"Mary Rosenblum - Afterimage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

"Two weeks. Nobody but us came to the funeral. You really don't have any family,
do you? You know, you don't even smell bad." Daniel's laugh is shaky and I can
smell booze on his breath.

"No, I don't have any family." Not anymore. "So I'm a ghost." A ghost that
bleeds. "Why?" The word comes out a whisper.

"The world's full of ghosts." Daniel gets up and goes over to pick up the vodka
bottle. "Just look out at the street. I see too many of them. That's why my old
man started drinking. The ghosts. They followed him back from Vietnam. You can
make them go away if you drink enough." His lips pull back from his teeth and he
throws the bottle through the window. A moment later glass tinkles in the alley.

I touch the cut on my scalp again, and it's not there-- the cut I mean. Although
drying blood still sticks my hair into clumps. I shiver. And for the first time
it hits me -- that I'm...different.

I really am a ghost.

"There's got to be a reason. I'm back here to do something, Daniel. Avenge
somebody. Save somebody." And I feel it like a shot -- all warm and bright,
running through my veins. "I know it," I say softly.

He touches me finally -- hands light on my shoulders. "Yeah," he says. "Maybe
you're right."

"I am." The words come out a whisper, and I think suddenly that I've just said a
prayer -- the first one I can ever remember saying. And I'm shivering again,
because Daniel's place is always cold, and he doesn't say anything, just goes
and gets the blanket off the futon he uses as a bed. And he wraps it around my
shoulders and just stands there real close, looking at the blood in my hair
where the cut healed up so fast. And I think maybe he's crying, but he's got his
head turned so I can't really be sure.

Then somebody knocks on the door, hard and sharp. Daniel jumps and I jump and we
look at each other. "Your spirit guide," Daniel says. And he laughs, but it's a
nervous scratchy sound like fingernails on a blackboard. Whoever it is knocks
again, and Daniel is looking at me like I should answer it, but I can't move. It
hits me-- that I don't know the rules. If there are any. Anything could be out
there on the other side of that flimsy door. Daniel gives me this look and goes
over to open it. "Wait," I say, but it's too late.

"My God." Keri is standing there, with her hair all tangled like she just jumped
out of bed. "He wasn't kidding. Ian..." And then she throws herself at me so
that I have to put my arms around her, and she's babbling in my ear about the
car and saying thank you over and over, and she's crying too.
And Daniel is leaning against the door watching, and it hits me suddenly that
I've never seen him look so sad. And for a minute I think I hear an echo of
Hammer's dark chords, but that's just me remembering, because there's no way you
could hear him all the way over here, no matter how loud he cranked that killer