Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) by Mark Edward Hall Read Free Book Online

there. Annie could have afforded anything, but that’s where she’d decided to go. Doug had been skeptical at first, little rich bitch slumming with the commoners, but the better he’d gotten to know her, the more he believed she was sincere. She was bright, and so filled with life. Like she was tasting freedom for the first time.
    Little did he know.
    And she was indeed an artist. As he would later discover, her work was both beautiful and strangely unnerving. She’d told Doug that she’d been painting since the age of two, much to her father’s chagrin. He had wanted her to become a lawyer, a diplomat, a statesman, a scientist, anything but an artist. Artists didn’t change the world, he’d told her. They were merely mute observers, albeit, documenters, of the changes wrought by the world’s true movers and shakers.
    She’d begged to differ, however, reminding her father that artists such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach and Beethoven, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Dylan and the Beatles had indeed been more than observers and documenters. They had shaped events, probably in more profound ways than any politician or businessman ever had.
    “Not the sort of difference I want my daughter to make,” he’d told her, and went about the task of doing everything in his power to discourage Annie’s artistic pursuits.
    To no avail. She would be an artist at all costs and the only way to accomplish it, at least in her way of thinking, was to abandon her life of privilege and live among ordinary people. Annie could have lived anywhere, yet she claimed to actually like living in the dorm, sharing her space with dozens of other young people. Doug had later learned that her growing up years had been so sheltered and lonely that by the time she escaped her father’s influence she’d been literally starved for the companionship of other human beings. And something he didn’t find out until years later; the close proximity of other people, “sane and normal people” is how she’d put it, helped in some small way to keep her demons at bay. Doug could only guess what terrible baggage lay at her core. Back then she rarely talked about her childhood. Whenever Doug broached the subject she’d tell him that it had no relevance to the person she was now. And Doug hadn’t pressed her , even though he sensed she wasn’t being totally truthful.
    Annie liked bicycle riding on campus. Doug knew this because he would ride with her for hours, talking and dreaming, feeling the cool, clean New England air in their faces. She grew to love the great outdoors, hiking and backpacking—experiences which were totally new for her. Doug remembered sitting on the edge of a wilderness lake with Annie in the gathering dusk listening to the call of wild loons. She was like a kid caught up in the miracle of discovery. She carried within her the grace and refinement of money and breeding, yet she had the sensibility and compassion of an ordinary person. But Antoinette De Roché was far from an ordinary person. Doug had sensed this from the beginning, and he had been in love almost from the moment they’d met.
    From what Doug had been able to glean, Annie had grown up in a whirlwind of wealth, privilege and power. There had been mention early on about her father having descended from some obscure French royal bloodline. But it had just been in passing and the truth was, Doug did not care about those sorts of things so he had never pressed her for details. She’d been born in Boston where her parents had a home, lived in Stone Harbor, Florida, where they had another, and in various places around the globe including France, the United Kingdom and the Cayman Islands where her father had vague business interests. He’d also done diplomatic work for several U.S presidents.
    Annie had often jokingly referred to her stint at the University of Maine as slumming. In truth her choice of school had been an act of rebellion against a domineering father and a