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

And if I managed to tell him, what was he going to say? УIТll start ringing up residential homes for the lethally loony tomorrow, see where the nearest openings areФ?
УDonТt even try to tell me what happened till youТve had some sleep,Ф said Mel. УThe goddam nerve of those guysЕI thought Pat and Jesse were okay.Ф
УI think they are okay,Ф I said, regretfully. In some ways it would have been easier if they werenТt. УJesse and Theo did get me out of thereЧumЧand they couldnТt help being, you know, professionally interested.Ф
Mel snorted. УIf you say so. Listen, the whole neighborhood is talking about it. Whatever it is. The official SOF reportЧwhat theyТve already fed to the media goonsЧis that you were an innocent bystander. None of us is going to say anything, but there were a lot of people in that alley by the time Jesse and Theo got you away, and itТs unanimous that you wereЕФ
There was a pause. I didnТt say anything.
He added, УCharlie seemed to think Jesse was doing you a favor. That SOF could protect you better than we could.Ф
Yeah. Further destruction of personal world view optional.
Mel sighed. УSo we hung around the phone at the coffeehouse, waitingЧCharlie and me. We sent everybody else homeЧincluding Kenny, sworn on pain of having his liver on tomorrowТs menu not to tell your mother anything. The phone didnТt ring. So then we rang SOF and got yanked around by some little sheepwit on the switchboard, and thatТs when I came overЕФ
УIТm sorry,Ф I said.
The coffeehouse was dark and the square silent and empty, although there was some kind of distantly audible fuss going on somewhere it was easy enough to guess was a block or two over and down a recently defiled alley. We went round the side of the coffeehouse and I could see a light on in the office. Charlie, drinking coffee and pacing. He had his arms wrapped around me so tight I couldnТt breathe almost before I was inside. Charlie is such a mild little guy, most of the time.
УIТm okay,Ф I said. Charlie gave a deep, shuddering sigh, and I remembered him backing me up with Mr. Responsible Media. I also remembered all the time heТd spent in years past, encouraging my mundane interest in learning to make a mayonnaise that didnТt crack, how much garlic went into CharlieТs famous hash, my early experiments with what turned out to be the ancestors of Bitter Chocolate Death et al. There was no magic about Charlie. Nor about most restaurants, come to that. Human customers tend to be a little twitchy about anything more magical than a waitress who could keep coffee hot. I wondered about my motherТs motive in applying for a job as a waitress all those years ago: I was already making peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies while we were still living with my dad (if there was a grown-up to turn the oven on for me), and if she was looking for nice safe outletsЕУTonight. ItТsЧitТs connected with what happenedЧwhen I was gone those two days.Ф
УI was afraid of that,Ф said Charlie.
УJesse wants me to try to find the place it all happened. Out at the lake. TheyТre taking me out there tomorrow.Ф
УOh bloody hell,Ф said Mel. УItТs been two months. They donТt have to go tomorrow.Ф
I shrugged. УMight as well. I have the afternoon off.Ф
УThe lake,Ф said Charlie thoughtfully.
IТd told everyone IТd driven out to the lake. I hadnТt said that what happened afterward also happened at the lake. Till tonight my official memory had ended sitting on the porch of the old cabin.
УYes. I wasЧerЧheldЧat a house on the lake. They want me to try to find it.Ф
Either Mel or Charlie could have said, when did you remember this? What else do you remember? Why did you tell SOF when you havenТt told us? Neither of them did. Mel put his arm around me. УOh, gods and frigging angels,Ф he said.
УBe careful,Ф said Charlie.
One of the (few) advantages to getting to work at four-thirty a.m. is that you can be pretty sure of finding a parking space. When I come in later IТm not always so lucky. IТd had to park the Wreck in a garage lot that evening, and it was locked at eleven. Mel took me home. When we got there and he turned the bike off the silence pressed against me. The sudden quiet is almost always loud when youТve been on a motorcycle and got somewhere and stopped and turned it off, but this was different. Mel didnТt say any more about the nightТs events. He didnТt say any more about SOF taking me out to the lake the next day. I could see him wanting toЕbut as IТve said before, one of the reasons Mel and I were still seeing each other after four years was because we could not talk about things sometimes. This included that we both knew when to shut up.
It was blissful, spending time with someone who would leave you alone. I loved him for it. And I was happy to repay in kind.
