"Hamilton,.Laurell.K.-.Anita.Blake.-.8.5.-.Girl.Who.Was.Infatuated.With.Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

Hamilton, Laurell K - The Girl Who Was Infatuated With Death
Laurell K. Hamilton



This short story occurs in the interval between BLUE MOON and
OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLY.





IT was five days before Christmas, a quarter 'til midnight. I should
have been asnooze in my bed dreaming of sugarplums, whatever
the hell they were, but I wasn't. I was sitting across my desk
sipping coffee and offering a box of Kleenexes to my client, Ms.
Rhonda Mackenzie. She'd been crying for nearly the entire
meeting, so that she'd wiped most of her careful eye makeup
away, leaving her eyes pale and unfinished, younger, like what she
must have looked like when she was in high school. The dark,
perfect lipstick made the eyes look emptier, more vulnerable.

"I'm not usually like this, Ms. Blake. I am a very strong woman." Her
voice took on a tone that said she believed this, and it might even
be true. She raised those naked brown eyes to me and there was
fierceness in them that might have made a weaker person flinch.
Even I, tough-as-nails vampire-hunter that I am, had trouble
meeting the rage in those eyes.

"It's alright, Ms. Mackenzie, you're not the first client that's cried. It's
hard when you've lost someone."

She looked up startled. "I haven't lost anyone, not yet."

I sat my coffee cup back down without drinking from it and stared
at her. "I'm an animator, Ms. Mackenzie. I raise the dead if the
reason is good enough. I assumed this amount of grief was
because you'd come to ask me to raise someone close to you."

She shook her head, her deep brown curls in disarray around her
face as if she'd been running her hands through what was once a
perfect perm. "My daughter, Amy, is very much alive and I want her
to stay that way."

Now I was just plain confused. "I raise the dead and am a legal
vampire executioner, Ms. Mackenzie. How do either of those jobs
help you keep your daughter alive?"

"I want you to help me find her before she commits suicide."