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

Even ghosts have to take the bus.
And then again, I didn't want to end up in East Suburbia in case my targets for
the evening did end up having coffee and I couldn't get back in time.
Atlanta has a unique design in that it's shaped like a huge wagon wheel. The city,
with its skyscrapers and mainstream pulse
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(that whole nexus, center-of-the-universe thing), is the wheel's hub. Roads spin
out in all directions, leading to the smaller suburbs like Decatur, Chamblee, Tucker,
Doraville-these are the spokes. Then just beyond them is Interstate 285. The "perimeter"
as it's called by most natives and residents. It encircles the entire city like the
outer tire.
Gobs of people live outside the perimeter, or OTP. Cheaper houses and more land
for sale. Worse traffic though, in my opinion. I live inside the perimeter, or ITP.
I like the city,
the diversity of people, and the convenience of having a Target and a museum in less
than a ten-minute drive.
I'd been to several of the large cities, like Boston, Chicago, New York, and Los
Angeles. And if there was one thing I enjoyed most about living in Atlanta, it was
the trees. All shapes and sizes. I've seen crews knock out areas just to plant trees
(and not always peach trees) or divert sidewalks to preserve a long-standing granddaddy
of an oak. We are the greenest city I've ever been in.
I moved along the sidewalk with people passing back and forth, bundled in their
fall coats. Another good thing about being a Traveler is I don't feel temperature.
If anyone could see me, I'd be wearing my usual uniform of a long-sleeved, black
spandex cat-suit with my black bunny slippers. They have white nylon whiskers and
soft pink noses-and are starting to look a bit frayed, come to think of it. I keep
my hair in a long braid that usually truncates at the small of my back.
It's the costume I put on before I go out of body. I found out by accident that if
I lay down naked, then I appear outside of my body naked as well, and though technically
no one could see me that way, I really didn't want to take any chance I'd run into
a kid who saw naked dead people.
Know what I mean?
I didn't have any standard utility belt a la superhero. Couldn't use one. Another
of the drawbacks of being incorporeal, other than being sat on, is that I haven't
been able to manipulate anything physical. I always figured ghosts who could move
things around
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had something up on me-though maybe it was the upside to really being dead.
If there was an upside.
I knew a few really dead people. And they could move things, albeit not well at
times. But as for other people that do what I do? Nada.
I'd been doing this for six years and never met another Traveler. Which is kinda
lonely.
After a block or two of walking, I found myself standing in front of one of the
more impressive buildings down from the Fox. During the daylight the Bank of America
Plaza was made of rustcolored marble and gleamed when the sun shone.
But at night, the polished surface reflected the moon and stars from the November
night sky. I liked looking around inside of buildings like this.
Most floors had their cubicle farms. Dozens of feet of blue or gray burlap squares,
each containing a snapshot of an individual's life. The concept appealed to the artist