"Smith, L J - Forbidden Game 2 - The Chase" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Lisa J)

It might have been his imagination, but he had the odd feeling that something else was stalking them, too.
They drove to the Center in two cars; Jenny and Audrey in Audrey's little red Alpha Spider, and Dee and Michael in Michael's VW Bug. Jenny braced herself as they walked inside.
No matter how she braced, the west wall was still a shock. It was covered with pictures of Summer.
Hundreds of them. Not just the flyers and posters.
Summer's parents had brought in dozens of photographs, too, to show Summer from different angles, or maybe just to remind people what all this efficiency and envelope-stuffing was really about. Somebody had gotten one of the pictures blown up into a monstrous billboard-like print, so that Summer's soft blond curls spanned five feet and Summer's wisteria blue eyes stared out at them like God's.
"Where's the Tomcat?" one of the volunteers asked Jenny. She was a college girl, and she always asked about Tom.
"I don't know," Jenny said briefly. The same question had been stabbing at her since lunch.
"If I were you, I'd know. What a hunk. I'd be keeping tabs on him... ." Jenny stopped listening. As usual, she wanted to get away from the Center as soon as possible. It was a warm, earnest, busy place, full of hope and good cheer-and it was a farce.
There was a sick feeling in Jenny's stomach as she turned to the large map on the wall. The map showed which areas had been postered and which hadn't. Jenny pretended to study it, even though she already knew where she had to go. If the Crying Girl had been P.C.'s friend, she might live near him.
She scarcely noticed as the Center door opened and one of the volunteers whispered, "It's that psychic who called. The one from Beverly Hills."
"Will you look at that Mercedes?" Michael said.
Jenny turned and saw a woman with frosted blond hair, who was decorated with ropes of expensive-looking gold chains. At the same moment the psychic turned and saw her-and gasped.
Her eyes got very large. She took several steps toward Jenny, until her Giorgio perfume overpowered Audrey's Chloe Narcisse. She stared into Jenny's face.
"You," she whispered, "have seen them. Those from the Other Side."
Jenny stood frozen. Lightning-struck.
"I have a message for you," the psychic said.
4
What message?" Dee said, frowning.
The psychic was still staring at Jenny intently. "You've got the look," she said. "You've seen them -the faery folk."
Audrey said sharply, "The faery folk?" In the paper house Audrey's worst nightmare had been a fairy tale. A story about the Erlking, a spirit who haunted the Black Forest and stole children. The Elf-king. Julian had played the part to perfection, had even claimed to be the real Erlking.
The Shadow Men. The faery folk. Different names for different ages. Oh, God, Jenny thought, she knows the truth. I should be happy, she thought wildly. But there was a knot in her stomach.
The woman was answering Audrey. "The Elder Race. Some people have the gift of seeing them where everyone else only sees a wind in the grass, or a shadow, or a reflection of light."
Something about the woman's tone brought Jenny up short. The psychic sounded too-pleased- about the subject. Not scared enough. "What do they look like?"
The woman gave her a laughing glance. As if you didn't know. "They're the most beautiful things imaginable," she said. "Creatures of light and happiness. I frequently see them dancing at Malibu Creek." She held up one of her chains, and Jenny saw the charm, a beautiful young girl with gauzy wings and floating draperies.
"Pixies in bluebells," Dee said, absolutely straight-faced. Jenny's muscles went slack. This woman didn't know anything about the Shadow Men. Just another kook.
The psychic was still smiling. "The message is: Vanished. They told me to tell you that."
"Vanished? Oh," Jenny said. "Well, thank you." She supposed it was as good a message as any, considering Summer's situation.
"Vanished," the woman repeated. "At least-I think that was it. Sometimes I only get the vowel sounds. It might have been-" She hesitated, then shook her head and went back to her Mercedes.
"For a moment there I thought she had something," Audrey murmured.
Jenny grabbed a handful of flyers and a map. "Let's go."
Outside, they made their plans. "P.C.'s house is at thirteen-twenty-two Ramona Street," Jenny said. She knew this by heart. It was the first place they had checked, along with Slug's house. Of course, they hadn't been able to search directly, but one of the kinder detectives had let them know that there was no paper house in either of the boys' homes.
"Dee, you and Michael can start there and cover everything west over to, say, Anchor Street. Audrey and I can cover everything east over to where Landana turns into Sycamore. Remember, it's the girl we want now."
"In other words we're canvassing the entire south side of town," Michael said with a groan. "Door to door."
"Obviously we won't cover it all today," Jenny said. "But we'll keep at it until we do." She looked at Dee, who nodded slightly. Dee would keep Michael at it.
Audrey didn't look particularly happy, either "We've been to a lot of those houses before. What are we supposed to say when they tell us they already have flyers?"
Dee grinned. "Tell them you're selling encyclopedias." She hustled Michael into the Bug.
Audrey shook her head as she and Jenny got back into the Spider and drove away. The top was down, and the wind blew stray wisps of copper-colored hail out of her chignon. Jenny shut her eyes, feeling the rushing air on her face.
She didn't want to think about anything, not about the psychic, not about Zach, not about Tom. Especially not about Tom. Underneath she'd had some faint hope he might show up at the Center after school. He was avoiding her, that was it.
Her nose and eyes stung. She wanted him with her. If she thought any more about him, about his hazel eyes with their flecks of green, about his warmth and his strength and his easy devil-may-care smile, she was going to cry.
"Let's go over by Eastman and Montevideo," she heard herself saying. The words just came out of her mouth, from nowhere.
Audrey cast her a spiky-lashed glance but turned
south.
Eastman Avenue, the scene of so many recent riots, was almost deserted. Jenny hadn't been there since the day of Tom's birthday, the day she'd walked there to buy a party game. As they approached Montevideo Street, everything Jenny had experienced the last time she'd been here-the blue twilight, the footsteps behind her, the fear-came back to her. She almost expected to see P.C. in his black vest and Slug in his flannels walking down the sidewalk.
Audrey turned the corner on Montevideo and stopped.
The mural on the blank wall still showed a street scene. In the middle of the mural was a realistic-looking store with a sign reading: More Games. But it was just paint and concrete. Flat. There was no handle sticking out of the door.
Behind that blank wall she'd met Julian, in a place that wasn't a real place after all.
Scraps of paper lay in the street. One was the bright yellow of Summer's flyer.
Jenny felt suddenly very hollow. She didn't know what she'd expected to find here, or even what had made her come.
Audrey shivered. "I don't like this place."
"No. It was a bad idea."