"Terence West - Wraiths 2 - Until The Stars Grow Cold" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Terence)

He folded the boy into his coat, left the house behind and vanished into the night.


* * *


She was in Heaven.

She leaned back in her office chair and rested her head against it. Her blonde hair spilled
around her shoulders as she felt a smile grow wide across her slender face. Taking a deep
breath into her lungs, she felt like screaming. Her first instinct was to jump up from her desk
and charge through the halls yelling to anyone and everyone, but she was more restrained than
that. She was a professional now. To do so would be unbefitting her stature. Lifting her hands
from the armrests, she balled up her fists and held her arms up like an Olympian finishing a
flawless routine.

Grabbing her mouse, she quickly hit the print command on her browser to capture the
moment. Carefully watching the screen to make sure it didnтАЩt changeтАФand to make sure she
wasnтАЩt imagining itтАФshe heard her printer sputter and whir to life behind her. She spun in her
seat and watched the white sheet of paper slowly being churned out by the old ink jet. Inch by
inch, it completed the image captured from her screen. She snatched the page and held it in
her hands, careful not to bend or crinkle it. This was for framing. She wanted to remember this
moment forever.

She was no longer an executive assistantтАФshe was now a best selling author.

Carefully tracing her finger around the rectangular cover image of her book on the page,
she looked at the blue emblazoned number next to it: one. This was the New York Times Best
SellerтАЩs List, the most prestigious list in all of noveldom, and her book was sitting at the very
top. She had no doubt the Today Show or OprahтАЩs people would be knocking on her door for
an interview in no time. Leno and Letterman would certainly not be too far behind. Why stop
there? she thought with a smile, a book tour, the talk show circuitтАжthey were all in her grasp
now.
 She wanted to rush into her bossтАЩ office and shove the paper in his face. He told her that
she had been wasting her time. He felt she should focus on a more realistic goal. How she had
enjoyed showing him the large advance check that Penguin Putnam had given her for the
novel. How she had loved taking time off to travel to New York with her agent to meet with
her new publisher. How she had relished telling him stories of five-star restaurants, limousines,
and nights spent in the Jacuzzi in her private hotel suite sipping champagne. This would be the
icing on the cakeтАФone final nail in his coffin.

She had come back to the company out of some misguided sense of loyalty. In a time when
she should have been thinking about her next projectтАФboth her agent and publisher were
pressuring her for a sequelтАФshe still came into work every morning, made coffee, answered
the phone and took messages. She had been here for nearly ten years after all. Maybe it was
more a sense of fear that kept her here than loyalty. This was only the second job in her life,
and now on the verge of twenty-nine years old, she was becoming complacent, comfortable.

A smirk appeared on her face. That was all about to change.