"Mckinley,.Robin.-.Sunshine" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)
What have I got to lose?
What if his something is something I canТt bear? There are all sorts of things I canТt bear. IТm not brave to begin with, IТm very, very tired, IТm spongy with post-traumatic what have you, and I very nearly canТt bear what I did last night with a table knife. And I may be a homicidal maniac.
УYes,Ф I said. УYes. I think so.Ф
He didnТt exhale a long breath, as a human might have done, but he went motionless instead. It was a different kind of motionlessness than not moving. Having said yes I felt better. Less tired. Evidently still delirious, however, because I bent toward him, touched the back of his hand. УOkay?Ф I said.
A little silence.
УOkay,Ф he said. I had the sudden irreverent notion that heТd never said УokayФ before. Spend time with humans and have all kinds of unusual experiences. Laughter. Slang.
УIt will not be tomorrow night,Ф he said. УPerhaps the night after.Ф
УOkay,Ф I said. УSee you.Ф
УSleep well,Ф he said.
УOh, sure, absolutely,Ф I said, trying for irony, but he was already gone.
I left the window full open. I wanted as much of the fresh night air in the room with me as possible. There was a tiny chiming from one of the window charms. It was a curiously serene and hopeful noise.
I must have looked pretty rough that morning too. It occurred to me that everybody at the coffeehouse was treating me like an invalid while trying to pretend they werenТt treating me like an invalid. I wanted to tell them that they were right, I was an invalid, that mark on my breast that only Mel knew was still there was poisoned, and I was dying. I didnТt say any of this. I said I was still short of sleep.
Paulie turned up an hour before time that morning saying he didnТt have anything better to do, but I was pretty sure Mom had called him and asked if he could come in early. I think Mom had figured out that the charms she was giving me were going somewhere like into the WreckТs glove compartment, so she had begun stashing them around the bakery where maybe I wouldnТt find them but they could still do me some good. Since my unwelcome speculations about dark family secrets the other night in JesseТs office I had begun to wonder what all MomТs charms were for, exactly. SheТs always been something of a charm freak; IТd put it down to eight years in my dadТs world. I found two new ones that morning: a little curled-up animal of some sort with its paws over its eyes and a red bead where its navel should have been, and a shiny white disc that rainbows ran across if you held it up against the light. I left them where I found them. Maybe I should let them try to defend against whatever they could. I had some fellow-feeling for the small curled-up creature with its hands over its face, even if the red alien parasite was lower down on it than it was on me. Charms are often noisy, which is another reason I donТt like them much, but you arenТt going to hear extraneous buzzing and burbling above the general din at CharlieТs. Especially on shifts when I had to spend some time in the company of a genially humming apprentice.
Mel was working that afternoon but Aimil had the day off from the library. She wandered back into the bakery with a cup of coffee toward the end of my stint, said sheТd just found out about an old-books-and-junk sale in Redtree, which was one of the little towns between us and the next big city to the south, she was going to go, and did I want to come along? I should probably have gone home and taken a nap, but I didnТt want to. So I said yes. A nice little outing for the doomed. Furthermore Aimil talked about library politics the whole way there and didnТt once mention nocturnal neighborhood excitements. So by the time we arrived at the village square in Redtree I was in the mood.
Ordinarily I love this kind of thing without any effort. Someone who does coffeehouse baking for a living doesnТt have huge amounts of disposable income, but the point about books-and-junk sales is that you never know what you may find for hilariously cheap. There are fewer people since the Wars than there had been before, and less money (donТt ask me how this works: youТd think if there were fewer people there would be more money to go around), so there is a lot less motive for dealers to discover specialist markets for old, beat-up, weird, or obscure-looking and possibly Other-related stuff. Plus a lot of people donТt want to think about old, beat-up, weird, obscure-looking, and possibly Other-related stuff because it reminds them of the Wars, or what life had been like before the Wars, i.e., better. The result is that a lot of very interesting nonjunk gets heaved into the nearest box for the next garage sale.
Furthermore, almost nobody wants to read the gormless old fiction about the Others which is my fave. I picked up a copy of Sordid-Enchantments on the title alone, and the fourth, and most icky and rare, volume of the Dark Blood series, which I was no longer sure I wanted to readЧthe heroine has a choice to die horribly or become a vampire horribly, and she chooses to die. If IТd realized how gross it was going to get after the first volume I wouldnТt have botheredЧ but IТm a completist, I had the first three, and hey.
