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

And another pause. I seemed to be missing something they wanted me to catch on to. But I was so tired.
УAnd the coffeehouse is a good place to keep an eye on a lot of people. Gat Donnor.Ф Poor old Gat. He was one of our hype heads. Sometimes when he got the mixture wrongЧor rightЧhe turned into a skinny orange eight-foot lizard (including tail) that would tell you your fortune, if you asked. The locals were used to him but tourists had been known to go off in the screaming ab-dabs if they came across him. SOF was interested because a slightly-above-the-odds number of the fortunes he told were accurate.
I brought myself back to the present. Sitting in a SOF office with a blue demon SOF and a few friends.
УI suppose you know your Mrs. Bialosky is a Were?Ф
I did laugh then. УEveryone believes she is, but no one knows were-what. NoЧdonТt tell me. It would spoil it. BesidesЧMrs. Bialosky is one of the good guys. I donТt care what her blood has in it.Ф It is a violation of your personal rights to have blood taken by your doctor examined for anything but the disease or condition you signed a release form about before the lab tech got near you with the needle, but accidents happen. One of the other ways you could guess a Were or a demon is by their paranoia about doctors. Fortunately the lab coats perfected artificial human blood fifty years agoЧor nearly perfected it: you need about one in ten of the real thingЧso donating blood isnТt so big a deal any more, and the nasty-minded donТt necessarily get any ideas looking at blood donor lists about who isnТt on them. Human magic handling doesnТt pass through transfusions; demon blood wonТt make you a demon, and weak part-demon might not show at all, but strong part- or full-demon makes a fullblood human very sick, even if the blood type is right. And being a Were transfuses beautifully, every time.
УI couldnТt have said it better myself,Ф said Jesse. УSo, you grew up being your momТs daughter, with no higher ambitions than the best cinnamon rolls in the country. Did you know about your dad?Ф
I hesitated, but not very long. УMore or less. I knew he was a magic handler, and I knew he was a member of one of the important magic-handling families. Or I found that out once I was in school and some of the magic-handler kids mentioned the Blaises. I was using my momТs maiden name by the time I went to school, before she married Charlie. I knew that my dad being a magic handler was something to do with why my mom left him, andЕat the time that was enough for me.Ф I thought about the Уbusiness associatesФ my mom hadnТt liked. That was what sheТd always called them. УBusiness associates.Ф It sounded a lot like Уpond slime.Ф Or Уsorcerer.Ф As I got a little older I realized that people like my mother mean Уpond slimeФ when they say Уsorcerer.Ф Lunatic toxic kali pond slime.
УI felt like my motherТs daughter, you know? And after we cleared off I never saw my dad again.Ф IТd never said this to anyone before: УMy mom was so determined to have nothing whatever to do with my dadТs family that I wanted to be as much like her as possible, didnТt I? She was all I had left.Ф They all nodded. УSo you didnТt know anything about what your own heritage might be?У
УI did know something. My granЧmy dadТs motherЧshowed up again a year after we geared off. I used to visit herЧat our old cabin at the lake. SheТd meet me there. My mom wasnТt happy about it, but she let me go. My gran told me someЧtaught me some.Ф
УTaught you,Ф Jesse said sharply.
УYeah. Stuff changing mostly. Little stuff. Enough to know that I had something, but not so much that IЧhad to use it, you know?Ф
They nodded again. Magic handling, like Other blood, often makes its presence known, whether you want to know or not. But if it wasnТt too strong, it would also leave you alone, if you left it alone. Probably.
УThen my gran disappeared. When I was about ten. Just before the Wars. And just when Charlie married my mom. Charlie didnТt seem to mind having me around. He adopted me, let me get underfoot at the coffeehouse. And yeah. I was drawn to cooking. IТve been cooking, or trying to cook, since I was like four. Pretty sad, huh? A Blaise with frosting on the end of her nose. And once I got to CharlieТs I thought that was the end of the story.Ф
УAnd then two months ago,Ф said Jesse. Why did I feel there was something else going on with these guys? Like we were having two conversations, one of them silent. It seemed to me that this out-loud one was enough.
