"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 10 - Narcissus Chains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

anymore.
"Ronnie, I can't arm wrestle shapeshifters and vampires. I will lose a fair
fight. The only way I survive, the only way my leopards survive, is because
the other shifters fear me. They fear my threat. I'm only as good as my
threat, Ronnie."
"So you'll go down there and kill them."
"I didn't say that."
"But you will."
"I'll try to avoid it," I said.
She tucked her knees up, wrapping her arms around those long legs. She'd
managed to get a tiny prick in one of the hose; the hole was shiny with clear
nail polish. She'd carried the polish in her purse for just such emergencies.
I'd carried a gun and hadn't even taken a purse.
"If you get arrested, call, and I'll bail you out."
I shook my head. "If I get caught wasting three or more people in a public
area, there won't be any bail tonight. The police probably won't even finish
questioning me until long past dawn."
"How can you be so calm about this?" she asked.
I was beginning to remember why Ronnie and I had started drifting apart.
I'd had almost the exact conversation with Richard once when an assassin had
come to town to kill me. I gave the same answer. "Having hysterics won't help
anything, Ronnie."
"But you're not angry about it."
"Oh, I am angry," I said.
She shook her head. "No, I mean you're not outraged that this is happening.
You don't seem surprised, not like ... " She shrugged. "Not like you should
be."
"You mean not like you would be." I held up a hand before she could answer.
"I don't have time to debate moral philosophy, Ronnie." I picked up the phone.
"I'm going to call Jean-Claude."
"I keep urging you to dump the vampire and marry Richard, but maybe there's
more than one reason why you can't let him go."
I dialed the number for Circus of the Damned from memory, and Ronnie just
kept talking to my back. "Maybe you're not willing to give up a lover who's
colder than you are."
The phone was ringing. "There are clean sheets on the guest bed, Ronnie.
Sorry I won't be able to share girl talk tonight." I kept my back to her.
I heard her stand in a crinkle of skirts and knew when she walked out. I
kept my back facing the room until I knew she was gone. It wouldn't do either
of us any good to let her see me cry.
3

JEAN-CLAUDE WASN'T AT the Circus of the Damned. The voice on the other end
of the phone at the Circus didn't recognize me and wouldn't believe I was
Anita Blake, Jean-Claude's sometimes sweetie. So I'd been reduced to calling
his other businesses. I'd tried Guilty Pleasures, his strip club, but he
wasn't there. I tried Danse Macabre, his newest enterprise, but I was
beginning to wonder if Jean-Claude had simply told everyone that he wasn't in
if I called.
The thought bothered me a lot. I'd worried that after so long Richard might