"Aisling Grey, Guardian- 01 - You Slay Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAlister Katie)

Rene reached backwards through his window and opened my door. I grabbed my things and got out onto the cobblestone street, my mouth still hanging open as I stared up at the house.
"You see that all the houses here are old mansions. It is a very exclusive neighborhood. lie Saint-Louis itself is only six blocks long and two blocks wide. And now, you will pay me exactly thirty-six euro, and recite for me please the phrases I have taught you."
I dragged my eyes off the house and smiled as I handed Rene his money. "If someone annoys me, I say, Voulez-vous cesser de me cracker dessus pendant que vous parlez"
"Will you stop spitting on me while you are speaking," Rene translated with a nod.
"And if I need help with anything, I say, J'ai une grenouille dans mon bidet."
"I have a frog in my bidet. Yes, very good. And the last one?'
"The last I should reserve for any guy who hits on me when I don't want him to: Tu as une tite afaire muter les plaques des egouts."
"You have a face that would blow off the cover of a manhole. Oui, tris bon. You will do. And for your meeting with the important lady, bonne chance, eh?"
"Thanks, Rene. I appreciate the lessons. You just never know when you need to tell someone there's an amphibian in your bidet."
"One moment. I have something for you." He rustled around in a small brown bag for a second, then pulled out a battered card and handed it to me with the air of someone presenting an object of great value. "I am available for hire as a driver. You pay me, I drive you around Paris, show you all of the sites you must see. You can call me on my mobile number anytime."
"Thanks. I don't know that I'll be in Paris long enough for a chauffeur to drive me around, but if I ever need a driver, you'll be the one I call." I saluted him with the card, then tucked it away in my wallet.
He drove off with a friendly wave and a faint puff of black exhaust. I turned back to the impressive building, squared my shoulders, and after a quick look around to make sure no one was watching me, stepped into the doorway to press the buzzer labeled DEAUXVELLE.
"I am confident," I muttered to myself. "I am a professional. I know exactly what I am doing. I am not at all freaked out by being in a different country where the only thing I know how to do is complain about frogs and insult people. I am cool, calm, and collected. I am... not being answered."
I buzzed again. Nothing happened. A quick glance at my watch confirmed that I was two minutes early. Surely Mme. Deauxville was in?
I buzzed once more, leaning on the buzzer this time. I tried putting my ear to the door, but couldn't hear anything. A glance at a window showed me why-the walls of the building looked to be at least three feet thick.
"Well, hell," I swore, stepping back so I could look up at the building. I knew from- the instructions Uncle Damian had given me that Mme. Deauxville was on the second floor. The red-and-cream drapes visible through the slightly opened windows didn't move at all. Nothing moved anywhere on the second floor... or on any of the floors, for that matter. Since it was a pleasant June evening, I expected people to be arriving home, bustling around doing their evening shopping, strolling down the street, gazing upon the Seine, and so forth, but there was no movement at all in the house.
I looked down the street, the hairs on the back of my neck slowly standing on end. There was no movement on the street either. No people, no cars, no birds ... nothing. Not even a flower bobbed in the slight breeze from the river. I looked behind me. The cross street was the Rue Saint-Louis en l'fle, a busy street with stores and restaurants, and lots of shops. It had taken Rene ten minutes to navigate a couple of blocks because the traffic and shoppers were so dense, but where I stood, the noise of said traffic and shoppers was oddly filtered, as if the whole of Rue Sang des Innocents was swathed in cotton wool, leaving it an oasis of stillness and silence in a city known for its liveliness.
"The word creepy doesn't even begin to cover the situation," I said aloud, just to hear something. Unease rippled through me as I held my case tightly, giving Mine. Deauxville's bell one more long ring. The skin on the back of my neck tightened even more as I noticed that the door to the building wasn't shut properly.
"Someone must have been in a rush to leave this morning," I told the door, trying to tamp down on the major case of the willies the silent street was giving me. "Someone was just late for work, and they didn't quite close the door. That's all. There's nothing foreboding in a door that hasn't been shut all the way. There's nothing eerie in that at all. There's nothing creepy about a street... Oh, crap. Hello?" I pushed the door open and took a step into a tiny hall. The entrance narrowed into a dark passage beyond a brown-paneled stairway that led upward. "Anyone here? I'm looking for Mme. Deauxville. Hellooooooo?"
I expected the last notes of my hello to echo up the stairwell, but strangely, my* words were muffled, as if they had been absorbed into the walls, filtered by the same strange effect that kept the street outside as quiet as a tomb.
"I would have to think of a tomb," I grumbled to myself as I carefully closed the door behind me, turning to start up the stairs to the second floor. 'There are times when it absolutely does not pay to have a good imagination."
There were two doors in the tiny hall stretching the length of the second-floor stairs. One bore a silver plate with the word DEAUXVILLE written on it in a fancy script mat screamed expensive. The other door, I assumed, was a second entrance to the apartment. I stepped up to the main door, one arm holding the case tight to my chest, the other upraised to knock. Just as my knuckles were about to touch the glossy oak of the door, a wave of dread and foreboding, a sense of something being very, very wrong swept over me. The sensation was so strong, I stepped backwards until the coolness of the paneling seeped through the thin cotton of my dress. I clutched the case and struggled to breathe, my chest tight with dread. The feeling of unease that had set in as soon as Rene left swelled into something much more frightening, leaving me with goose bumps on my arms and a warning voice in my head shrieking at me to leave the building that very second, if not sooner.
Something horrible had been in that apartment. Something ... unnatural.
"I am confident," I ground out through my teeth, and forced my feet forward to the door. "It's just an eccentric collector, nothing evil. There is nothing to be afraid of. I am a professional. I can do this."
The door swung open at the first brush of my hand against it.
I stood frozen in the doorway, the skin on my back crawling with horror as I looked down the short hall into what must be the living room of the apartment. Tiny little motes of dust danced lazily in the late afternoon sunshine that streamed through the tall floor-to-ceiling arched windows, spilling in a ruby pool on a carpet of deeper red. A bouquet of fresh flowers sat on an antique table between two of the windows, the sharp scent of it detectable even from where I stood. The ceilings were high, cream-colored to complement the robin's-egg-blue walls, the edges scalloped with intricate molding. Along one wall I could see a highly polished antique desk with a red upholstered matching chair sitting before it at an angle, as if its occupant had arisen just a moment before.
Everything was lovely, beautiful, expensive, just exactly what I expected in the apartment of a rich woman who lived in an exclusive area of Paris.
Everything except the body, that is. Suspended from a chandelier, a woman's body was doubled over, hanging from her hands tied behind her back, her body swinging slightly above a black circle of ash that had been drawn on the lovely red carpet, a circle inscribed with twelve symbols. The dead woman was Mme. Deauxville; of that I was sure.
"J'ai une grenouille dans mon bidet," I said, and wished fervently that the worst of my problems were frogs.


