"Charlaine Harris - Dancers in the Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Charlaine)

reference librarian to the stars, who can look up


the inner dimensions of a sarcophagus


faster than I can whistle "Dixie."


CHAPTER ONE

2




Rue paused to gather herself before she pushed open the door marked both Blue Moon
Entertainment and Black Moon Productions. She'd made sure she'd be right on time for her
appointment. Desperation clamped down on her like a vise: she had to get this job, even if the
conditions were distasteful. Not only would the money make continuing her university courses
possible, the job hours dovetailed with her classes. Okay, head up, chest out, shoulders square,
big smile, pretty hands, Rue told herself, as her mother had told her a thousand times. There were
two men two vampires, she corrected herself one dark, one red-haired, and a woman, a regular
human woman, waiting for her. In the corner, at a bar, a girl with short blond hair was stretching.
The girl might be eighteen, three years younger than Rue. The older woman was hard-faced,
expensively dressed, perhaps forty. Her pantsuit had cost more than three of Rue's outfits, at least
the ones that she wore to classes every day. She thought of those outfits as costumes: old jeans
and loose shirts bought at the thrift store, sneakers or hiking boots and big glasses with a very
weak prescription. She was concealed in such an ensemble at this moment, and Rue realized from
the woman's face that her appearance was an unpleasant surprise.


"You must be Rue?" the older woman asked.


Rue nodded, extended her hand. "Rue May. Pleased to meet you." Two lies in a row. It was
getting to be second nature or even (and this was what scared her most) first nature.


"I'm Sylvia Dayton. I own Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions." She shook
Rue's hand in a firm, brisk way.


"Thank you for agreeing to see me dance." Roe crammed her apprehension into a corner of her
mind and smiled confidently. She'd endured the judgments of strangers countless times. "Where
do I change?" She let her gaze skip right over the vampires her potential partners, she guessed. At
least they were both taller than her own five foot eight. In the hasty bit of research she'd done,
she'd read that vampires didn't like to shake hands, so she didn't offer. Surely she was being rude
in not even acknowledging their presence? But Sylvia hadn't introduced them.