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

But IТd never been able to bear a charm against my skin. They make me a total space cadet. IТd agreed to the key ring loop to make Mom feel good, and that was pushing it. Poor thing. It had probably been grateful to be drowned in the shower, last night, if it had survived the little incident shortly before.
I said to Pat unkindly, УYou might have thought of that last night.Ф
He grinned, and opened the passenger door. I got in. УWhy did you draw the short straw?Ф
У ТCause IТm best at going without sleep. My demon blood has its uses.
There were at least two classes of demons who didnТt sleep at all. My favorite is the Hildy demon, who gets all the sleep it needs during the blinking of its eyes. YouТd think this would seriously interrupt any train of thought that takes longer to pursue than the time between one eye blink and another, but not to a Hildy. (TheyТre called Hildies after Brunhilde, who slept for a very long time surrounded by fire. Hildies also breathe fire when theyТre peeved, although theyТre even-tempered as demons go.) Hildies arenТt blue though.
I certainly couldnТt get all the sleep I needed by blinking my eyes.
I stayed in the bakery all morning. Charlie and Mel kept everyone who didnТt belong behind the counter on the far side, Mom answered more phone calls than usual and said Уshe has nothing to sayФ a lot. With the bakery door open I could sometimes hear conversations in Уthe office. Mom is good at hanging up on people. ItТs one of her great assets as a small-business manager. (She and Consuela had lately been working up a good cop/bad cop routine that was a joy to eavesdrop on.) I had no idea what Charlie had told her about the events of the night before. I didnТt want to know. But he must have told her something. Miraculously, she left me alone, although a particularly lurid new charm was waiting for me on my apron hook that morning. I left it there, glowering to itself. I like orange, but not in over-decorated feather whammies.
It wasnТt as bad as it might have been by a long shot. I felt some grudging admiration for SOF.
Nobody tried to follow me when I left the coffeehouse at ten, or at least nobody but some of the overweight so-called wildlife that hangs around the pedestrian precinct and tries to cadge handouts from the weak-willed. They know a white bakery bag when they see one, and I was carrying a dozen cinnamon rolls. I swear some of our sparrows are too fat to fly, but the feral cats are too fat to catch them. And the squirrels should have had teeny-weeny skateboards to keep their bellies off the ground. One of the recent rumors about Mrs. BialoskyТs neighborhood activities was that she ran a commando unit that protected us from some of Old TownТs larger, more threatening wildlife, the rats and foxes and mutant deer that never shed their short but pointy horns. If CharlieТs had had to keep all of that lot too fat to intimidate anybody weТd have gone out of business.
It was just Jesse and Pat today. They put me in the front seatЧof an unmarked carЧwith Pat alone in the back. Jesse ate four cinnamon rolls and Pat ate five. I didnТt think this was humanly possibleЧbut then maybe it wasnТt. I ate one. IТd had breakfast already. Twice. Ten oТclock is a long time from four in the morning.
We drove first to the old cabin. I was still clinging to that mysterious sense of someone keeping a protective eye on me, but I was beginning to feel a little rocky nonetheless. Maybe I should have brought the feather whammy instead of hiding it under my apron when I left. As the weed-pocked gravel of what had once been a driveway crunched under my feet, I put my hand in my pocket and closed it round my little knife. I had been not remembering what had happened two months ago so emphatically that the edges of my real memory had become a little indistinct. Standing on the ground where it had begun brought it horribly back. I looked at the porch, where I hadnТt heard them coming from. I looked at the place where my car had no longer been, two days later.
I went down to the marshy reach near the shore, where the stream had run fifteen years ago. It didnТt look like anybody had been there playing in the mud recently. I went back to the cabin. УYeah,Ф Pat was saying.
УBut itТs been a long time, and they havenТt been back,Ф said Jesse.
They were just standing there, no gizmos in sight, no headsets, no wires, no portable com screens with flashing lights making beeping noises. I guessed it wasnТt technology that was helping them draw their conclusions.
What a good thing Pat hadnТt walked on my porch this morning, and up my stairs and knocked on my door and, maybe, walked into the front room where the same, if savagely stain-removed, sofa still stood, and the little square of carpet beside it, and maybe even the handle of the fridge door, the same handle that had been there ready to expose a carton of milk behind it if someone pulled on it, two months ago.
What a good thing that good manners dictate that you donТt idly cross peopleТs probable outer ward circle and knock on their doors unless invited.
Carthaginian hell.
We got back in the car and drove on the way weТd been going, north.
There was a bad spot almost at once. I picked it up first, or anyway I was the one who said, УHey. I donТt know about you, but I donТt want to go any farther this way.Ф
УRoll up your windows,Ф said Jesse. He hit a couple of buttons on the very peculiar dashboard I was only now noticing and suddenly there was something like heavy body armor enclosing me, oppressive as chain mail and breastplate and a full-face helm, plume and ladyТs silk favor optional. I could almost smell the metal polish. УUgh,Ф I said.
УDonТt knock it, it works,Ф said Jesse. Our voices echoed peculiarly. We drove very slowly for about a minute and then a red light on the dashboard blinked and there was a manic chirping like a parakeet on speed. УRight. WeТre clear.Ф He hit the same buttons. The invisible armor went away.
УSpartan, isnТt it?Ф said Pat.
УNo,Ф I said.
We drove through two more bad spots like that and I hated the body armor program worse each time. It made me feel trapped. It made me feel as if when I woke up again IТd be sitting at the edge of a bonfire with a lot of vampires on the other side.
