Ghostlight by Marion Zimmer Bradley

income from tourism.
    It was by now late afternoon, and it would have been reasonable for Truth to at least locate and stop in at her Bed-and-Breakfast to meet her hostess and drop off her bags, but now that she was so close to her goal she couldn’t bear to stop. Shadow’s Gate had loomed in her imagination for years as some sort of hideous combination of Hell House and the Bates Motel; she could not wait any longer than utterly necessary to see it as it really was and reduce it to ordinariness.
    Following her directions, Truth drove up Main Street, as State 13 was now called—past shops that gave way to tidy—and costly—cottages. Then the cottages stopped, and there was about a mile where the sides of the road were edged only by running fence and grass. Then she reached the place where Main Street formed a T with Old Patent Grant Road.
    Shadow’s Gate was straight ahead, and the board fencing that edged Old Patent Grant Road had been removed from the area in front of the gatehouse, so that it was possible to drive right on to the property. Truth crossed the two-lane highway and pulled up into the graveled apron in front of the gatehouse. A warning quiver of alarm made the hair on her arms and neck stand up; the very air felt charged, as if before a storm.
    Don’t be melodramatic. It’s just a house, Truth scolded herself sternly. She forced herself to look around, to gather data with a scholar’s mind.
    From her investigations, she knew that Shadow’s Gate was an estate dating from the days when both sides of
the Hudson had been studded with the palatial enclaves of the nineteenth-century robber barons. The current house, she gathered, had been built sometime after the Civil War. The gatehouse where her car now stood was a later addition—a miniature castle in itself, complete with the mammoth clock face that gave it a faint spurious resemblance to some public building. The gatehouse building formed an arch across the drive; iron gates within that arch could be closed to bar the road into the estate to the casual intruder. Truth had seen photographs of the gatehouse in the Cavendish book, and had mentally embellished that picture: the surroundings overgrown with weeds, the rusted gates padlocked shut; everything bearing a wistful aura of decay.
    Unfortunately for her peace of mind, the weeds were gone, the ornamental plantings were flourishing, and the freshly-painted gates stood open to the recently regraveled drive. Shadow’s Gate was very far from being a deserted relic of a ghostly past.
    Someone is living here, Truth realized, and felt a muted ghost of the jealousy she had experienced at Aunt Caroline’s. Shadow’s Gate was hers —who dared …
    â€œCan I help you?”
    The voice belonged to the brash young man who had stepped out from behind the gatehouse. She rolled down the window and leaned out.
    â€œI—I’m not sure. I came to look at the house,” Truth said hesitantly.
    â€œIt isn’t for sale,” the young man said, still smiling. He was several years younger than Truth, with sun-streaked blond hair and deeply tanned skin testifying to a commitment to open-air activities.
    â€œOh, I don’t want to buy it,” Truth said quickly. “I just wanted to look at it.” Some impulse of honesty made her add: “I grew up here—well, for a while. My name’s Truth Jourdemayne.”
    By now Truth had become inured to practically every
possible reaction to her admittedly-peculiar first name. This, too, was a legacy of Thorne Blackburn, but by the time she’d realized that, it had become so much her name that no amount of dislike of the giver was reason enough to change it.
    â€œ You’re Truth Jourdemayne? The Truth Jourdemayne? That’s great! And you’re here! How did you—? Oh; I, uh, guess I ought to introduce myself. I’m Gareth. Gareth Crowther? Anyway, welcome to Shadow’s