It had never occurred to me that leaving someone alone could harden into a habit that could become a barrier. It had never occurred to me before now.
I had to repress the desire that he not shut up this time. I had to repress the desire to ask him if I could talk to him.
But what could I have said?
We stood there in the darkness for a minute or two. He was rubbing another of his tattoos, the sand wheel, on the back of his left hand. Then he came with me to check that I still had KennyТs bicycle and the tires werenТt flat. Then he kissed me and left. УSee you tomorrow,Ф is all he said.
I reached over my head to touch the wards strung along the edge of the porch roof on my way indoors. These were all YolandeТs. Her wards were especially good and IТd often thought of asking her where she got them, but you didnТt really ask Yolande questions. I had noticed that her niece, when she was visiting, didnТt seem to ask questions either, beyond, УIТm taking the girls downtown, can I bring you anything?Ф And the answer would probably be УNo, thank you, dear.Ф
I wiggled my fingers down the edges of my pots of pansies on the porch steps, to check that the wards IТd buried there were still there, and that a ping against my fingers meant they were still working. I straightened the medallion over my downstairs door and lifted the Уgo awayФ mat in front of the one at the top of the stairs to check that the warding built into the lay of the planks of the floor hadnТt been hacked out by creature or creatures unknown. I fluttered the charm paper that was wound round the railing of my balcony to make sure it was still live, blew on the frames of my windows for the faint ripple of response. I didnТt like charms, but I wasnТt naive enough not to have good basic wards, and IТd been a little more meticulous about upkeep in the last two months.
Then I made myself a cup of chamomile tea to damp down the scotch and the cheese. I took off the bunny pajamas and put on one of my own nightgowns. The toilet paper had held; there wasnТt any blood on the SOF thing. I put my still-wet clothes in a sinkful of more soap and water. Tomorrow I would put them through a washing machine. I might throw them out anyway, or burn them. (I still hadnТt burned the cranberry-red dress. It lived at the back of my closet. I think I knew I wasnТt going to burn it after the night I dreamed that it was made of blood, not cloth, and IТd pulled it out of the closet that night, in the dark, and stroked and stroked the dry, silky, shining fabric, which was nothing like blood. Nothing like blood.) My sneakers would live. I had dozens of T-shirts and jeans if I decided I wanted to burn something but I wasnТt going to sacrifice a good pair of sneakers if I could help it.
I pushed open the French doors and went out and sat on my little balcony. It was a clear, quiet night with a bright quarter moon.
When Yolande had had mice in her kitchen I had set take-Сem-alive traps and driven the results twenty miles away and released them in empty farmland. (Wards against wildlife are notoriously bad: hence the electric peanut-butter fence to keep the deer from eating Yo-landeТs roses. And a house ward successful against mice and squirrels would be almost the money-spinner that a charm to let suckers walk around in daylight would be.) I couldnТt kill anything larger than a housefly. IТd stopped putting spiders outdoors after I read somewhere that house spiders wonТt survive. When I dusted, I left occupied cobwebs alone. I hadnТt drawn blood in anger since the seventh-grade playground wars.
I donТt eat meat. IТm too squeamish. It all looks like dead animals to me. On the days I cover in the main kitchen, the only hot food is vegetarian.
Maybe my mother had successfully coerced and brainwashed her daughter into being a nice, human wimp.
But IТd blown it. IТd blown it when IТd turned my knife into a key, because it was the only way to stay alive. BecauseЧmaybe only because I didnТt know any betterЧI wanted to stay alive. I looked down at my arms, at my hands cupping the tea mug, as if I would start growing scales or fur or wartsЧor turning blueЧimmediately. Most demon blood doesnТt make you big or strong or blue though, whether it comes with magic ability or not. A lot of it makes you weaker or stupider. Or crazier.
IТd been doing okay as my motherТs daughter. My life wasnТt perfect, but whose was?
Yes, IТd always despised myself for being a coward. A wuss. So? There are worse things.
And then I had to drive out to the lake one night. TheyТd started it. And I may be a wuss, but IТve never liked bullies. Maybe, if it was all about to go horribly wrong, I could at least go out with a bang.
How cute and sweet and winsome and philosophically high-minded, that I didnТt like bullies, that I wanted to go out with a bang. I was still a coward, I had a master vampire and his gang on my tail, I was all alone, and I was way out of my league.
