Until Forever by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online Page A

showing up in this century, even if only in my dreams. What else would that make him?”
    “Immortal?” She gave him the snort that remark deserved, which made him chuckle before he asked, “So, did you question him about the curse this time?”
    “I was too frightened by his appearance again even to think of the curse. I simply told him to go away. But—he did volunteer a warning before he vanished, something about how I could send him away and he would go, but only because he wanted to go. If he chose to stay, he said there was nothing I could do to get rid of him.”
    “At least until you woke up.”
    That simple statement brought a wide grin to her lips, and some very definite relief. She hadn’t realized she was still wound up so tight with nervous tension until it drained from her now.
    “It’s too bad I didn’t think of that while I was having the dream.”
    “Now that you have, maybe it will occur to you next time, and you can—”
    “I do not intend to have that particular dream again, David,” she interrupted him, her tone more determined than certain.
    “ If you do, keep him around long enough to find out about the curse. I’m curious toknow what your subconscious will come up with for an answer.”
    Roseleen wasn’t. Her conscious thoughts had become too fanciful as it was, since she’d had that first dream. She would just as soon not know how much more fanciful her subconscious could get.
    “And by the way,” David continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the thunder this afternoon that triggered your dream again. The storm that didn’t show up last night has arrived, if you haven’t noticed.”
    She hadn’t noticed, but she looked out the kitchen window now to see that it was indeed raining, and no small drizzle but a downpour. Her smile, on the other hand, was as bright as sunshine.
    “I never thought I’d welcome the sight of rain,” she said, “but I have to tell you, having thunder and lightning show up in cloudless skies twice lately was beginning to get a little spooky. At least this time it appears to have heralded a perfectly normal storm.”
    He burst out laughing. “Getting a little superstitious, are we?”
    She blushed slightly but still grinned. “Maybe just a little.”
    Somehow, she managed to put thoughts of ghosts and Vikings and thousand-year-old curses from her mind for the rest of the day, so she could enjoy David’s company while she had it. It wasn’t easy.
    She would be starting her research next week. She had museums to visit, as well asbookstores, the older libraries with their wealth of books no longer in print, and, of course, ancient battle sites. She had no time to devote to the analysis of dreams that couldn’t really satisfy her curiosity about that curse. Whatever answers her subconscious could come up with wouldn’t be the real answers, and…
    Roseleen still ended up giving it some thought later that night while she lay curled up in her bed, trying to sleep, but knowing it would be impossible with that one little kernel of doubt still floating around in her head—what if she hadn’t been dreaming?
    It was a very big if , one that her logical stick-to-the-facts mind was leery of exploring, because if she hadn’t been dreaming, and she hadn’t found anything to prove that she was the victim of a hoax, then she’d been talking to a ghost. And that led to a wealth of other questions.
    Thorn Blooddrinker had left each time she’d told him to leave, but what if what he’d told her was true—that he could stay if he chose to? What did she know about ghosts, anyway, except that she didn’t believe in them, or she hadn’t believed in them. Was that the curse on the sword, that its original owner came part and parcel with it?
    The previous owner had been warned about eternal damnation if the sword fell into the hands of a woman. Because only a woman could “summon” the ghost? Was she going to be stuck with a ghost for as long as