2

1 hope I get major brownie points for not racing screaming from the house as soon as my eyes caught sight of the dead body of the woman I had come halfway around the world to meet. I hope whoever controls the karma scale rewards me for not getting the hell out of Dodge while I could, because stepping into Mme. Deauxville's apartment while her body swayed gently in the warm afternoon sun was the hardest thing I've ever done.
OK, I admit it; I whimpered a little bit, and I left the front door ajar because something in the primitive part of my brain was insisting on an easy escape route just in case the body should suddenly spring to life and try to grab me (in the best horror-movie style), but the whimper was small, and I stopped it as soon as I realized it was coming from my mouth.
"Get a hold of yourself," I said sternly, flinching at the sound of my voice in the dead apartment. Then I flinched at the way the word dead rolled around in my mind. "If she's really dead, she can't hurt you. Oh, shoot, if she's dead ... Uck. I suppose I should make sure she's really dead."
It took what seemed to be hours to travel the seven steps needed to cross the short hall. I sidled around the ash circle, unwilling to disturb it, unwilling to touch the body. Surely she couldn't have survived being strung up like that? Surely the lack of movement was indicative of death? Surely I could get by without checking to make sure she was really dead?
"Poop," I said, and set my case down carefully on a beautifully embroidered antique chair. I shuffled forward, careful not to touch anything as I stopped directly in front of the body, my toes just brushing the outer edge of the ash circle. I took a deep breath, pushed down the horrible feeling that I shouldn't be doing what I was about to do, and leaned forward to feel for a pulse on Mme. Deauxville's neck.
'Won.'"
Startled by the man's voice behind me, I jumped just as I reached for Mme. Deauxville, sending me plummeting toward the body, my arms cartwheeling madly. I screamed even as I tried to twist away from her, but it was a hand on the back of my dress yanking me backwards that kept me from plunging into the circle.
"Ne la touchez pas!"
"Huh?" I rubbed the goose bumps on the suddenly cold flesh of my arms as I blinked at the man who loomed before me. "I'm... uh... sorry, non parlez French."
"American?" the man asked, his nostrils flaring as if he smelled something.
"Yeah," I answered, still rubbing my arms. I looked from him to the body, then back, the realization flashing through my head that I was alone in an apartment with a stranger and a dead body, which probably meant that he was ...
"I didn't kill her," he said quickly, evidently reading my mind before turning away to look at the body.
I used the moment to examine him. I'm not exactly an idiot-if I find myself in a room with a murder victim, the big, tall, dark-haired, extremely handsome guy dressed in black who positively reeks of danger and who mysteriously pops up out of nowhere is naturally going to be on the top of my Potential Murderer List.
Which meant I had to get myself and my dragon out of there before Mr. Killer decided to enjoy a double-header.
I grimaced just as the man turned back to me. Something flashed deep in his dark green eyes. "Are you unwell? You aren't going to vomit on me, are you?"
"That wasn't on my list of planned activities for the afternoon, no, but if you really insist, I suppose I could try for a hairball or something."
His head tipped to the side for a moment as he examined me from toes to nose. "I've never completely understood American humor. That was supposed to be a joke, yes?"