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

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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