"Laurell K. Hamilton - Meredith Gentry 1 - A Kiss Of Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

He gave a small smile. “Can’t fool you, can I, Merry?”

“No,” I said.
 “Nice outfit,” he said.

I knew I looked hot when Jeremy complimented my clothes. He always looked impeccable even in
jeans and T-shirt, which he only wore if he absolutely had to be undercover. I’d seen Jeremy do a
three-minute mile in Gucci loafers once, chasing a suspect. Of course, it helped that his dexterity and speed
were more than human. When I thought I might have to actually chase someone, a rare occasion, I got out
the jogging shoes and left the high heels at home.

Jeremy put into his eyes that look a man gives you when he’s appreciating the view. It wasn’t
personal, but among the fey it’s an insult to ignore someone who’s obviously trying to be attractive, a slap in
the face telling them that they’d failed. Apparently, I hadn’t failed. I’d woken up to the smog and dressed
brighter than normal to try and cheer myself up. Royal blue suit jacket, double-breasted, silver buttons, a
matching blue pleated skirt that was so short, it was only a fringe across my thighs underneath the jacket.
The outfit was short enough that if I crossed my legs wrong, I’d flash the tops of my black thigh-highs.
Two-inch patent leather high heels helped show off the legs. When you’re as short as I am, you’ve got to
do something to make your legs look long. Most days the heels were three inches.

My hair was a deep rich red in the reflections of the mirrors. A color more red than auburn, a color
that had black highlights instead of the usual brown that most redheads had. It was as if someone had taken
dark red rubies and spun them out into hair. It was a very popular color this year. Blood auburn it was
called in the high court of the fey royalty. Faerie Red, Sidhe Scarlet, if you went to a good salon. It was
actually my natural color. Until it became popular this year and they finally got the shade right, I’d had to
hide my true color. I’d gone for black, because it looked more natural than human red with my skin tone. A
lot of people getting the dye job made the mistake of thinking that Sidhe Scarlet complements a natural
redhead’s coloring. It doesn’t. It’s the only true red color I know of that matches a pale, pure white skin
tone. It’s the red hair for someone who looks great in black, true reds, royal blues.

The only things I still had to hide were the vibrant green and gold of my eyes and the luminosity of
my skin. I used dark brown contacts for the eyes. My skin—that I had to tone down using glamour, magic.
Just a steady concentration like music in the back of my head, to never let down my guard and start to
glow. Humans don’t actually glow, no matter how luminous they may be. No glowing, which was why the
contacts covered my eyes. I also wove a spell around myself like a long familiar coat, an illusion that I was
just a human with lesser fey blood in my background who had some psychic and mystical abilities that made
me a really excellent detective, but nothing too special.

Jeremy didn’t know what I was. No one at the agency knew. I was one of the weakest members
of the royal court, but being sidhe means something even on the weak end of the scale. It meant that I had
successfully hidden my true self, my true abilities, from a handful of the best magicians and psychics in the
city. Maybe in the country. No small feat, but the kind of glamour I was best at wouldn’t keep a knife from
finding my back or a spell from crushing my heart. For that I needed skills that I didn’t have, and that was
one of the reasons I was in hiding. I couldn’t fight the sidhe, not and live. The best I could do was hide. I
trusted Jeremy and the others. They were my friends. What I didn’t trust was what the sidhe might do to
them if I were discovered, and my relatives found out my friends had known my secret. If they were truly
ignorant, then the sidhe would leave them alone and only hurt me. Ignorance was bliss on this one. Though I
thought that some of my very good friends would see it as a type of betrayal. But if the choices were them
alive, with all their body parts intact, but angry at me, or dead by torture but not angry at me, I’d take angry.
I could live with their anger. I wasn’t sure I could live with their deaths.