I was feeling pretty good. In spite of last night. Or in an even funnier way, because of it. It was like I had two days out of time. Everything was on hold untilЕeither the vampire-something worked, or it didnТt. Jesse and Theo had been at a table under the awning when Aimil and I left CharlieТs, and IТd nodded and kept going. I hoped nothing had come up they wanted to talk to me about. Nothing was allowed to come up for the next two days. I was on vacation in my own mind, cinnamon rolls at four a.m. or not.
It must have been PaulieТs influence, but I was positively humming a tuneЧan old folk song about keeping a vampire talking till sunrise: not one of your brighter vampiresЧwhile I burrowed through a big sagging cardboard box of junk. Chipped china teacups. Dented tin trays. Small splintery wooden boxes with lids that no longer closed. A bottle opener shaped like a dragon with an extremely undershot lower jaw and pink glass eyes. Pink. The Dragon Anti-Defamation Society should hear about this.
At the bottom, when I touched it, it fizzled right through me, like IТd put my arm in a cappuccino machine. I knew it had to be some kind of wardЧnonwarding charms are kind of stickierЧbut a live ward shouldnТt be in the bottom of a box of cheap junk at a garage sale. Maybe it had fallen out of one of the splintery boxes. I hesitated, then picked it up to get a better look. Gingerly. It had now got my attention, so presumably it wouldnТt feel the need to scramble my arm like an egg again.
I didnТt recognize the style or the design. It was an oval, not quite the length of the palm of my hand, with a slightly raised edge, the whole of it thick and heavy, like an old coin, before the mints got mean and started stamping out pennies that sometimes bent if you dropped them edgewise on a hard floor. It was silver, I thought, or plate; it was so tarnished I couldnТt make out clearly what was on it, except that something was. Three somethings: one each on top, middle, and bottom, rather like an old Egyptian glyph. The only thing I could say for sure was that they werenТt any of the standard Other-preventive sigils I knew of, nor the all-purpose circle-star-and-cross one.
The most interesting thing was that it was live. Very live. Wards arenТt necessarily as master-specific as most charms, and if they arenТt actively in use they can molder quietly for a long time and still be capable of being wakened and doing some warding; but even one thatТs been tuned to you specifically shouldnТt leap avidly out at you and wag its tail like a dog wanting to go for a walk.
I could have put it back. I could have taken it to someone in charge and said УYouТve made a mistake. This one still works.Ф But I didnТt. It seemed to like lying there in my hand. DonТt be ridiculous, I thought. ItТs not responding to me personally.
As a soldier in the dented-tin-tray army they shouldnТt be expecting real money for it, but that could only be because they hadnТt noticed it was live. It was still worth a try. I took the two books and the tarnished ward to the suspicious-looking character at the card table with the rusty money box, who snatched them out of my hands as if he knew I was trying something on. But he was so preoccupied with whether or not he should sell me Altar of Darkness (in which it takes the heroine four hundred pages to die), which was certainly worth more than the seventeen blinks for two, which is what the sign on the drooping book table said, that he barely registered my little glyph. IТd done piously outraged innocence when he started haranguing me about Altar and a few of his other customers scowled at him and muttered about fairness. I won that round. So when he looked at the glyph and said Уfifty blinksФ I sniffed so he would know that I knew he was a brigand and a bandit, and let it pass. He knew more about books. Even a dead ward made out of silver plate was worth more. A blink is a dollar, and has been since after the Wars, when our economy went to pieces, and the average paycheck disappeared in the blink of an eye.
