"Laurell K. Hamilton - Strange Candy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

Her dress, shoes, even hose, were white. Earrings of silver flashed in the moonlight as she turned to me.
She was leaning against one of the trees, and its black trunk emphasized her whiteness. She only turned
her head as I came up to her.

Her eyes looked silver-gray in the light. I couldn’t decipher the look on her face. It wasn’t grief.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

I agreed that it was. “Carla, are you all right?”

She stared at me terribly calm. “I’m feeling much better than I did this afternoon.”

“I’m very glad to hear that. Did you remember to bring his clothes and a memento?”

She motioned to a dark bundle by the tree.

“Good, I’ll unload the car.” She didn’t offer to help, which was not unusual. Most of the time it was fear
that prevented it. I realized my Omega was the only car in sight.

I called softly, but sound carries on summer nights. “How did you get here? I don’t see a car.”

“I hired a cab, it’s waiting at the gate.”
A cab. I would love to have seen the driver’s face when he dropped her off at the cemetery gates. The
three black chickens clucked from their cage in the backseat. They didn’t have to be black, but it was the
only color I could get for tonight. I was beginning to think our poultry supplier had a sense of humor.

Arthur Fiske was only recently dead, so from the box in the trunk I took only a jar of homemade
ointment and a machete. The ointment was pale off-white with flecks of greenish light in it. The glowing
flecks were graveyard mold. You wouldn’t find it in this cemetery. It only grew in graveyards that had
stood for at least a hundred years. The ointment also contained the obligatory spider webs and other
noisome things, plus herbs and spices to hide the smell and aid the magic. If it was magic.

I smeared the tombstone with it and called Carla over. “It’s your turn now, Carla.” She stubbed out her
cigarette and came to stand before me. I smeared her face and hands and told her, “You stand just
behind the tombstone throughout the raising.”

She took her place without a word while I placed ointment on myself. The pine scent of rosemary for
memory, cinnamon and cloves for preservation, sage for wisdom, and lemon thyme to bind it all together
seemed to soak through the skin itself.

I picked the largest chicken and tucked it under my arm. Carla stood where I had left her, staring down
at the grave. There was an art to beheading a chicken with only two hands.

I stood at the foot of the grave to kill the chicken. Its first artery blood splashed onto the grave. It
splattered over the fading chrysanthemums, roses, and carnations. A spire of white gladioli turned dark. I
walked a circle sprinkling blood as I went, tracing a circle of steel with a bloody machete. Carla shut her
eyes as the blood rained upon her.

I smeared blood on myself and placed the still-twitching body upon the flower mound. Then I stood once
again at the foot of the grave. We were cut off now inside the blood circle, alone with the night, and our