УOh, Constantine,Ф I whispered into the darkness. УWhat do I do now?Ф
I slept the moment my head touched the pillow, in spite of everything that had happened. It was very late for me though, and IТd had two generous shots of scotch. The alarm went off about three hours later. I woke strangely easily and peacefully. I can get by on six and a half hours, just, and only if IТm feeling lively generally, which I hadnТt been lately. Three hoursТ sleep doesnТt cut it under any conditions. But I sat up and stretched and didnТt feel too bad. And I had the oddest sensationЕas if someone had been in my bedroom with me. Given the events of the night before, this should have been panic stations, but it wasnТt. It was a reassuring feeling, as if someone had been guarding me in my sleep.
Get a grip, Sunshine.
I had to get moving quickly however I was feeling, because it took so much longer to bicycle than to drive into town. But as it turned out, it didnТt. When I went round to the shed to fetch KennyТs bike there was a car parked at the edge of the road, engine off, but SOF spotlight on, illuminating the SOF insignia on the door, and the face of the man leaning against the hood. Pat. У СMorning,Ф he said.
УWe are not going to the lake at this hour,Ф I said, half scandalized and half disbelieving. УI am going to make cinnamon rolls and oatmeal bread and brownies and Butter Bombs, and you can call out the cavalry at about ten.Ф
УSheer. I know youТre going in to make cinnamon rolls. You want to be setting some aside to bring with you later on. The only good Monday is a holiday Monday when CharlieТs is open. But we figured that Mel would bring you home last night which would leave you with only two unmotorized wheels this morning. And we donТt want you tired this afternoon.Ф
Tired but alive would do, I thought. Dawn isnТt for another hour and a half, and if IТm the first person to stake a sucker with a table knife I could be the first person to get plucked off a bicycleЕI had been thinking about this as I walked downstairs in the dark. Living alone has its advantages in terms of warding: your wards donТt get confused, nor do they blunt as fast as they will if there are several of you. A big family with a lot of friends will go through wards like the Seddons through popcorn on Monday nights. And unless you are so fabulously wealthy that you can spend millions on made-to-order wards, there are always going to be some holes in the barrier. Someone living alone who isnТt constantly having different people over can probably build up a pretty good, solid, home ward system. ThatТs probably.
But wards are unstable at best, and they tend to blow up or fall over or go rogue or get their attributes crossed and morph into something else, almost certainly something you donТt want, pretty easily, and generally speaking the more powerful they are the more likely they are to go nuts. And wards are the sober end of the charm family. Most of the rest of them are a lot worse. One of the most dependable ways to make a ward kali on you is to expect it to travel. All charms, including wards, that you wear next to your skin, are differentЧhence the perennial, if problematic, popularity of tattoosЧbut wards you hang at a distance have to stay put.
Consequently the eternally vexed question of warding your means of transportation. And while itТs true that the chauffeur-driven limos of the global council are almost more ward than limo, itТs also true that no council member travels anywhere without a human bodyguard stiff with technology, including to the corner store for a newspaper. If there are any global council members that live in neighborhoods with corner stores, which there probably arenТt.
The irony is that the best transport ward for us ordinary schlemiels remains the confusing fact of motion itself. (ThereТs a crucial maintenance speed of a little under ten mph. This is a brisk pedal on your bicycle and sensible joggers, if this isnТt a contradiction in terms, get their exercise during the day. In the horse era a harness or riding horse that couldnТt maintain a nine-mph clip for a useful distance was shot. This made horses short-lived and expensive and most people stayed at home after dark: but at least travel was possible.) The protection of movement is nothing like perfect, which is why they keep trying to create transport wards, but it existsЧand thank the gods and angels for it, since without it I donТt think there would be many sane humans left. ThereТs only so much constant relentless constrictive dread you can live with. Anyway I knew to be grateful for it, but it had never made much sense, at least not till a vampire had told me it is not the distance that is crucial, but the uniformity and given me an inkling.
But what kind of homogeneity is it, about sucker senses? Had the goblin gigglerТs last sight of the human who offed him been transmitted anywhere?
IТd felt relatively safe inside my apartment. I had good wards, and you can kind of feel the presence of the screen they put up, that itТs there, and there arenТt any big drafts coming through it. And you feel it when you come out from behind it too.