Ghostlight, p.28
Ghostlight, page 28
“Did you know it even has a ghost?” Julian asked as the maître d’ led them to a table on the terrace.
“You’re kidding!” Truth said.
They were seated, and Truth took a moment to admire the view. Though the sun had long since set and it was too dark to see much, the bushes lining the path down to the water were strung with fairy lights, and on the river itself, a determined tanker could be seen plugging its way downriver.
“No, truly,” Julian protested. A waiter appeared, with the attentiveness of very expensive service, to take their drink orders.
“Shall we be trite and have champagne?” Julian asked. “Unless you’d prefer a cocktail, of course.”
“Oh, no, champagne would be fine.” The fizzy white wine Truth associated with the name wasn’t something she’d be tempted to overindulge in, and she felt a need to keep her wits about her, even as another part of her wanted to give Julian his head and see if the old adage about “enough rope” was true.
Now why would I want to do that? If there’s anyone at Shadow’s Gate without extra added dark secrets, it’s Julian.
“About the ghost?” Truth prompted.
“Cristal if you have it on ice, otherwise Perrier-Jouët will do,” Julian told the waiter. “And ice the P-J nineteen eighty-two grande cuvée for dessert, will you?” The man bowed and left.
“Ah, yes, the ghost. Well, old Joseph Peladan who built this place was your usual sort of turn-of-the-century robber baron in the William Randolph Hearst mold. You can’t tell so much here on the first floor since it’s been redone as a restaurant, but to finish and furnish the place Peladan denuded a large number of stately English homes of plaster and paneling and objets d’art—as well as of a great deal of the furniture. This place must have looked like a museum in its heyday. Well, anyway, among the items Peladan ordered—and was duly shipped—was a ghost.”
The champagne arrived, and was opened and approved. Truth took a small sip, and then a larger one. This was light-years beyond the so-called champagne served at the faculty mixers at Taghkanic College.
Just be careful, Dorothy—you’re not in Kansas anymore.
She sipped her drink as Julian rambled on charmingly with what Truth came to suspect was a shaggy ghost story—if not an outright piece of local folklore about the millionaire and his haunted library.
“—so if you see a lady in old-fashioned evening dress about the place,” Julian finished, “whatever you do, don’t ask her the time.”
Truth laughed as she was meant to, and a hovering waiter, sensing his moment, approached with large leather menus.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just ask Peter to decide what he’d like to feed us; it can be more amusing that way,” Julian said.
He looked an inquiry at her; Truth nodded. Julian gestured; the waiter took his menus and retreated.
Truth meditated upon her unaccustomed passive. It was as though she were on some sort of magickal quest, where to find the answer to the riddle at the end of it she had to answer yes to every question along the way.
He’s up to something and I wonder what. I can’t think of any reason I deserve a snow job. How could I have anything he wants—or couldn’t buy cheaper elsewhere?
But it was difficult to retain such cynicism in the face of Julian’s charm—charm which, manifestly, he was exerting tonight, making all the normal inconveniences of everyday life melt away, leaving behind a sort of Hollywood version of reality.
“I assure you, I have an ulterior reason for bringing you here,” Julian said, as an appetizer described by the waiter as gravlax in puff pastry with wild asparagus was placed before them. “I’m very … attracted to you,” he said, almost shyly, “and I behaved like such an idiot the other day that I’m here hoping to recover lost ground.”
“Oh yes,” Truth agreed gravely. “You behaved so badly that I can’t quite remember the occasion, myself.” She speared a forkful of the delicate appetizer. It seemed to melt upon the tongue without any need for chewing. She shuddered to think what the tab of this dinner à deux would be; if this was the sort of life the wealthy led, she could easily get used to it.
And wasn’t that what she was being offered?
The chill that struck through her then nearly made her choke. Julian had led her up to a high place and was offering her … what?
He’d been speaking. “I’m sorry, Julian: What were you saying?”
