"Laurell K. Hamilton - Faerie 2 - A Caress of Twilight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

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A Caress of Twilight



by

Laurell K. Hamilton



Book 2 of the Merry Gentry Series




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Chapter 1



Moonlight silvered the room, painting the bed in a hundred shades of grey, white, and black. The
two men in the bed were deeply asleep. So deeply that when I'd crawled out from between them, they'd
barely stirred. My skin glowed white with the kiss of moonlight. The pure bloodred of my hair looked black.
I'd pulled on a silk robe, because it was chilly. People can talk about sunny California, but in the wee hours
of the night, when dawn is but a distant dream, it's still chilly. The night that fell like a soft blessing through
my window was a December night. If I'd been home in Illinois, there would have been the smell of snow,
crisp enough, almost, to melt along the tongue. Cold enough to sear the lungs. So cold it was like breathing
icy fire. That was the way air was supposed to taste in early December. The breeze crawling through the
window at my back held the dry tang of eucalyptus and the distant smell of the sea. Salt, water, and
something else, that indefinable scent that says ocean, not lake, nothing usable, nothing drinkable. You can
die of thirst on the shores of an ocean.

For three years I'd stood on the shores of this particular ocean and died a little bit every day. Not
literallyтАФI'd have survivedтАФbut mere survival can get pretty lonely. I'd been born Princess Meredith
NicEssus, a member of the high court of faerie. I was a real-life faerie princess, the only one ever born on
American soil. When I vanished from sight about three years ago, the media had gone crazy. Sightings of
the missing Elven American Princess had rivaled Elvis sightings. I'd been spotted all around the world. In
reality I'd been in Los Angeles the entire time. I'd hidden myself, been just plain Meredith Gentry, Merry to
my friends. Just another human with fey ancestry working for the Grey Detective Agency, where we
specialized in supernatural problems, magical solutions.