"Martha Wells - Bad Medicine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

"Arce Cardenas, a curandero who lives in Albuquerque. He told me to come to Silverpan, to the ski
hotel and ask for Ben Murphey." The boy's voice had gotten softer and he wrapped his arms tightly
around his knees, in nervousness or embarrassment or both. "I think I'm in the wrong place."

Mac sighed. "No, you're in the right place. Come inside and I'll hunt Ben out to listen to your troubles."
The boy hesitated, and Mac added, "You've come a long way for this, son, you gonna turn to jelly just
when you get to the doorstep?"

"No. No, I'm not." The boy jumped down off the firewood, came through the heaped dead leaves to the
porch. "I did something stupid and I want to make it right."

"That's what they all say," Mac said, not unkindly, and held open the screen door. As the boy passed
through, Mac glanced up at the mirror that was positioned above the inner doorway. It showed him only
an ordinary boy, nothing less, and more importantly, nothing more.

He took the boy into the small dining room off the main kitchen, which in the old private mansion days
had been a servants' hall, and now was a break room for the cooks, wait crew and busboys. Mac
gestured for the boy to take a seat at the old spanish mission table and yelled back into the kitchen area,
"Carl!"

His assistant chef appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on his apron. "What's up?"

"Think you can find me a plate of the special for this customer?"

"I think I can scrape one up." Carl grinned. "I'm not hungry, you don't have to," the boy objected. "Yeah,
sure." Mac eyed him sardonically. As if he couldn't tell when somebody was half-faint from smelling the
dissipating aromas of lunch. "I don't have any money. It all went for my bus ticket."

"I didn't ask for your money." "It's his way of being nice, kid," Carl explained. "And it's no use to argue
with him. Special coming up."

"Send somebody upstairs for Ben, too," Mac told him. He sat down at the table. The boy was looking
around the room at the antique stable tools that hung on the walls, the schedules and stack of time sheets
for the employees, the roll top desk piled with the sample books for the catering side of the business, the
cellular phone. He shook his head. "I still think I'm in the wrong place." "We run four businesses out of
the Thundershield Lodge, son. We run a hotel, with condominiums for seasonal visitors, we run a four
star restaurant, we run a catering service for weddings, parties, and other social occasions, and we take
curses off people foolish enough to get put under them. Now which one are you interested in?" "The
magic." It was a whisper.

"I thought so." Carl brought a plate of the special, which happened to be trout with vegetables and rice,
and a glass of ice tea. Mac watched the boy eat for a few minutes, and noted somebody had cared to
bring him up with decent table manners. "What happened to your shoes?" "I sold them to buy a bus
ticket. They were good basketball shoes, like the players on TV. That's how it started. I wanted to play
basketball professionally, like those guys. The Lakers and the Celtics, you know."

Mac didn't know. He didn't read the sports sections of any of the papers the hotel took, and he hadn't
watched TV since Ed Sullivan died. He nodded anyway. It was typical. There was always something
they wanted: money, a token of power, health, or a dream fulfilled. "Hard work's the only way to get
that, son." The boy was carefully scraping the last of the sauce off the plate with a roll when Ben