,” Truth said, jumping up this time before Julian could stop her.
Irene had brought only a single candlestick into the kitchen, and in the leaping shadows of its wavering flame the kitchen was a spooky place. The storm had worsened in the few moments it had taken Truth to cross the room, and the howling wind flung rain at the kitchen windows with force enough to make the panes rattle in their casements. The sound made Truth think better of her determination to leave. Julian was right; this was no night to try to find a place she’d never been before, and it had been a long day.
“It’s a wild night,” Irene said happily. “Thorne used to do his best work on nights like this—when the Wild Hunt rode.” She bustled about the kitchen with the ease of long familiarity, taking down a pair of thermal carafes from the cupboard and decanting the coffee from the silent chrome percolator into them. “Oh, I do miss him. And it’s no night to be out on the road if you don’t have to,” she added, changing the subject to practical matters with what Truth was learning was Irene’s customary quickness.
“Irene,” Truth said. “That girl—Light—where did she come from?”
“Oh, Julian found her. When he got Shadow’s Gate back last year—it’s almost a year this month that he sent for me—he did one of the minor Workings, and here she was.”
Drat Irene’s fuzzy occultism, providing a magickal explanation for everything, Truth thought with annoyance.
“Yes,” she said patiently. “But where did she come from?”
“I think she must have been in hospital somewhere,” Irene said vaguely, stacking cups and saucers on another tray. “She hasn’t any family, poor dear, and sometimes those with the greatest Gifts are the least able to deal with Malkut—the Sphere of Manifestation.”
Or with the real world, either, Truth added mentally. It was odd, though—if Light really didn’t have any family, how had Julian gotten her out of the institution?
Assuming she’d really been in one, Truth added conscientiously.
“But now that you’re staying, we’ll have plenty of time to chat,” Irene added in her brisk English fashion. “Do take these out to the dining room for me, there’s a dear,” she said, handing Truth a tray full of coffee cups.
“It’s all black, as far as the river—phone’s out too,” Gareth announced with satisfaction as Truth reached the dining room. “I took a look outside,” he added—unnecessarily, as his hair and shirt were plastered to his skin as if he’d been standing under a showerhead. “It’s really wild. A good night for—things,” he finished stifledly, with a glance at Truth.
Truth carefully set down her tray, and Michael rose from his seat to help hand its contents around. He seemed to be studying her as if seeking the answer to a question. Truth smiled automatically. Irene followed Truth out of the kitchen, sans candlestick, to set the carafes on the table.
“There’s a bit more in the kitchen,” she said, “getting cold.”
“We’ll be wanting it,” Hereward said. “Even if it’s cold. Long night tonight, eh, Julian?”
Julian smiled anticipatorily. “You’re welcome to join us, Truth,” he said. “As an observer, or … what you will.”
Truth recoiled inwardly, finally realizing what the hints and the sideways looks were about. Julian meant to do magick tonight—from her reading of Venus Afflicted she’d gathered the hazy impression that Blackburn preferred his rites to be enacted during storms.
As a scientist and psychic researcher, Truth felt she should be able to regard any peculiar manifestation with perfect calm, and she certainly didn’t believe in magick, but the thought of being anywhere near a Blackburn-style magickal rite filled her with suffocating dread.
He killed my mother. Here, in this house, on a night like this. He killed her—
“Truth?”
Julian touched her arm and she startled and gasped, slopping coffee onto her hands and the tablecloth and then flinching at the touch of the hot liquid. She stared at him wide-eyed, heart racing.
“Are you all right?” he demanded.
She set her cup back in its saucer and swabbed at her hands. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be badly burned; the tablecloth had taken the worst of it. “I’m sorry, Julian. I hope the stains will come out; I don’t know where my mind was … .”
“It’s all right,” he soothed. “This house can have that sort of effect on people, especially during a storm.”
“Thanks,” Truth said, not quite knowing what she meant.
No one else seemed to be paying attention to the small accident. She sipped at the coffee left in her cup. She had loaded it with cream and sugar in hopes that between the caffeine and the sugar she could stay awake. The day’s events, on top of the long drive, had caught up with her, and the candlelit dimness served only to underscore how tired she felt.
