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

repeated.

And if we don't, George thought, you kids are going to be' out of Maywell State College on your tight
little asses just like me. No Stohlmeyer grant means no professorshipтАФand no assistantships either. But
then again, what would dark careтАФhe had the Covenstead to return to. Bonnie was too wild to live in
Constance Collier's witch village. As for George, he kept his house in town. He had his reasons for
staying away from the estate, chief among them his career. It was one thing for people to commute into
New York from the Covenstead, another for them to try and work in the town.

Any professor foolish enough to have open contact with the witches could forget things like tenure.

If the Stohlmeyer grant ended, Constance might find George some money for his work, but the grant was
the validation that the college trustees needed to allow him to continue it here. Loss of the grant meant
loss of career. George could not bear that thought: he had worked so hard, and been so misunderstood.

тАЬLet's earn some gold, kiddies, and bring this little sucker back to life.тАЭ

The frog heard, thrumming in the whole air, a rush as of bird wings. It was low and large, too large even
to be a bird. Was it wind?

The frog saw scud on the surface of the waters, saw the lilies tearing, saw the leaves of cypress and
willow lift into the black sky, heard the thrumming rise to a scream. It waited no longer, but rather leaped
for the dark, safe deeps.

A shimmering, golden goddess of a frog swam there. The bull's heart was captured and he went deeper
and deeper after her, his loins tingling, his muscles singing in the quiet. She lured him farther and farther,
deeper than any frog should go. Come, she said with her quickness. Swim, she said with her grace.
Swim! Swim!

The wind was seething behind him, roaring through the lilies, ripping the green and quiet waters, the holy
pond.

Swim, little one, the goddess called, swim with all your soul!

The black torn began to run. He rounded a comer onto, Meecham Street. The neighborhood changed
from houses to a row of neat little shops. Bixter's Ice Cream was open, its video games clattering and
buzzing. Beside it the B. Dalton bookstore was just closing up. Joan Kominski locked her register and
turned out her lights. The passing torn, unnoticed by her, shot her a vision of her own future: she was in a
hospital room dragging breaths that would not fill her lungs. The hallucination was so detailed that she
could smell the oxygen, see a picture of a clown on the wall, hazy beyond the plastic oxygen tent, taste
her own drowning fluids. And feel Mike's hand in hers and hear him catling тАЬDoctor, Doctor!тАЭ

She paused, stunned. With shaking hands she lit a cigarette. She stood in her darkened bookshop,
smoking, calming herself down.

The torn trotted quickly down Main and crossed the Morris Stage Road. Mike Kominski was roaring
home full of Amtrak martinis, late as usual from his job in New York, and it would not do to be caught in
front of that particular Lincoln.

The wind was just behind the frog now and he knew it was dry and he knew it was hot. He swam and