"Simon R. Green - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

there's ever been. Something for everybody.'
'Rubbish,' said Grant. 'It's all white kids getting off on pretending to be gangstas, and girl
groups so young they're probably still doing homework. And most rap should have the letter
C in front of it ... Oh God, listen to me. I sound so old. I hate kids' music and I can't stand the
fashions. I have become my parents.'
'Everybody does,' said Cragg. 'But the Manor Farm bunch do worry me. What have they
got to hide? What are they afraid of our finding out? Nothing good will come of this, mark
my words.'
'You always say that,' said Grant.
'And I'm usually right. Another coffee?'
Everyone immediately pushed their empty cups at him, and he went over to the bar to order
more industrial-strength caffeine.
Grant scowled after him. 'He may be a gloomy bastard, but he has a point. I just hope they
don't turn out to be another of those bloody doomsday cults. End up drinking poisoned cider
and burying themselves in the back garden. Before you know it, the whole town will be
crawling with TV documentary crews, making programmes called Town of Terror, or The
Hippies from Hell. And I'll get called on to do another bloody part-work on them . . .'
Leo was looking at the dead man again. He'd been hoping against hope that his old friend
Reed might have gone away by now, or at least had the good manners to be just an illusion,
but no; it was looking more and more like Leo was going to have to Do Something. Reed had
made his slow way over to the long wooden bar, and was staring uncertainly at the rows of
spirits on the wall behind, as though sure they'd once meant something to him. People walked
by him unconcernedly, and even pushed past him to give their orders, but so far no one had
recognised him for who and what he was. On the rare occasions when the unnatural insisted
on pushing its way into the real world, people mostly tended to ignore it for as long as
possible. Leo sighed heavily and put down his glass. He wasn't thirsty any more.
The dead shouldn't be able to walk in Veritie. It took a lot of magical power to raise the
dead from their graves, and even more to keep control of them once they were up and about.
And there was no magic in the real world: that was the point. Leo, however, being a hybrid
derived from both worlds, could see more than most. In particular, he could see the magical
field currently surrounding the dead man, containing him like a soap bubble, insulating what
he was from the implacable laws of physics in the real world. Leo didn't even want to think
about how much power such a field would take up. Reality was not easily defied, and even
then not without terrible cost, for somebody. Leo knew most of the heavy-duty movers and
shakers in the magical world, but unfortunately far too many of them knew him. And they
certainly wouldn't take kindly to him pushing his nose in where it wasn't wanted.
Leo grinned suddenly. It was a wide, unpleasant, distinctly wolfish smile, and the people
sitting around him shrank back in their seats a little, giving him more room, in case he
decided to do something unpleasant. Leo tried to be a nice guy, but he wasn't at all averse to
being a complete bastard when necessary. This wasn't just any dead man. This was his friend,
Reed. Leo had many acquaintances, but few friends; even he knew that when someone drags
your friend up out of his grave, you're supposed to do something about it. Leo felt like doing
something very nasty. The more he considered the matter, the less he liked it. He didn't know
a lot about zombies, apart from what he'd seen in bad Italian horror movies, but he knew they
tended to come in two basic versions. One was just an empty shell, an untenanted body being
operated at some remove by someone else. Which was disrespectful, if nothing else. Leo felt
he could give someone a serious slapping for that. But there was an even worse alternative.
Reed's soul could still be trapped inside his decaying body, a helpless victim under someone
else's control. Endlessly suffering, denied his rightful rest, just because some heartless bastard
had a use for him. Leo's mouth widened, his lips thinning as his smile became a snarl. Around