“There are a number of observances—the Smoothing of the Path—that precede the Opening of the Way,” Julian amplified, “and night is a good time for them. It’s a time when the psychic interference, both of sunlight and of waking minds, is minimized.”
Truth found herself nodding in reluctant agreement. Most of her “professional” psychics—those who believed in and acknowledged their psychic powers—felt that their Sixth Sense was strongest during the night hours.
But to participate in one of Blackburn’s rituals … ?
Julian was watching her, obviously awaiting her response.
No! some inward part of her mind screamed.
“Uh, I really don’t think—I’m really tired; perhaps some other time,” Truth floundered.
“I look forward to it,” Julian said, smiling with intimate meaningfulness.
“I’ll just go make sure everything’s ready for Truth in her room, and then pop off down to the Temple, shall I?” Irene said. “I’ll say good night now, dear.”
Irene got up from her place and came around to where Truth sat, leaning over to kiss her upon the cheek. Truth reached up and patted the beringed hand resting on her shoulder, biting back a sudden upwelling of tears. She was tired, that was all. That explained everything. Everything.
“Good night, Aunt Irene,” she said aloud.
Irene Avalon walked from the room bearing a candlestick before her like a flaming sword.
“Are you feeling strong enough to work tonight, dear?” Julian asked Light.
“Oh, yes!” Light responded.
Truth glanced at her. There was no doubt of Light’s sincerity; her eyes sparkled in the candle flame and her delighted smile was entirely genuine.
“But won’t you come too, Michael?” Light asked plaintively, turning to him. “You never do.”
“And I never will,” Michael Archangel told her kindly. “Each tailor to his own last.” He got to his feet.
“And each cat to his own rat,” Julian said. “We’ll leave Michael to find the truth in his own fashion, and hope we can encourage our Truth to join us,” he finished punningly. Michael acknowledged the remark with a bow and a slight smile and left the room. He didn’t bother to take a candle.
Oh, well, I suppose he’s been here long enough to know the house. Truth drained her coffee cup and stood. She could sense an undercurrent of anticipation among the remaining people at the table, an eagerness to be on about their business, or, rather, Thorne Blackburn’s business.
“I’ll say good night,” she said. “It’s been a pleasure to meet all of you.” But not much of one, all things considered.
“I’ll light your way,” Ellis said, walking to the sideboard for another candlestick and lighting it from one of the ones burning upon the table. It seemed that the display Truth had thought only for show was entirely practical after all.
Not having a strong enough aversion to Ellis’s company to make a scene, Truth followed him out. As she left the room, she could already see the other five drawing together in secret council.
Just like in some kids’ club with passwords and secret decoder rings, Truth scoffed to herself through a faint tinge of jealousy. It was never pleasurable to be excluded from something, even if it was something you didn’t really want to belong to.
Truth kept a tight rein on her imagination as she went up the wide stairs with Ellis. The candle flame seemed to conjure dancing animal shapes out of every corner, and despite the fact that she knew they were illusions, she flinched each time one seemed to spring.
Ellis, too, was wary, walking as if these imaginary dangers were real, and Truth’s unease fed on his. She was very glad when they reached the door of the room Irene had given her earlier to rest in. The door swung inward at her touch, and Truth could see that Irene had indeed been here, turning down the bed and leaving a candle in a glass chimney burning on the bedside table.
Ellis stepped back for her to enter. The candlelight cast the curves and hollows of his face into sharp relief, making it a Mephistophelean mask. As he turned to go, Ellis hesitated.
“This is an old house, and so old advice seems best. Believe only half of what you see, and nothing of what you hear.”
Before Truth could frame a suitable rejoinder to this, he turned away and left her standing there.
As soon as the door closed Truth lifted the mattress. Venus Afflicted was there, just as she’d left it. She felt obscurely relieved, as though there were danger all around her which she was avoiding merely by dumb luck. After a moment’s hesitation, she lowered the mattress again, leaving the book where it was.