What was more interesting was that heТd touched the glyph and hadnТt said УWow! That was like putting my hand in a cappuccino machine!Ф
She didnТt say anything about a feeling like having her funny bone hit with a hammer. УHmm. ItТs quiteЧappealing, isnТt it? Even all blackened like this.Ф
УAppealingФ? Maybe it had decided that making peopleТs hair stand on end wasnТt such a good way of making friends and influencing people. УCan you figure out any of whatТs on it?Ф
She frowned, turning it this way and that in the light. УNo clue. Maybe after you get it polished.Ф
Dessert shift that night was notable only for the number of people who wanted cherry tarts. They were catching on. Rats. I didnТt really like little electrical gadgetsЧmost of the other so-called home bakeries in town used kneading machines, for example, which I thought beneath contemptЧbut there was no way I was going to be making cherry tarts without one. IТd already said I would only make individual tarts and customers had to order them with the main course to give me enough lead time. And they were still catching on. I didnТt want cherry tarts to turn into another Death of Marat. When I was first installed in my new bakery and messing around with the heady implications of CharlieТs having built it for me, IТd been having fun with puddings that look like one thing and you stick a fork in them and they become something else. A Gothic sensibility in the bakery is not necessarily a good thing. IТd made this light fluffy-looking number in a white oval dish with high sides and presented the first one with a flourish to a group of regulars who had volunteered to be experimented on. Aimil was the one with the knife, and she stuck it in and the raspberry-and-black-currant filling had exploded down the side and over the edge of the dish onto the counter. It was, I admit, a trifle dramatic. УGods, Sunshine, what is this, the Death of Marat?Ф she said. Aimil reads too much. Everybody at CharlieТs that night wanted a taste, and the Death of Marat, the first of SunshineТs soon-to-be-notorious, implausibly named epic creations, was born, although I think most of our clientele thought Marat was some kind of master vampire. (Aimil is good at names. SheТs responsible for Tweedle Dumplings and GluttonТs Grail and Buttermost Limit too.) The problem is that for months after I was getting constant requests for the damn thing, and light, fluffy puddings with heavy fillings are a brute to make. Our long-time regulars still ask for it occasionally, but IТm older and meaner now and say УnoФ better. I will make it if I like you enough. Maybe.
Well, the cherry season doesnТt last long around here; IТd be back to apple pie before BillyТd had time to miss doing the peeling. (Unless I found some other source of cheap child labor I might have to get an electric peeler in another year.) It was true that CharlieТs did almost everything from scratch and that anything that one of us wasnТt good at didnТt get done at all, but it was also true that our loyal customers were compelled to be biddable. If I decided I didnТt feel like doing cherry tarts outside of fresh cherry season they could like it or eat at Fast Burgers СRТ Us.
When I got home I fished last nightТs sheets and nightgown out of the tub where theyТd been soaking the bloodstains out (just like the Death of Marat without Marat), hauled them downstairs, and stuffed them in the washing machine. If Yolande had noticed the amount of laundry IТd been doing in the last two months she never said anything.
I put Altar and Sordid Enchantments on one of the hip-high piles of books to read next in the corner of the living room, and got out the silver polish. Not standard equipment in my household: IТd bought some before I came home. The glyph came up beautifully. Except I still couldnТt make out the figures.
It was weirdly heavy for plate. And doesnТt plate tend to look platy when youТve shined it up? Maybe I only knew cheap plate. Even so.
The symbol at the top was round, with snaky and spiky lines woven through it. The symbol at the bottom was narrow at the base and fat at the top. The one in the middleЕmight conceivably have four legs, which would presumably make it some kind of animal. Right. Two squiggles and an unknown animal.
The top squiggle could be a symbol for the sun. The bottom squiggle could be a symbol for a tree.
And if it was solid silverЧeven if the round squiggle wasnТt the sun and the fat-on-the-top squiggle wasnТt a treeЧit was still a shoo-in as an anti-Other ward. None of the Others liked silver.
Whatever it was, looking at it made my spirits lift. For someone under two death threatsЧplus, I suppose, the incompatible threats of Pat and JesseТs idea of what my future should include, supposing I had a future, because, if I did, I would spend it incarcerated in a small padded roomЧthis was good enough. I put it in the drawer in the little table next to my bed. I slept that night, you should forgive the term, the sleep of the dead.
So when the alarm went off I was almost ready to get up. The prospect of the night to come started to creep up on me almost immediately, but there were distractions: Mr. Cagney complained that his roll didnТt have enough cinnamon filling at seven a.m., Paulie called at seven-fifteen with a head cold, and Kenny dropped a tray of dirty plates at seven-thirty. HeТd been doing better since MelТd had his word, but heТd decided heТd rather do the early hours than the late ones, and this was only going to work if he got home sooner to do his homework sooner to get to bed sooner. Not my problem. Except in terms of Liz spending time helping to clean the floor instead of unloading cookie trays and muffin tins for me.
