"Whitley Strieber - Cat Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strieber Whitley)

screams, and little Mandy had thought. She's in the house. Constance Collier is in the house.

In the morning she had decided that it had to have been a dream.
In those days Constance had seemed frightening. Now the fact that she was a witch was a matter of
indifference to Mandy. What she was interested in was this illustration assignment. There was no reason
Amanda Walker couldn't become the next Michael Hague or even the next Arthur Rackham. Beyond
that, though, illustrating a Grimm's offered her a chance to express her craft to the fullest.

Mandy was convinced that her visions of the fairy tales were original and powerful and new. Surely they
would stun die art world if they were ever painted.

All that stood between her and success was this final interview. It promised to be hard. How had Will
described Constance Collier? Quixotic. Rude. Imperious. And you were never late to an appointment
with her. Nol ever was the way he had put it. From her own past, Mandy could easily imagine Miss
Collier to be even harder to deal with than Will had said.

Soon the forbidding brick wall that marked the towns ide edge of the estate appeared out the right
window of the Volks. It was vine-covered but in excellent repair. Iron spikes jutted up from it, hooked
out at their tops. Perhaps the incursions from the town had grown more aggressive in recent years. There
was no scaling that wall now and dropping over, sweaty and breathless, knees skinned and heart
pounding.

The main gate, which Mandy had never before entered, was securely closed. Mandy pulled up and got
out of her car. The gate was simple, almost stark, made of wrought-iron bars topped by more spikes. It
might as well have enclosed a prison. Along the top of it were the familiar brass letters, тАЬThis Land of
Dark,тАЭ from a line of Constance Collier's great poem. Faery: тАЬEntered she this land of dark, borne by the
mist's own hand.тАЭ

How very quiet this place was, and how old. The trees soared huge and silent. The only sound was that
of an occasional leaf whispering to the ground.

Beyond the gate was a narrow dirt road, curving off into a thick forest the kids had always avoided,
preferring to go the long way around, by the fields.

Mandy pulled and pushed at the gate until her feet scraped on the brick paving. The hinges didn't even
creak.

She looked left and rightтАФand saw a small gateman's house with its iron door hanging open. Inside was
a disused telephone on a frayed cord. She picked it up, put it to her ear. тАЬHello?тАЭ Dead. тАЬGreat.тАЭ It was
now 9:30 exactly. тАЬMarvelous.тАЭ She was getting off to a wonderful start. She would be fired before she
even met her employer.

But she mustn't be fired. This just had to work, it had to. Her alternatives were bleak: illustrating the
covers of paperbacks or maybe getting into advertising. To Mandy there was no thought more horrifying
than that of being forced to abandon her vision and just use her skill. She had seen such people, had even
interviewed in a few ad agencies. It had chilled her to walk down the long rows of trendy offices, each
with its light box and drafting table, and see the gray people huddling there in frayed designer jeans and
Yves Saint Laurent shirts.

She deliberated climbing the gate.