A gust of rain struck the window with a faint drumroll, followed by the flash-and-flash-again of two lightning strikes nearly on top of each other.
Truth winced, hoping the storm wouldn’t keep her awake all night. Though the Hudson River Valley was famed as a mother of storms, there were usually more of them in the summer than in the fall. There’d be precious little fall color this year if the storm blew all the leaves off the trees now.
By the light of her single candle, Truth made ready for bed, hanging the blue dress up neatly in the empty closet. She tried to review the day’s events and put them in some sort of mental order, but every time she tried they went spinning out of her grasp. Should she stay at Shadow’s Gate as Julian seemed to expect? It would make her research easier—and though she wished now she’d never considered writing a book about Thorne Blackburn, she’d told so many people of her plans that she’d look very foolish backing out on them now.
She hated to look foolish, no matter how many times she told herself that other people’s opinions didn’t matter. And she certainly wasn’t going to give up her project on the basis of nothing more than some sort of anxiety attack!
Such ringing declarations were all very well, but how closely should she ally herself with this new Circle of Truth? To do so might be to destroy her credibility as a serious researcher; on the other hand, information on them would be a valuable sidelight to Blackburn’s bio, but then again—
A jaw-stretching yawn reminded Truth that she was in no shape to consider these matters now. Everything would seem clearer after a good night’s sleep, anyway.
Truth slid into her borrowed bed and blew out the candle.
Some unknown time later Truth wrenched herself to wakefulness from a vivid dream of water. Welling up from the earth, falling from the sky … Random scraps of dreamed conversation skirled through her mind: “Come thou elemental prince, Undine, creature of water: Thou who was before the world was made—”
But the dream was not what had wakened her. Truth stared into the darkness, every sense straining to the utmost to discover what it was that had roused her. The rain had stopped, and a scent that managed to be sharp and cloying at the same time filled the silent room, making her throat dry and ticklish.
Incense, Truth realized. It must be coming up through the vent from somewhere else in the house. Hadn’t Irene mentioned there being a temple on the premises?
That she could smell the incense in her room meant that there had to be a vent connecting the two—somewhere. Maybe she could close the one in here before the incense smell permeated every article of clothing she’d brought.
If there were matches with the candle her touch-search of the area around it failed to find them, but by that time her eyes had adjusted enough to discern a faint glow coming from the wall near the floor—the vent opening she sought.
Now to close it. Truth climbed out of bed and went over toward it. Just as she had thought, the scent of incense was strongest here, making her eyes water with its intensity. She crouched down on her heels, running her hands over the metalwork to see if she could close it.
“Get out!” The voice was loud: masculine, angry—and inches from her face.
Truth flung herself backward in reflex, stifling the scream that threatened to burst from between her tightly clenched teeth. She scrabbled away from the wall on heels and elbows, conscious only of a desire to put as much distance between herself and the voice as she could.
She cracked her head painfully against the bed frame, and the sudden pain shocked her into rationality, although it did little to stop the racing of her heart.
There was no one behind the grate.
The voice had not been talking to her.
It was only a freak of the house’s acoustics, carrying a voice from elsewhere into her ears.
There was no one there—no one!
She believed that, Truth told herself. But after she scrambled back into bed, clutching the covers up to her chin, she lay awake, stiff and trembling in the darkness, until the sky turned gray with dawn.
CHAPTER SIX
THE MIRROR OF TRUTH
Most true it is that I have look’d on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov’d thee my best of love.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
THE NEXT TIME TRUTH AWOKE THE SUN WAS HIGH IN the sky. She stretched creakily, wondering why she was so stiff. Suddenly memory of the events of the previous night clicked into place; she glanced around and located the vent she had crouched beside. It looked harmless in the morning light, its white-painted grille nothing more than the covering for a duct of the kind that abounded in these old houses. Harmless.
Had it only been her imagination? A dream perhaps, brought on by the rich food and strange surroundings? Truth got out of bed and crossed to the window, looking out. The day was crystalline, blue and untroubled, and the only evidence of last night’s storm was the new patterns of wet autumn leaves blown in drifts across the lawn.
