"The Immortal Highlander" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moening Karen Marie)

Babbling loudly about how clumsy she was, apologizing and blaming everything from eating too much, to not being used to heels, to being nervous about the interview, in a matter of moments, she managed to completely blow the image of cool, composed confidence she'd so painstakingly projected through lunch.
But she'd had no choice.
In order to make the fairy believe she hadn't seen it, that she was just a clumsy human, nothing more, she'd had to act like a complete spaz and risk sabotaging her credibility with her prospective employer.
Sabotage it, she had.
Swatting away Gabby's frantically dabbing hands, Ms. Temple smoothed her ruined suit and huffed off toward her car, pausing to toss stiffly over her shoulder. "As I told you earlier, Ms. O'Callaghan, our firm works with only the highest-caliber clients. They can be demanding, excessive, and temperamental. And understandably so. When there are millions at stake, a client has every right to expect the best. We at Temple, Turley and Tucker pride ourselves on being unflappable under stress. Our clients require smooth, sophisticated handling. Frankly, Ms. O'Callaghan, you're too flighty to be successful with our firm. I'm sure you'll find an appropriate fit elsewhere. Good day, Ms. O'Callaghan. "
Feeling like she'd been kicked in the stomach, Gabby watched in stricken silence as Ms. Temple accepted her spotless Mercedes from the valet, dimly registering that the fairy, blessedly, was also moving on. As the sleek pearl-colored Mercedes merged onto Fifth Street and disappeared into trafficЧ the job of her dreams flapping farewell on its tailpipeЧ Gabby's shoulders slumped. With a gusty sigh, she turned and trudged down the street to the corner lot where simple law students not-destined-for-success-because-they-were-too-flighty could afford to park.
" 'Flighty,' my ass," she muttered, resting her head on the steering wheel. "You have no idea what my life is like. You can't see them."
All Ms. Temple had probably felt was a slight breeze, a moderate increase in temperature, perhaps caught a whiff of an exotic, arousing fragrance. And if, by chance, the fairy had brushed against herЧ although they were invisible, they were real, and were actually thereЧ Ms. Temple would have rationalized it away somehow. Those who couldn't see the Fae always did.
Gabby had learned the hard way that people had zero tolerance for the inexplicable. It never ceased to amaze her what flimsy excuses they dredged up to protect their perception of reality. "Gee, I guess I didn't get enough sleep last night." Or, "Wow. I shouldn't have had that second (or third or fourth) beer with lunch." If all else failed, they settled for a simple "I must have imagined it."
How she longed for such oblivion!
She shook her head and tried to console herself with the thought that at least the fairy had been convinced and was gone. She was safe. For now.
The way Gabby figured it, the Fae were responsible for ninety-nine percent of the problems in her life. She'd take responsibility for the other one percent, but they were the reason her life this summer had been one crisis after another. They were the reason she'd begun to dread leaving her house, never knowing where one might pop up, or how badly it might startle her. Or what kind of ass she'd make of herself, trying to regroup. They were the reason her boyfriend had broken up with her fifteen days, three hours, andЧ she glanced broodingly at her watchЧ forty-two minutes ago.
Gabrielle O'Callaghan harbored a special and very personal hatred for the Fae.
"I don't see you. I don't see you." she muttered beneath her breath as two mouthwatering fairy males strolled past the hood of her car. She averted her gaze, caught herself, then angled the rearview mirror and pretended to be fussing with her lipstick.
Never look away too sharply, her grandmother, Moira O'Callaghan, had always cautioned. You must act natural. You must learn to let your gaze slide over them without either hitching or pulling away too abruptly, or theyТll know you know. And theyТll take you. You must never betray that you can see them. Promise me, Gabby I can't lose you!
Gram had seen them, too, these creatures other people couldn't see. Most of the women on her mom's side did, though sometimes the "gift" skipped generations. As it had with her mom, who'd moved to Los Angeles years ago (like the people in California were less weird than fairies), leaving then-seven-year-old Gabrielle behind with Grain "until she got settled." Jilly O'Callaghan had never gotten settled.
Why couldn't it have skipped me? Gabby brooded. A normal life was all she'd ever-wanted.
And proving damned difficult to have, even in boring Cincinnati. Gabby was beginning to think that living in the Tri-StateЧ the geographical convergence of Indiana, Ohio, and KentuckyЧ was a bit like living at the mystical convergence of Sunnydale's Hellmouth.
Except the Midwest didn't get demons and vampiresЧ oh, noЧ they got fairies: dangerously seductive, inhuman, arrogant creatures that would take her and do God-only-knew-what to her if they ever figured out that she could see them.
Her family history was riddled with tales of ancestors who'd been captured by the dreaded Fae Hunters and never seen again. Some of the tales claimed they were swiftly and brutally killed by the savage Hunters, others that they were forced into slavery to the Fae.
She had no idea what actually became of those foolish enough to be taken, but she knew one thing for certain: She had no intention of ever finding out.


