"Phaedra Weldon - Zoe Martinique 01 - Wraith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weldon Phaedra)

and to my daughter, Indri, for bringing me the happiest moments of my life.
1
ONE of the perks of astral travel is the inability to smell, especially when I glide
into restaurants that haven't thrown out their raw meat in a day or two.
Now that's an odor that sticks to the back of your tongue like a hairy sock.
My name is Zoe-that's with a long e. Not the pronunciation like "toe." Martinique.
Irish mother, Latin American father. Which means I have darker than usual skin for
an Irish Catholic, a mass of brownish hair, very light brown eyes, a wicked mean
temper, and love of bawdy pub songs.
My mother insists
I look like my father, whom I'd always sort of imagined as resembling Antonio Banderas.
Okay-so Antonio's not Latin, but Spanish. He's still one beautiful man. But you know
how it is, how a daughter always imagines her father as being the most beautiful
man in the world. A hero. A legend.
But according to my mom, the only legendary thing my dad did was vanish from my
life. As to the whereabouts of one Adiran Martinique, can't help you. Haven't seen
him since I was four. Mom refers to his absence as necessary.
Try explaining the word necessary to a teenager with raging hormones and the want
of a daddy.
2
As strange as this may sound, I astral travel for a living, gathering up information
that people pay good money for. I can't give you the mechanics of how I do
it, only that I can. I'm not sure there's any real official name for what I am or
do. I've sort of selflabeled myself a Traveler for want of a better name. Telling
a new client I
travel
to locate the information they pay for is easier than saying "Oh-I go out of body
and tootle around in my altogether to snoop on people."
Ever tried explaining the astral plane to any average Joe? They get that whole MEGO
look-you know-My Eyes Glaze Over. Where was I? Oh. Yeah.
Smell. The smell problem wasn't what brought me into the biggest case of my life-the
one that sent me down a road of no return.
It was the sound of a gunshot.
The first step was walking out of the Fox Theatre on a Tuesday night. It was mid-November,
one of my favorite months. I'd been hired to look in (okay, snoop-satisfied?) on
a meeting between the owners of some dot-com company in Buckhead, one of the more
upwardly urban areas of Atlanta, Georgia.
My client had wanted to know if they were discussing his dismissal. Like I was going
to find this out while they watched a musical? I mean-who actually talks in the middle
of Chicago?
This is Atlanta for crying out loud, the third largest Gay-Mecca in the States.
Talking? Not likely. Singing? Definitely.
These guys hadn't uttered a word in the first half hour, and I didn't feel like
sitting through the show a third time. Not to mention I didn't really have a seat
and I felt a bit uncomfortable standing in front of them, waiting, even though no
one could see me.
So I left the gig, confident they weren't going to talk about my client during the
production. They'd mentioned tentative aftershow plans for a coffee at Cafe Intermezzo
over in Buckhead-so I figured I'd step outside and wait for them to leave and resume
my snoopiness then.