Rain of the Ghosts Read Online Free

strange artifact from another world. Then she placed it absently on the counter and sighed deeply.
    “Well, I’m waiting,”’Bastian said.
    Rain’s head turned slowly toward him. “What for?”
    ’Bastian gave her his patented Old Man Twinkle. “My thank you.”
    Rain walked around the table, pulled an empty chair out of the way and kissed him on the forehead. “Sorry. Thanks. You saved me.” She looked down at the empty chair and thought about sitting down. The simplest decision suddenly seemed very hard to make. Or so unimportant that it was impossible to care.
    “So how come you’re not happy?”
    Rain collapsed into the chair. “I’m thirteen years old, and my life is over! ” she moaned.
    It seemed to ’Bastian that she was auditioning to be the poster child for teen angst and melodramatic defeat. He nodded solemnly. “I see. And how did you come by this revelation…?”
    “ Summer’s over! I can’t pretend anymore. I’m trapped, Papa. Totally trapped.”
    Papa Sebastian leaned his head away, scratching one eyebrow with his pinky so that he wouldn’t have to meet her gaze. “That’s a problem, all right.”
    But she wasn’t fooled. She gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. “Don’t laugh,” she said. “You don’t know what it’s like. You’ve been places. To the mainland, to Europe.”
    His whole body tensed up; he responded in clipped tones. “I wasn’t exactly on holiday, young lady.”
    “That’s the point. You did something important with your life. I’m never going to do anything. I’ll never go anywhere. I’ll graduate high school and spend the rest of my life ushering tourists around these same eight islands!” She slumped down dramatically, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, her head buried in her hands on the table.
    Sebastian quickly pushed away an old memory and eyed her wryly. He paused just long enough for her to be sure that he’d received the full effect of her performance. Then he spoke quietly. “Now I don’t believe that, Raindrop. I don’t believe that for a second.”
    She didn’t budge, but he knew she was listening, so he continued: “This is home. And frankly, it’s not a bad place to make a life. So you may come back some day to usher tourists.” He shrugged. “After all, I did. But you’ll get your own chance to decide.”
    Still no movement. “You’ve always been special, Rain. An adventurer. We’d turn our backs for a minute, and you’d be off exploring. Before you could walk, even. And I remember watching you as you grew up. You’d have long conversations with your imaginary friends. You’d fight pirates. Find treasure. Solve mysteries. I knew you were destined for greatness.”
    She refused to lift her head. But at least she spoke—a sarcastic “Right.”
    Sebastian placed a gentle hand on Rain’s head. His gold wristband caught the flash from another burst of lightning and sparkled. “It’s like my abuela used to say … ‘To unlock a door, you need two things: a key and someone who knows how to turn it. ’”
    Rain’s arms and the thunder muffled her reply. “I never knew what that meant. And what does it have to do with anything, anyway?”
    He leaned down to whisper in her ear, “You strike me as someone who knows how to turn a key.”
    Sebastian leaned back again, and slowly, tentatively, as if he had been working magic upon her, Rain started to raise her head to meet his warm gray eyes. “Maybe,” she said begrudgingly. “But I’m never gonna get my hands on any key. Not to anyplace I’d want to go.”
    Papa Sebastian considered this for a moment. Rain watched him stare down at the milk in his cereal bowl. Outside, the wind howled, and another lightning bolt lit up the window. The thunder was nearly simultaneous; the storm was right over their heads. In contrast to that fury, the music in her head, which had been silent since she had yelled at Callahan out on the street, played a slow and pretty jazz