I sighed. УAll I did was drive out to the lake on my night off. I had a headache, I wanted some peace and quiet, you donТt get that anywhere around my family, including away from the coffeehouse. IТd just had my car tuned, it was a nice night. There hasnТt been any trouble at the lake that I know of since the Wars were over, so long as you stay away from the bad spots. I drove out to our old cabin, sat on the porch, looked at the waterЕФ
That was as much of the story as I had told before. I still wasnТt expecting my heart rate to speed up, my stomach to hop back and forth like water on a hot griddle, and tears to start pricking the backs of my eyes at the prospect of telling even a little bit more. I looked down at my shapeless jersey kidsТ pajama lap, and then glanced at the table knife on JesseТs desk. The world started to turn faster and at a funny angle.
Jesse reached into a bottom drawer and brought out a bottle ofЕoh, hey, single-malt scotch. Some SOFs did know how to live. Theo had turned the Prime Time bag upside down. There was an assortment of greasy-paper-wrapped bundles and they smelledЕlike food. Real human food. УHave a sandwich,Ф said Theo. УHave some chips. HaveЧhey, Pat, youТre living dangerously. Have a Prime Time brownie.Ф
УNo thanks,Ф I said automatically. УToo much flour, too much raising agent, and the chocolate they use is only so-so.Ф
УYour colorТs improving,Ф said Jesse. УTell us more about Prime TimeТs sins. IТm sure their bread isnТt as good as yours either.Ф It isnТt. УHave some scotch.Ф I held out my (empty) tea mug.
I had half a Swiss cheese and watercress sandwich (on mediocre anadama) to give my stomach something else to think about. The dark stains on the walls in the alley. The goblets among the cobble-stonesЕStop that. Okay, I should maybe think about what Pat and Jesse and Theo were trying to give me space to say. To be afraid of? Something that had to do with, however good their cover, how they must be afraid of being found out as partbloods?
ЕNo.
It hadnТt occurred to me before. I didnТt think there was a word for a human so sicko as to rescue a vampire, because no human had ever done it. Before.
Dear gods and angels, no.
ItТs not only paranoia and bureaucratic oppression that demands partbloods be registered. Human magic-handling genes and certain demon genes mix really, really badly. There are lots of minor charm-twisters who have a touch of both the human capacity for magic and the demonic, and thereТs a story that some of them can do stuff no one else can, although it tends to be more goofy than useful. But this is strictly trivial magic handling.
Not all demons can do magic; some of them just are, although the areness of demons can seem magical when it isnТt. A swallow demonЧto take a rare but spectacular exampleЧcan fly less because of its hollow bones, although it has those too, than because something funny goes on with some of its atoms, which behave in certain ways as if they exist in some other universe. One of these ways is that they have no gravity in this one. So a swallow demon, despite being the size of anything from a large wardrobe up to and including a small barn, flies. It isnТt magic. Swallow demons donТt do magic. It only looks like magic. But a lot of demons also handle magic, some of them as powerfully as powerful humans do. And a drop of their blood into a strong human magic-handling gene pool is a disaster.
Strong magic-handling genes and even a weak unmanifested-for-generations magic-operating demon gene in the same person gives you about a ninety percent chance of being criminally insane. It might be as high as ninety-five percent. There are asylums specially built to hold these people, who tend to be extremely hard to hold.
Important magic-handling families for obvious reasons therefore become kind of inbred. Although this isnТt an ideal solution either, because over the generations you start getting moreЕthird cousins who can maybe write a ward sign that almost worksЕsay. And usually fewer children total. In one way this is a relief. Someone whose human magic-handling DNA isnТt up to more than a ward sign that almost works is in little if any danger from a big thor demon-blooded great-great-grandmother on the other side even if her magic genes have played very neat hopscotch over the intervening generations and come through nearly intact. (ThatТs actually another tale. Yes, there are stories, at least one or two of them impressively documented, about strong doers in apparently on-the-skids magic-handling families whose magic turns out to be demonic in origin. But all of those storiesЧall the ones with happy endings anywayЧare about families whose magic handling has been moribund for generations. People with fathers under even the suspicion of being sorcerers need not apply.) On the other hand, important magic-handling families need to go on handling magic to remain important magic-handling families.
The BlaisesТ name still casts a long shadow. But even I knew theyТd hit their peak a while back, and that there werenТt many of themЧusЧaround any more. There didnТt seem to be any at all left since the Wars. I hadnТt thought about this. It might have been an issue if I had wanted to be a magic handler, but I didnТt. ItТs pretty amazing what you can not think about. To the extent that I thought about it at all, I missed my gran, but it was a lot simpler to be Charlie SeddonТs stepdaughter.