“Oh, nothing that matters. Merely that I didn’t want you to think I objected to Shadow’s Gate being investigated. In fact, I hadn’t quite made my mind up when I spoke to you before, but I’ve decided to close up the house in November. If your friends would like to come up with their strange devices, I could just as easily leave it open and keep Hoskins on, if you think that would suit.”
“That would be great,” Truth said. And too late; whatever’s coming will be here next week, on Halloween. “I’ve spoken to Dylan—Dr. Palmer is the Institute’s resident ghost-hunter—and he’s very interested”—if calling her an idiot was an expression of interest, anyway—“and he’ll be sending some of his equipment on ahead. It should be here soon. You don’t mind, do you?”
It was odd, Truth noted with detachment, how all the manipulative wiles she’d scorned in others came so naturally to her the moment she felt a need for them. How could Julian say he minded without looking like an idiot?
“How could I mind, when it keeps you interested in us?” Julian answered. “What’s rather a sore point with me—and I know you understand—is word of this getting out, and Thorne’s name being linked with some sort of Amityville idiocy. By now you know us well enough to know that the last thing we’re looking for is publicity.”
Know you? But I don’t know you, Julian …
“Thorne seemed to court publicity,” Truth pointed out, discovering the appetizer appeared to have vanished. The hovering waiter swooped in to remove the plates.
“That was long ago and in a far country,” Julian said with a crooked smile, “and that sort of innocence is long dead. I think of Thorne as a profoundly innocent man in some ways, don’t you?”
The waiter returned with the immense serving plates upon which the dinner plates would be set. Julian refilled their champagne glasses.
“Innocent?” Truth pondered. “I don’t know if I’d call him innocent. Sincere, certainly, but …” Passionately sincere, in fact, and infused with the idealism of his time, only in Thorne it had taken that bizarre turn into the occult sciences. Like all this generation, Thorne Blackburn had wanted to fill the world with peace and love—though in his case, he intended to do it by making the Golden Age come again, when gods and heroes had lived among men.
He’d never stopped to ask whether this would be a good idea.
“Anyway,” Truth said, shrugging, “that’s a judgment for the biographer to render—or not—when all the material is in hand, don’t you think?”
“Touché,” Julian said, raising his glass in salute. “And I can only hope that she is as insightful as she is beautiful.”
Thorne Blackburn, it seemed, was to be the invisible guest at the feast. Ignoring—or merely overlooking—her attempts to draw him out about himself, Julian spoke of Thorne throughout the meal: the San Francisco period, the Universal Mystery Tour, the cross-country odyssey in the Mystery Schoolbus, the eight months spent in Mexico, during which Thorne’s determination to perform the rituals that made up Venus Afflicted had crystallized.
Abandoning her attempts to question him, Truth felt the growing temptation to tell Julian about Thorne’s appearances at Shadow’s Gate instead—but surely Thorne had appeared to Julian as well?
If she weren’t simply going mad.
It was a possibility, after all.
“I would give up ten years of my life just to know where the book is now,” Julian said, as their plates were cleared away. “Venus Afflicted was there at Shadow’s Gate; we know that much. Thorne was adding to it and correcting it all the way up to the end. The police looked for it and didn’t find it, and of course when I took over Shadow’s Gate I turned the place inside out. Nothing.”
“Why would the police want a grimoire?” Truth asked. The turn the conversation had taken made her uncomfortably guilty. The book that Julian sought so fervently was within his reach: Venus Afflicted was currently in the trunk of her car.
Truth had never liked keeping secrets, and Julian seemed—oh, not to suspect her, but in some strange way to hope—
And meanwhile some still, small inner voice—of self-preservation?—told her that she must keep the book a secret—just as Aunt Caroline had.
For if Julian had sought Thorne Blackburn’s artifacts everywhere, it was not possible that he would have overlooked Caroline Jourdemayne.
