"Mckinley,.Robin.-.Sunshine" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

Titles Robin McKinley
Sunshine
Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits (with Peter Dickinson)
SpindleТs End-Rose Daughter
A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories (stories)
Deerskin The Outlaws of Sherwood
Imaginary Lands The Hero and the Crown
The Blue Sword
The Door in the Hedge (stories)
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of the Beauty and the Beast

SUNSHINE
ROBIN MGKINLEY
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

A Berkley Book Published by The Berkley Publishing Group
A division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
authorТs imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright й 2003 by Robin McKinley. Text design by Kristin del Rosario.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means
without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only
authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of
copyrighted materials. Your support of the authorТs rights is appreciated. BERKLEY and the УBФ design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First edition: October 2003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKinley, Robin.
Sunshine / Robin McKinley.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-425-19178-8 1. VampiresЧFiction. I. Title.
PS3563.C3816S86 2003 813С.54Чdc21
2003052415
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 987654321

To Peter,
my Mel and my Con wrapped up in one (slightly untidy) package Hey, am I lucky or what?

PART ONE
It was a dumb thing to do but it wasnТt that dumb. There hadnТt been any trouble out at the lake in years. And it was so exquisitely far from the rest of my life.
Monday evening is our movie evening because we are celebrating having lived through another week. Sunday night we lock up at eleven or midnight and crawl home to die, and Monday (barring a few national holidays) is our day off. Ruby comes in on Mondays with her warrior cohort and attacks the coffeehouse with an assortment of high-tech blasting gear that would whack Godzilla into submission: those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters. Thanks to Ruby, CharlieТs Coffeehouse is probably the only place in Old Town where you are safe from the local cockroaches, which are approximately the size of chipmunks. You can hear them clicking when they canter across the cobblestones outside.
WeТd begun the tradition of Monday evening movies seven years ago when I started slouching out of bed at four a.m. to get the bread going. Our first customers arrive at six-thirty and they want our Cinnamon Rolls as Big as Your Head and I am the one who makes them.
I put the dough on to rise overnight and it is huge and puffy and waiting when I get there at four-thirty. By the time Charlie arrives at six to brew coffee and open the till (and, most of the year, start dragging the outdoor tables down the alley and out to the front), you can smell them baking. One of RubyТs lesser minions arrives at about five for the daily sweep- and mop-up. Except on Tuesdays, when the coffeehouse is gleaming and I am giving myself tendonitis trying to persuade stiff, surly, thirty-hour-refrigerated dough that itТs time to loosen up.
Charlie is one of the big good guys in my universe. He gave me enough of a raise when I finished school (high school diploma by the skin of my teeth and the intercession of my subversive English teacher) and began working for him full time that I could afford my own place, and, even more important, he talked Mom into letting me have it.
But getting up at four a.m. six days a week does put a cramp on your social life (although as Mom pointed out every time she was in a bad mood, if I still lived at home I could get up at four-twenty). At first Monday evening was just us, Mom and Charlie and Billy and Kenny and me, and sometimes one or two of the stalwarts from the coffeehouse. But over the years Monday evenings had evolved, and now it was pretty much any of the coffeehouse staff who wanted to turn up, plus a few of the customers who had become friends. (As Billy and Kenny got older the standard of movies improved too. The first Monday evening that featured a movie that wasnТt rated Уsuitable for all agesФ we opened a bottle of champagne.)