"Holly Lisle - Minerva Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

However, this time her strategy worked. The box was still
there when she shoved her cart in front of it and reached up.

Her reflexes were a little off. It had been an awful day,
which was segueing into an awful evening. Edgy as she was,
her reach for the Wheaties was more of a desperate grab.
The box was hersтАФuntil she tumbled it away with one
clumsy move . . . and saw it grabbed in midair by another

shopper.

Like a wild thing, she faced the devious thief, teeth bared,

warning growl readied in the back of her throatтАФ
The growl stopped, strangled, halfway to delivery.
A dragon stared back at her out of serene amber eyes.
It looks real, Minerva thought. What sort of promotion is
FoodUon having that uses a dragon? Dragon Days? They're
going to give some old lady a heart attack with that thing.
Or me. They may give me a heart attack.
The vertical slits in the dragon's amber eyes dilated, and
it cocked its head to one side, staring at her as if it found her
as peculiar-looking as she found it.

It had a bony, oversized snout full of curved ivory teeth
the size of ten-penny nails. Its delicately scaled blue hide
shimmered with rainbow iridescence. The pale, glossy wings,
of flesh around its face and down its neck flexed and spread
with a slow, steady rhythm; its long, thick tail trailed around
the comer, while two membranous pale blue wing* unfurled

slightly as she glared at it.

That's real, she thought with growing wonder- No one

makes costumes that perfect.

Other shoppers hurried past. They pushed their carts by
without paying attention to either the dragon or Mineiva,

MINERVA WAKES 5

but Minerva noticed that they detoured around the space
the dragon occupied and kept their eyes averted.

There is something standing there. It isn't just a figment
of my imagination. Could it, perhaps, be a womanтАФand I'm
just seeing a dragon?

That's it I'm hallucinating. I've cracked up. I'm about to