Pat came in about midmorning and penetrated my floury lair. УThought youТd like to knowЧthe girl from the other night. SheТs come round. She doesnТt remember a thing from the time the sucker spoke to her to waking up in the hospital the next morning. She doesnТt remember the guy was a sucker. And sheТs fine. A little spooked, but fine.Ф Translation: the only on-the-spot witness doesnТt remember what she saw, or at least isnТt saying anything. And Jesse and Theo, who were claiming the strike for SOF (you donТt kill vampires, of course, although most of us civvies use the term; in SOF-speak you strike them), were there only seconds after me and before anyone else. Except maybe Mrs. Bialosky.
But it was one of those days when the coffeehouse schedule breaks down, and Charlie and Mel and Mom and I held the pieces together with our teeth. We always have at least one of these days during a seven-day (or thirteen-day, depending on how youТre counting) week. Not to mention the prospect of getting up at three-forty-five on Thursday. During a thirteen-day week. My sense of occult oppression tightened anyway, but it had its work cut out for it. I had forty-five minutes off from ten-forty-five to eleven-thirty, between the usual morning baking and the beginning of the lunch rush, and almost an hour off at three-thirty, while a skeleton staff got us through the late-afternoon muffin and scone crowd, before the more gradual dinner swell beganЧplus two or three tea with elective aspirin breaks. I went home at nine. Anyone who wanted dessert after that could have ginger pound cake or Indian pudding or Chocoholia. It wasnТt a night for individual fruit tarts.
Fortunately I was tired enough to sleep. Before IТd found out I was going to be working all day I had thought I wouldnТt sleep at all; by the time I got home I knew IТd sleep, but assumed IТd get a couple of hours and be awake by midnight, waiting for something to happen.
IТd spent some time considering what I should, you know, wear. This vampire in the bedroom thing was a trifle more intensively perturbing than this vampire around at all thing. Even if the discon-certingness was only happening in my mind. There was a corollary to the story about male suckers being able to keep it up indefinitely: that you had to, er, invite them over that threshold first too. But if they could seduce you into dying just by looking at you, then they could probably perform other seductions as well. Okay, this particular vampire had declined to seduce me to death when he could have. This was a good omen as far as it went.
I reminded myself that the sound of his laughter made me want to throw up, and that in sunlight he lookedЕwell, dead. LetТs get real here. I couldnТt possibly be interested inЕ
I involuntarily remembered that sense of vampire in the room. It wasnТt like the pheromone haze when your eyes lock with someone elseТs across a room, crowded or otherwise, and wham. It really was not at all like that. But it was more like that than anything else I could think of. It probably had something to do with the peak-experience business: with a vampire in the room you are sitting there expecting to die. Sex and death, right? Peak experiences. And since I didnТt go in for any of the standard neck-risking pastimes I didnТt have a lot of practical knowledge of the hormone rush you get when you may be about to snuff it. Perhaps someone who loved free-fall parachuting or shark wrestling would find vampires in the room less troubling.
Never mind. LetТs leave it that vampires infesting your private spaces are daunting, and one of the ways to stiffenЧerЧboost morale is to wear carefully-selected-for-the-occasion morale-boosting clothing.
I went to bed wearing my oldest, most faded flannel shirt, the bra that had looked all right in the catalog but was obviously an escapee from a downmarket nursing home when it arrived, white cotton panties that had had pansies on them about seven hundred washings ago and were now a kind of mottled gray, and the jeans I usually wore for housecleaning or raking YolandeТs garden because they were too shabby for work even if I never came out of the bakery. Food inspector arrest-on-sight jeans. Oh, and fuzzy green plaid socks. It was a cool night for summer. Relatively. I lay down on top of the bedspread.
And slept through till the alarm at three-forty-five. He hadnТt come.
That was not one of my better days at work. I snarled at everyone who spoke to me, and snarled worse when no one snarled back. Mel, who would have, wasnТt there. Mom, fortunately, didnТt have time to get into a furious argument with me, so we shot a few salvos over each otherТs bows, and retired to our separate harbors.
We did try to stay out of each otherТs way but it wasnТt like Mom to avoid a good blazing row with her daughter when one was offered. What had she been guessing while IТd been doing my guessing? There was quite a lot in the literature of bad crosses about petty, last-straw exasperations that tipped the balance. IТd been checking globenet archives when I could have been reading Sordid Enchantments.
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