Truth had the teasing sense that she was on the verge of making an important discovery, but whatever she was about to uncover vanished as Julian spoke again.
“They were still trying to make a case against Thorne and thought Thorne’s grimoire would be evidence of God knows what. The book was fairly famous in the magickal community; Thorne referred to it often in his diaries and essays,” Julian said with a certain air of wistfulness.
All of which she was going to have to read, as well reading his letters, Truth realized with a sinking heart. Maybe she could ask Thorne to come back from the dead to explain them to her, she thought flippantly.
“But you don’t really need Thorne’s spellbook, do you? You’re doing the—” Truth was reduced to waving her hands, uncertain of the proper terminology to describe what she meant.
“Our Circle is indeed doing the Ritual of the Opening of the Way, sometimes called the Opening of the Gate,” Julian supplied with a teasing pomposity. “Without the book.
“Since you’ve given me the opening, I’ll go on to explain that the Opening is the last part of a series of rituals that take about ten days to perform; they’re keyed to the Tree of Life—which is, oh never mind; the Kaballah would take me years to explain. To make a long story positively cryptic in its brevity, the first part of the Opening has been published—in a number of variorum forms, I might add—and forms the principal part of the Blackburn Work as it is done today. These nine rituals are collectively called the Smoothing of the Path, and form a complete Working by themselves. Thorne prescribed that the Smoothing be done several times as an end in itself to get a Circle working fluidly, but when it must be done is as a prelude to the Opening of the Way.”
It was amazing how plausible all this was, even logical. In her own mind Truth hesitated; if magick as Julian described it was more than the mere elaboration of a delusion, how much more was it?
“Which you don’t have,” she said again, bringing the discussion back to ground she was sure of.
“Neither did Thorne—once,” Julian said, almost sna-pishly. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I’ve been hearing the same thing from Irene and Ellis for weeks, and it’s true: I don’t have the Opening as it is written in Venus Afflicted. But I have Irene, who rehearsed it with Thorne’s original Circle several times, and I have … well, I won’t tax your magnanimity with a blow-by-blow account of more forays into the home life of Science’s Dark Twin.”
That was a phrase of Colin MacLaren’s that Dylan was especially fond of quoting—and Thorne had known Professor MacLaren years ago. She looked at Julian. Charming, sane, and nearly normal—and handsome and rich besides! It would be so easy to ask Julian about Thorne and MacLaren—and to tell him … .
To tell him …
About Thorne. About the book. That she had it, it was here, he didn’t have to try to re-create the ritual, that—
“What do you suppose the chef has planned for dessert, Julian? Do you know?” Truth said brightly, shattering the spell.
Dessert, when it came, was breathtaking; individual compotes of fresh fruit lightly poached in liqueur and sugar and piled into a dish made of colored spun sugar.
“It’s too pretty to eat!” Truth protested.
“It will only melt if you don’t,” Julian responded with cheerful ruthlessness. To Truth’s relief, Julian seemed to be willing to abandon the subject of Thorne Blackburn and Venus Afflicted, and become once more what he appeared to be—a man of wealth and sophistication.
As the waiter who had placed the dishes retreated, the wine steward approached with a sweating, white-swathed bottle. Another uniformed attendant carried away the standing ice bucket that held the melted ice and empty champagne bottle.
“Your champagne, sir. The cellarer couldn’t supply a nineteen eighty-two grande cuvée blanc, but we did have an ’eighty-five double cuvée pink, which I hope you will find acceptable.” He paused, waiting for Julian’s decision.
It was very odd, Truth decided, to look into a world not only where sentences like this made sense, but where the questions those sentences framed actually mattered, and mattered desperately: the world of great wealth, a world polished so smooth by the application of privilege that any flaw in the seamless perfection was seen as an enormous defect.
Julian frowned, and for a moment Truth even thought he might make a scene, but then he smiled and the anxious steward relaxed.
“Of course. Pink champagne, Truth?”