It was a long drive. Thirty miles or so. I remembered.
Then we reached a really bad spot. Jesse hit his buttons again but this time it really was like being trappedЧheld down while Things slid through the intangible gaps between the incorporeal links, reached out long taloned fingers and grabbed meЕ
Big. Huge space. Indoors; ceiling up there somewhere. Old factory. Scaffolding where the workers had once tended the machines. No windows. Enormous square ventilator shafts, vast parasitic humps of silent machinery, contortions of piping like the Worm Ouroboros in its death throesЕ
And eyes. Eyes. Staring. Their gaze like flung acid. No color. What color is evil?Е
When I came to, I was screaming. I stopped. Even the guys looked shaken. I could see the scuff marks in the road ahead of us, where Jesse had slammed us into reverse. Good thing the driver hadnТt gone under. I put my hands over my mouth. УSorry,Ф I said.
УNah,Ф said Pat. УIf you hadnТt been screaming, IТdСve had to do it.У
УWhat now?Ф said Jesse. They both looked at me.
УMaybe this is the really big bad spot behind the house,Ф I said. УI told you there was one. WeТre pretty well north of the lake now, arenТt we? Seems like weТve come far enough, but I keep losing the lake behind the trees.Ф
УYeah,Ф said Jesse. УThe roadТs well back here, because this is where the big estates are. Were.Ф
УOkay,Ф I said. УSo we walk.Ф I opened the car door and clambered stiffly out. This was harder than it would have been if I hadnТt been squashed by SOF technology four times, especially the last time when it didnТt work. I patted my stomach as if checking to make sure I was still there. I seemed to be. The cut on my breast was itching like crazy: the sort of variable itch that reinforces its performance by regular nerve-fraying jabs of pain.
My jackknife seemed to be trying to burn a hole through its cotton pocket to my leg. I wrapped my hand around it. The heat was presumably illusory, which perhaps explained why the sense of being fried felt so comforting. I set off through the trees without looking behind me. TheyТd follow, and I had to get myself moving before I thought much about it or I wouldnТt do it at all.
I didnТt bother trying to figure out where the bad spot ended. I went down to the shore of the lake and turned right. Walking on the shore, while awkward, all shingle and teetery stones and water-tossed rubbish, wasnТt so bad as walking through the trees. I was in sunlight out here, and the memories were under the trees. I hadnТt walked on the shore before.
It was the right bad spot. I came to the house much too soon. I could half-convince myself I was enjoying walking by the lake. I like walking by water in the sunshine. IТd often enjoyed walking by this lake. Before. I stopped, feeling suddenly sick, and waited for the other two to catch up with me. УIТm not sure I can do this,Ф I said, and my voice had started to go funny again, as it had last night, when I told them you donТt hear vampires coming.
УItТs daylight, and weТre with you,Ф said Jesse, not unsympathetically.
I said abruptly, УWhat if we get back to the car and it wonТt start? WeТd never get out of these woods before dark.Ф
УItТll start,Ф said Pat. УYouТre okay. Hold on. WeТre going to walk up the hill toward the house real slow. You just keep breathing. IТm walking up on your left and Jesse is walking up on your right. WeТll go as slow as you want. Hey, Jesse, howТs your nephew doing with that puppy he talked your folks into buying him?Ф
It was well done. Puppy stories got me to the stairs. By that time Pat had me by the elbow because I was gasping like a puffer demon, except they always breathe like that, but having a hand on my elbow was too much like having been frog-marched up those stairs the last time IТd been here. УNo,Ф I said. УThanks, but let me go. Last time, you know, I had help.Ф
The porch steps creaked under my weight. Like last time. Unlike last time, the steps also creaked under the weight of my companions.
Almost dreamily I went through the still-ajar front door and left across the huge hall toward the ballroom. It was daylight, now, so I could look up, and see where the curl of grand staircase became an upstairs corridor lined by what had once been an equally grand balustrade, but some of the posts were cracked or missing. There were still glints of gold paint in the hollows of the carving. In the dark I hadnТt known the railings were anything but smooth. I wouldnТt have cared.
The ballroom was smaller than I remembered. It was still a big room, much bigger than anything but a ballroom, but in my memory it had become about the size of a small country, and in fact it was only a room. As ballrooms go it probably wasnТt even a big one. The chandelier, very shabby in daylight, still had candle stubs in it, and there was a lot of dripped wax on the floor underneath. There was my corner, and the windows on either wall that had bounded my world for two long nights and a day in betweenЕ
I shuddered.
УSteady, Sunshine,Ф said Pat.
I had been worrying about the shackles in the walls. I was going to have to revert to not remembering, when Pat and Jesse asked me about the second shackle, the one with the ward signs on it.
There were no shackles. Just holes in the walls. I almost laughed. Thanks, Bo, I said silently. YouТve done me a favor.
Pat and Jesse were examining the holes, Pat still half keeping an eye on me. The holes looked like theyТd been tornЧas if the shackles had been ripped out of the walls by someone in a rage. By some vampire: no human couldТve done it. But I guessed the rage part was accurate. A frustratedЧpossibly frightenedЧrage, or on orders? On orders, I thought. I doubted BoТs gang did anything that Bo hadnТt told them to do first. But however it had happened, I didnТt have to explain a shackle with ward signs on it.
They did, of course, want to know about the second set of holes.