"Esther M. Friesner - At These Prices" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

“I suppose it’s no use offering you coffee?” Bella’s smug, too-sweet question
was a taunt, not a proposal of hospitality.
Selina the pixie made a gesture as rude as it was nigh imperceptible, but Berry
simply said, “Tea will be fine, ma’am. Herbal, please. Very good of you to go to the
trouble.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble for me.” Bella barked orders into the kitchen where the
captive brownie languished. While Bixby brewed and served some prime chamomile
(hand-picked in Massachusetts, hand-swiped from the Sheraton in Boston), Bella
told her callers, “Now, listen up, you refugees from Better Gnomes and Gardens,
once that tea’s ready, you’ve got ten minutes to drink up and get out. If you’ve got
anything to say to me, say it now.”
“Ma’am, as you know, we’ve come for our comrade,” Berry said calmly.
“And as you know, fat chance,” Bella returned. “This is the best freebie I ever
brought home from a hotel stay, and that’s a fact.”
“Y’know, ma’am,” Tom the troll said in his gritty voice. “If you c’n see fit t’
let Bixby go, outer th’ kindness o’ yer heart, we’d be more’n willin’ t’ pervide th’
selfsame services fer you as he’s incumbently doin’ ‘round this place. We’d come
by twice weekly, reg’lar as th’ Holy Hour, and tidy yer home up a treat. I might not
look it, but I’ve a good paw fer wipin’ winders.”
“Wiping out windows, you mean,” Selina said. Melusine shushed her.
Bella curled her lip. “Twice weekly cleaning? Instead of household chores
done twenty-four seven by someone at my beck and call? I don’t think so.”
“Please, ma’am, have pity,” Mel implored. “If Bixby’s kept apart from his
Seelie kinfolk for too long, he’ll waste away.”
“He’s related to seals?”
“Not seals, but the Seelie,” Mel said, and ran right back into Bella’s amassed
lifetime ignorance, head first. But the plucky ondine was nothing if not a tryer. “The
Fair Folk. The Little People. The Fey, the Good Neighbors, the Hidden Helpers, the
Underhill Posse, the Goblin Marketeers, the—”
“Hey, think Santa’s friggin’ elves, okay?” Selina broke in before poor Mel
burst a water vessel in frustration.
Bella was enlightened but unmoved. “What’s that to me?”
“Nothing, apparently,” Berry said dryly. “Ma’am, in all my life as a dwarf and
an engineer, I’ve run into some tough problems, but you make building the Hoover
Dam look easy as letting two beavers loose at a Christmas tree farm.”
“Spare me your beavers,” Bella said. “I’m willing to bet you your weight in
pure Kona coffee that you’ve got some completely self-serving reason for coming to
Bixby’s rescue. Nobody does good deeds for nothing, not in this world. I wasn’t
born yesterday.”
“I’ll say you weren’t,” Selina declared cheerfully.
“Ma’am, if that’s what you believe, I pity you,” Berry said. “No wonder you
cram your sorry little life with hotel freebies. It’s empty otherwise.”
Bella laughed so hard she spritzed Tom with tea. While the troll dabbed at his
dripping face with a tissue (from a box Bella had wrested out of the wall dispenser at
a Hilton in Baltimore), she subjected Berry to a double helping of scorn. “Oh, that’s
rich! I’ll tell you what, you sanctimonious twerp, how about a little wager?”
She fetched a bag of whole-bean Jamaica Blue Mountain from the kitchen and
slapped it down, appropriately enough, on the coffee table. “See this? I didn’t take it
from any hotel, motel, or bed-and-breakfast in existence. It’s mine. I bought it with
my own hard-earned money, and at the price that money-grubbing grocery store