* * *


Later Gabby would realize that it was all the cup of coffee's fault. Every awful thing that happened to her from that moment on could be traced directly back to that cup of coffee with the stunning simplicity of an airtight conditional argument: If not for A (said cup of coffee), then not B (blowing job interview), hence not C (having to go into work that night), and certainly not D (the horrible thing that happened to her there)... on to infinity.
It really wasn't fair that such a trivial, spur-of-the-moment, seemingly harmless decision such as taking an iced coffee to-go could change the entire course of a girl's life.
Not that she didn't hold the fairy significantly culpable, but studying law had taught her to isolate the critical catalyst so one could argue culpability, and the simple facts were that if she hadn't had the cup of coffee in her hand, she wouldn't have dropped it, wouldn't have splattered Ms. Temple, wouldn't have made an ass of herself, and wouldn't have lost all hope of landing her dream job.
If not for the cup of coffee, the fairy would have had no reason to turn and look back at her, and she would have had no reason to panic. Life would have rolled smoothly on. With the promise of that coveted second interview, she would have gone out celebrating with her girlfriends that night.
But because of that nefarious cup of coffee, she didn't go out. She went home, took a long bubble bath, had a longer cry, then later that evening, when she was certain the office would be empty and she wouldn't have to field humiliating questions from her fellow interns, she drove back downtown to catch up on work. She was behind by a whopping nineteen arbitration cases, which, now that she didn't have a different job lined up, mattered.
And because of that calamitous cup of coffee, she was in a bad mood and not paying attention as she parallel-parked in front of her office building, and she didn't notice the dark, dangerous-looking fairy stepping from the shadows of the adjacent alley.
If not for the stupid cup of coffee, she wouldn't have even been there.
And that was when things took a diabolical turn from bad to worse.

2



Adam Black raked a hand through his long black hair and scowled as he stalked down the alley.
Three eternal months he'd been human. Ninety-seven horrific days, to be exact. Two thousand three hundred twenty-eight interminable hours. One hundred thirty-nine thousand six hundred eighty thoroughly offensive minutes.
He'd become obsessed with increments of time. It was an embarrassingly mortal affliction. Next thing he knew, he'd be wearing a watch.
Never.
He'd been certain Aoibheal would have come for him by now. Would have staked his very essence on it; not that he had much left to stake.
But she hadn't, and he was sick of waiting. Not only were humans allotted a ridiculously finite slice of time to exist, their bodies had requirements that consumed a great deal of that time. Sleep alone consumed a full quarter of it. Although he'd mastered those requirements over the past few months, he resented being slave to his physical form. Having to eat, wash, dress, sleep, piss, shave, brush his hair and teeth, for Christ's sake! He wanted to be himself again. Not at the queen's bloody convenience, but now.
Hence he'd left London and journeyed to Cincinnati (the infernally long wayЧ by plane) looking for the half-Fae son he'd sired over a millennium ago, Circenn Brodie, who'd married a twenty-first-century mortal and usually resided here with her.
Usually.
Upon arriving in Cincinnati, he'd found Circenn's residence vacant, and had no idea where to look for him next. He'd taken up residence there himself, and had been killing time sinceЧ endeavoring grimly to ignore that, for the first time in his timeless existence, time was returning the favorЧ waiting for Circenn to return. A half-blooded Tuatha Dщ, Circenn had magic Adam no longer possessed.
Adam's scowl deepened. What paltry power the queen had left him was virtually worthless. He'd quickly discovered that she'd thought through his punishment most thoroughly. The spell of the fщth fiada was one of the most powerful and perception-altering that the Tuatha Dщ possessed, employed to permit a Tuatha Dщ full interaction with the human realm, while keeping him or her undetectable by humans. It cloaked its wearer in illusion that affected short-term memory and generated confusion in the minds of those in the immediate vicinity.
If Adam toppled a newsstand, the vendor would blithely blame an unseen wind. If he took food from a diner's plate, the person merely decided he/she must have finished. If he procured new clothing for himself at a shop, the owner would register an inventory error. If he snatched groceries from a passerby and flung the bag to the ground, his hapless victim would turn on the nearest bystander and a bitter fight would ensue (he'd done that a few times for a bit of sport). If he plucked the purse from a woman's arm and dangled it before her face, she would simply walk through both him and it (the moment he touched a thing, it, too, was sucked into the illusion cast by the fщth fiada until he released it), then head in the opposite direction, muttering about having forgotten her purse at home.