Outcrosses in a magic-handling family on the declineЕlike meЕare viewed with mixed feelings. We may be salvation. We may be catastrophe. It depends on the bloodline on the other side.
Dubious outcrosses are often exiled or repudiated by the family. ItТs easier if the alien parent is the mother too, because then they can claim she was fooling around. Paternity tests applied to bad-magic crosses are notoriously unreliable.
No. There was no whisper of demon blood in my motherТs family.
Would I know? My motherТs sisters were both several sandwiches short of a picnic in terms of common sense. They were not the kind of people who would be entrusted with dark family secrets. And I didnТt have to waste any time wondering if my mother would have told me. УOverprotectiveФ is my momТs middle name. She wouldnТt have told me.
My motherТs parents had been dead against the marriage. They hadnТt spoken to her since she refused to give my dad up. SheТd been very young, and in love, and I could guess that even in those days she didnТt take direction well. Maybe they didnТt tell her. Just booted her out: never darken our door again, etc. TheyТd never made any attempt to meet me, their first grandchild, either. Maybe my mother found out later, somehow, after I was born. Maybe it was my dad whoТd found it outЕ
IТd never seen my father again after my mother left him, nor any of the rest of his family. Only my gran. Who was maybe choosing to see me privately and alone not in deference to my motherТs feelings but because her own family had ordered her to have nothing to do with me.
Maybe my gran had some other reason for believing I was okay. Or maybe she didnТt know why my mom had left. Maybe she thought it was my dadТs business associates. Magic-handling families can be pretty conceited about their talent, and pretty offended by commoners feeling they have any rights to inconvenient opinions. Maybe my gran thought her family were just being arrogant.
If you were in the ninety percent, it showed up early. Usually. If you werenТt born with a precocious ability to hoist yourself out of your crib and get into really repulsive mischief, the next likeliest time for you to begin running amok was in the preteen years, when magic-handling kids are apprenticed for their first serious magic-handling training. When my gran taught me to transmute.
The sane five or ten percent most often have personalities that are uninterested in magic. One of the recommendations, for someone who finds out theyТre in the high-risk category, is not to do magic, even the most inconsequential. My mother would never have let me have all those meetings with my gran if thereТd been any chanceЕ
She might have. My mother makes Attila the Hun look namby-pamby. If she wanted me not to be a bad-magic cross, then I wouldnТt be, by sheer force of will if necessary. But she might still have wanted to know what she was up against.
I hadnТt come home and started knifing old ladies or setting fire to stray dogs.
I was kind of a loner though. A little paranoid about being close to people. A little too interested in the Others.
My mother would have assumed that my gran had tried to teach me magic and that she hadnТt been successful. So my mother would have assumed the Blaise magic genes were weak enough in me, or her own compromised heritage had missed me out.
Maybe my mother could be forgiven for being a little over-controlling. Because sheТd never be sure.
Bad-magic crosses donТt invariably show up early. Some of our worst and most inventive serial murderers have turned out to be bad-magic crosses, when someone finally caught up with them. Sometimes it turns out something set them off. Like doing magic. Like finding out they could.
And I hadnТt done any magic in fifteen years.
No.
I stopped chewing.
Pat and Jesse assumed IТd thought of all this before. They were assuming thatТs why I hadnТt been able to talk to them. Had been afraid to talk to them. The licensing thing was piffle. They would know that I knew that too. If it was just a question of not being a certified magic handler, hey, I could get my serial number and my license. The bureaucrats would snuffle a little about my not having done it before, but I was a model cinnamon-roll-baker citizen; theyТd at least half believe me that IТd never done any magic before, they probably wouldnТt even fine me. Licensing was a red herring. Pat wouldnТt have turned blue over a question of late magic-handling certification. So I had to be afraid of something else.
I was afraid of something else. TheyТd just guessed wrong about what it was and how I got there.
They were, in fact, offering me a huge gesture of faith. They were telling me that they believed I wasnТt a bad cross. They must really love my cinnamon rolls.
What they didnТt know was that IТd rescued a vampire. Which might be read as the polite, subtle version of becoming an axe murderer.