"Barbara Hambly - Night's Edge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

sorts of things that were whispering through her brain right now. And had been ever since she'd moved
in.

I jerked open the door, it caused a breeze, the dress moved a little. Big deal.

In spite of her internal scolding, her eyes felt wider than she would have liked as she perused the closet's
interior. Her handyman-slash-house-inspector had asked if she'd like a light installed in there. She'd said
no. Now she was thinking about calling him tomorrow morning to change her answer. Meanwhile, she
spotted her robe and snatched it off its hanger with the speed of a cobra snatching a field mouse. She
back-stepped, slammed the closet door, and felt her heart start to pound in her chest.

B-r-e-a-t-h-e, she thought. And then she did, a long, deep, slow inhalation that filled her lungs to
bursting, a brief delay while she counted to four, and a thorough, cleansing exhalation that emptied her
lungs entirely. She repeated it several times, got a grip on herself and then felt stupid.

She didnotbelieve in closet-dwelling bogeymen. Hell, she'd made her career debunking nonsense like
that. More precisely, putting phony psychics, gurus and ghost busters out of business in this spooky little
tourist town. And no one liked it. Not the town supervisor, the town council, the tourism bureau, and
least of all, the phony psychics, gums and ghost busters.

But thanks to the Constitution, freedom of the press couldn't be banned on the grounds that it was bad
for tourism.

She pulled her bathrobe on, relishing the feel of plush fabric on her skin, and then drew a breath of
courage and turned to face the bathroom again. Her hairbrush was in there, along with her skin lotions,
cuticle trimmer and toothbrush. And she still had to tug the plug and let the water run out of the bathtub.
She was going back in. A cold draft was nothing to be afraid of.

Crossing the room, one foot in front of the other, she moved firmly to the door, closed her hand on its
oval, antique porcelain doorknob, and opened it. The air that greeted her was no longer icy. In fact it was
as warm as the air in the bedroom.

She sighed in relief as she stepped into the room. But her relief died and the chill returned to her soul
when she saw the mirror, no longer coated in fog, but something else. Something far, far worse.

Written across the damp glass surface, in something scarlet that trickled in streams from the bottom of
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each letter, were the words "House of Death."

Someone screamed. It wasn't until she was down the stairs, out the door and about fifteen yards up the
heaving, cracked sidewalk, that Kiley realized the scream had been her own.

She stood there in the dead of night, barefoot, clutching her robe against the whipping October wind and
staring back at her dream house with its turrets and gables and its widow's walk at the top. Such a
beautiful place, old and solid. And framed right now by the scarlet and shimmering yellow of the sugar
maples and poplar trees at the peak of their fall color.