"Laura Anne Gilman - Staying Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilman Laura Anne)

going deep into the proverbial shitter. She was going to have to do some actual work for her paycheck
on this one.

"Maybe that will teach you to answer the phone before six," she said out loud.
"Excuse me?"

Rafe, the guard who had been detailed to "help" her, had a cute little wrinkle between his eyebrows,
totally spoiling his until-now perfect Little RentACop look.

"Nothing. Never mind." Don't talk to yourself in front of civilians, Valere. It wouldn't have mattered,
anyway. Even if she had ignored the phone's ringing two hours ago, before either she or the sun had
thought about getting up, the sound of Sergei's voice on the machine would have made her pick the
receiver up. She might have the skills that people paid for, but her partner was the one with a nose for
jobs that was slowly but surely making them moderately well-off, if not obscenely wealthy. Only a fool
would pass up a call from someone like that, no matter what the time.

And while Wren Valere was many things, a fool had never been one of them.

"Rafe? Can you go get me a refill of water?" she asked, handing him the plastic sports bottle she had
been holding. He wasn't thrilled at being an errand boy, she could tell, but his orders had been explicit.
Give Ms. Valere all the help she needed. Type of help not specified. So he went.

Freed from observation, she sat back on her heels and closed her eyes slowly, holding them shut for a
count of ten. She had been doing this long enough that it didn't take her any longer than that to slip into a
state of clear-minded awareness. The sounds of early-morning traffic, the smells of exhaust and
fresh-budding greenery all faded, leaving her with a clear, concentrated, settled mind. As she opened her
eyes slowly, not rushing anything, her gaze went back to the sleek marble foundation in front of her, as
though there might have been some change in those ten-plus seconds of blackout.

Nope. Nothing. It still looked as ordinary and commonplace as before, one of any of a hundred-plus
buildings throughout the city built in the same time period. No bloody handprint, no chisel marks or dust
left on the pale gray surface, no sign of any kind of disturbance at all. Nothing to suggest there was
something different about this northeast corner of the building, as opposed to the southeast, the southwest
or the northwest sides. The four corners of this building stretched out over a full city block, and she'd just
spent the past hour becoming far too familiar with all four.

God, she hated prep work! But you had to check everything before you started looking for anything.
Even the stuff you knew you wouldn't find. Except, of course, the fact that one corner, or rather one
small block inside of this corner, wasn't really there anymore.

A deliberate letting-go of her concentration, and the fugue state slipped away. Wren stood, arching her
back to release some of the tension that had gathered there. MagicтАФcurrent, in the post-eighteenth
century terminologyтАФwas easy enough to use, if you had the Talent, but that didn't make it easy.

Her throat felt like sandpaper. She looked around, but Rafe wasn't back yet with her water. He must
have gone all the way up to the executive lunchroom for San Pellegrino.

She clicked on the miniature recorder in her hand, and spoke into it, remembering to speak slowly
enough that she would be able to transcribe correctly later on that day. "No indications of newly-made
marks or disturbances on the site, not that that means anythingтАФI bet they have a team of sanitation