A Gift of Thought Read Online Free Page A

“Rachel?”
    Dillon looked at her, looked at the door, then shrugged and pushed himself through it. Not waiting around for people to open doors was one of the few advantages of being a ghost. In the back of his mind, he imagined his grandmother scolding him for his lack of manners. But ghosts can’t knock, he protested silently to the voice of his conscience, shutting it up for the moment.
    Inside the room, a girl in cotton pajamas, dark hair twisted in wet tangles down her back, hurriedly slid a book onto a shelf. Dillon frowned. Something about her hurry was furtive, as if she was trying to hide the book. He drifted closer.
    The spine was black with a red ribbon on it. Eclipse , he read. Was that one of those weird vampire books?
    “Rachel!” The knock was harder, the voice a demand.
    “Coming.” The girl glanced back at the shelf, touching the book one last time, then crossed to the door. Dillon took a look at the other books on the crowded shelves. He didn’t recognize most of them, but she had a couple by Terry Pratchett. That was a good sign.
    As the girl opened the door, Dillon wondered who she was. But he supposed if he was going to be haunting her house, he’d find out soon enough.
    *****
    Dillon was dead.
    Had been dead for a while, judging by the flavor of Lucas’s emotions.
    Sylvie knew that if she let it, the pain would overwhelm her. Every morning when she woke up and thought of Dillon, wondered what he was doing, where he was, every morning he’d already been gone. Every night before she fell asleep, when she’d wished him a silent good night and God bless, he’d already been gone.
    Was this what drowning felt like? This choking sensation closing off her throat?
    But she had a job to do.
    Rachel.
    She needed to check on Rachel, make sure she was okay, then test the security system, find out how Lucas had gotten in, get the cameras back online . . . yes, she needed to work. To make her charge safe.
    She stuffed the pain down, burying it deep inside her. Later, she promised herself. Later.
    Rachel was fine. A little forlorn-looking still, but going straight to bed and to sleep. Twenty minutes ago Sylvie might have insisted she eat something or at the very least rehydrate, preferably using a drink with electrolytes. Instead, Sylvie just nodded and walked away, heading straight to the security room on the lowest level of the house.
    She and Rachel had come in that way, through the garage, and up the back stairs to the third level where the bedrooms and Chesney’s private office were located. Lucas, though, exited on the mid-level, through the French doors that opened from the large family room onto the back terrace. But how did he bypass the security system?
    The room that the security team used as their base of operations was tucked between the caterer’s kitchen and a staff work room. A wide-screen monitor displayed multiple camera feeds. Lucas had said that the ones in back were down, but they all appeared to be running. Sylvie ran a quick system check. Managing the technology wasn’t her job, and apart from turning the system off and on, the system check was all she knew how to do. But the lights were green and it seemed to be working the way it was supposed to.
    She tapped her fingers on the desk, debating, and then, with a twist of her mouth, she picked up a phone and called Ty.
    “Clear?” He didn’t bother with hello when he answered, jumping straight to the information he wanted.
    “Not exactly,” Sylvie answered reluctantly. She glanced at the monitors again. Everything looked as if it was running properly, but it couldn’t be.
    “Not exactly? You’re on the house phone.”
    “Confirmed. The house is currently clear.” Sylvie put a little extra emphasis on the second to last word.
    “Currently?” Sylvie could hear the shock in Ty’s voice.
    “Confirmed.” She waited. In the background, she heard the noise of the party; the faint formal music, the dull clamor of conversations,