Cuvée, Julian explained, was a sweet dessert champagne. The wine in their glasses was a delicate shell pink, and its sweetness made it slide down her throat as if it were the scent of roses made liquid. It would be easy to become reckless, irresponsible, drinking this, and part of Truth welcomed the thought.
But if I’m going to do anything rash, I’m going to do it because I want to, and not because I’m hopped up on expensive booze. She put the half-empty glass down.
“Don’t you like it?”
“It’s lovely. But I’m afraid academics don’t see much of the high life. I’m not used to it.”
“We’ll just have to accustom you, then. Do you dance?”
Truth would have bet hard cash that there wasn’t any place in the Hudson Valley where you could still find ballroom dancing; and if she could have found anyone to take her bet she would have lost her money. Julian found such a place—in fact, he found three of them, beginning with the River View Inn itself, which had a small dance floor tucked off in what had once been the conservatory wing, and a live band to provide the music.
So it was very late indeed when Julian’s BMW drew up at the front door of Shadow’s Gate.
“I’ll let you off here and go put the car away around back. Oh, and if you’re looking for yours, I had Gareth move it today. With the bad weather setting in, it’s just as well to have everything under cover.”
“How did he move it?” Truth asked. “I didn’t give him the keys.” Nor would she, when the ignition key opened the trunk as well, and the trunk contained Venus Afflicted. She’d even made sure to take them with her this evening.
“No? He might have left it then; he’ll probably ask you for the keys tomorrow. But sleep well, darling.”
So there wasn’t to be a proffered nightcap and a skillful pass, subtle or un-. Truth felt a sense of relief; she couldn’t handle one more complication in her life just now and Julian seemed astute enough to know it. She got out of the car.
“And you,” she said, turning back to close the door. Julian reached out and took her hand, raising her fingers to his lips for a quick Continental salute; the gesture had enough of conscious self-mockery in it that she didn’t find it embarrassing. Truth turned away and heard the car move off behind her.
Though her head was mazed with wine and music, the sense of responsibility that was so much a part of her nature made her follow the drive around to the pass-through where she’d left her car the last time she’d driven back from Shadowkill.
It was still there, untouched. Relief combined with the champagne made her suddenly giddy, and the distant sound of a car door closing, carried on the still night air, warned her that if she didn’t want this evening to continue in a direction she wasn’t ready for, she’d better get inside before Julian returned.
Despite her distraction, the sense of sanctuary that she’d thought dispelled forever filled her sense as soon as Truth stepped into her room.
She knew what to call it now. It was Thorne’s presence she sensed. He would never hurt her. She knew that with the unquestioning intuition of a child; felt the burden of hatred for him she had carried in her heart all these years simply … vanish.
Know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Thorne Blackburn might be dead, he might have returned from the dead, the things he’d done in life might still be weird, hateful, or simply puzzling to her, but he would never knowingly or intentionally hurt his daughter.
He’d loved her.
He loved her now, and with that certainty some needy, stunted part of Truth Jourdemayne began to flex and spread its wings.
“Champagne talking,” Truth muttered aloud, embarrassed at the tenor of her own thoughts. She flopped down on the bed and groaned, kicking her shoes off. Her new shoes, in which she’d gone dancing the first time she’d worn them. So much for common sense.
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, frowning.
Love was all very well, but it certainly wasn’t enough to bring somebody back from the dead; if it was love alone that mattered, surely there would be thousands—millions—of the dead come back to comfort grieving loved ones. Love alone could not explain Thorne’s presence.
If he really were here. If this wasn’t the self-delusion of a woman heading full-speed for a world-class nervous breakdown. Her very conviction could be a symptom of her sickness.
What proof did she have? What proof could she get? Something tangible—or, failing that, some information only Thorne could have, something that she could check. What had he been doing in her room anyway?
Oh, of course—he wants his jewelry back. It’s still in the car with Venus Afflicted. I’ll have to get it for him … she found herself thinking.
