“All of us who are left,” Winter said, suddenly somber. Cassie would not be here. She wheeled the Mercedes into the hospital parking lot and found a space near the door. “I won’t be long,” she said. “Why don’t you wait here, Jannie?”
THE FAMILIAR SMELLS of mingled disinfectants greeted her as the elevator opened onto her floor. After so many visits, Winter could just have walked right past the desk, but today was a special day.
“He’ll be right out, Winter,” the nurse on duty said. “Happy Holiday.”
“Thanks, Rachel. Merry Solstice to you.” Winter smiled, breathing deeply to cover her nervousness. She’d waited so long for this moment—she wanted everything to be perfect.
Hunter Greyson walked slowly down the hall toward her, a muscular attendant hovering slightly behind. The clothes she had bought him for this occasion still looked painfully new.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, smiling his crooked grin. “Want to go dancing?”
Winter came toward him and hugged him gently. Automatically, she glanced at Grey’s throat. A small white scar was all now that remained of the tracheostomy that had once let a machine breathe for him.
The effects of a year-long coma could not be instantly shrugged off, but Grey’s progress toward health and mobility had been rapid, from the moment at San Gabriel when Winter had seen Grey open his eyes in the hospital bed. She’d had a lot of explaining to do about her presence in the building at that hour—not to mention the fact that Grey’s respirator was shut down—but the fact that Grey was alive and conscious counted for a lot. Once he’d been able to make his own health-care decisions, Winter had been able to get Grey moved to Resurrection City and started on the long road to rehabilitation.
“Ready to go? Jannie’s waiting in the car outside, and Ramsey’s getting in tomorrow,” Winter said.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.” Grey put his arm around her waist.
“The chair will be around in just a minute,” Rachel said.
“The hell with that,” Grey shot back, grinning. “I’m walking out of here under my own power.”
The aides and nurses applauded as he walked to the elevator and stepped inside. He bowed carefully as the doors closed, and Winter steadied him as he straightened.
“Dancing, eh? Not for a few weeks, I’d say.”
“Maybe for New Year’s,” Grey suggested irrepressibly. He smiled fondly at Winter. “Now that my time is my own again—or almost—what shall we do with the rest of our lives?”
“I know what I’d like to do,” Winter said. She’d meant to say this later, but somehow she felt the time was right. “I’d like to get married. You did ask me, you know—fourteen years ago.”
The joy that filled Grey’s face told her the timing had been right. “It’s about time,” he said, taking her hand. “It took you long enough to say yes.”
“But it’s never too late,” Winter answered, her eyes misty. “Not for a beginning.”
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
—ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
Another kind of poltergeist activity may be the expression of psychic force in tension, not around a hysterical or maladjusted child, but around a relatively well-adjusted adult. When this occurs, there is some unresolved psychic force in action; it could be said that the Unseen is coming in search of the individual concerned, and this does not, strictly speaking, come under the scope of this book.
In addition to the case histories in this book, consult Carrington and Fodore, cited elsewhere, as well as the monograph by Margrave and Anstey, in the Autumn, 1983, issue of The Journal of Unexpected Phenomena, reissued by Silkie Press, San Francisco, as The Natural History of the Poltergeist.
—The Inheritor
Tor Books by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Dark Satanic
The Inheritor
Witch Hill
Ghostlight
Witchlight
Gravelight
Heartlight
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously.
WITCHLIGHT
Copyright © 2004 by Rosemary Edghill
All rights reserved.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781466819160
First eBook Edition : March 2012
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Bradley, Marion Zimmer.
Witchlight / Marion Zimmer Bradley.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 0-312-86104-4
1. Parapsychology—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.R228 W5 1996
813’.54—dc20
96020703
ISBN 978-0-7653-2374-3
First Hardcover Edition: September 1996
First Trade Paperback Edition: September 1997
Second Trade Paperback Edition: December 2009
Witchlight Page 35