"Nightworld 8 - Black Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Lisa J)

This place is dangerous.

Everybody there was so good-looking--or else ugly in a really fashionable way, as if they'd just stepped off MTV. But there was an air about them that reminded Maggie of the sharks at the Seattle Aquarium. A coldness that couldn't be seen, only sensed.

There is something so wrong here. Are they all drug dealers or something? Satanists? Some kind of junior mafia? They just feel so evil....

Maggie herself felt like a cat with all its fur standing on end.

When she heard a girl's voice coming from the first bedroom, she froze, hoping it was Sylvia.

"Really, the most secret place you've ever imagined." It wasn't Sylvia. Maggie could just see the speaker through the crack in the door. She was pale and beautiful, with one long black braid, and she was leaning forward and lightly touching the back of a boy's hand.

"So exotic, so mysterious-it's a place from the past, you see. It's ancient, and everybody's forgotten about it, but it's still there. Of course, it's terribly dangerous-but not for us...."

Not relevant, Maggie's mind decided, and she stopped listening. Somebody's weird vacation plans; nothing to do with Sylvia or Miles.

She kept on edging down the hall. The door at the end was shut.

Sylvia's bedroom.

Well, she has to be in there; she isn't anywhere else.

With a surreptitious glance behind her, Maggie crept closer to the door. She leaned toward it until her cheek touched the cool white paint on the wood, all the while straining her eyes toward the living room in case somebody should turn her way. She held her breath and tried to look casual, but her heart was beating so loudly that she could only hear it and the music.

Certainly there was nobody talking behind the door. Maggie's hopes of eavesdropping faded.

All right, then, I'll go in. And there's no point in trying to be stealthy; she's going to notice.

So I'll just do it.

It helped that she was so keyed up. She didn't even need to brace herself; her body was at maximum tension already. Despite her sense that there was something menacing about this whole place, she wasn't frightened, or at least not in a way that felt like fear. It felt like rage instead, like being desperately ready for battle. She wanted to grab something and shake it to pieces.

She took hold of the knob and pushed the door open.

A new smell of incense hit her as the air rushed out. It was stronger than the living room smell, more earthy and musky, with an overlying sweetness that Maggie didn't like. The bedroom was even darker than the hall, but Maggie stepped inside. There was tension on the door somehow; as soon as she let go of it, it whispered shut behind her.

Sylvia was standing beside the desk.

She was alone, and she was still wearing the Gore-Tex climbing outfit she'd had on at Maggie's house. Her shimmering fine hair was starting to dry and lifting up like little angel feathers away from her forehead.

She was doing something with a brass incense burner, adding pinches of powder and what looked like herbs to it. That was where the sickeningly sweet smell was coming from.

Maggie had planned as far as she'd planned anything at all--to, rush right up and get in Sylvia's face. To startle her into some kind of confession. She was going to say, "I need to talk to you." But before she could get the first word out, Sylvia spoke without looking up.

"What a shame. You really -should have stayed home with your .parents, you know." Her voice was cool and languorous, not hasty and certainly not regretful.

Maggie stopped in her tracks.

Now, what's that supposed to mean? Is it a threat? Fine. Whatever. I can threaten, too.