"Tanya Huff - Keeper's Chronicles 1 - Summon the Keeper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

over the reinforced structure of the sofa's arm in case she started to sink again,
dropping the change into a bowl of dubious looking mints. It might have made more
sense to find another place to sit, but none of the other furniture looked any safer.
"The summons wasn't coming from the site, or I'd still be able to feel it. It had to have
been coming from Augustus Smythe."
The cat leaped up onto the coffee table. "He needed to leave so badly he drew
you here?"
 "Since he left last night, which is when the summons stopped, that's the only
logical explanation."
"But why?"
"That's the question, isn't it? Why?"
Austin put a paw on her knee. "Why are you looking so happy about this?"
Was she? She supposed she was. "I'm not drifting any more." Stalling the day
with neither a summons nor a site had been disconcerting. "I have a purpose again."
"How nice for you." He sat back. "We're not going to get our vacation, are
we?"
"Doesn't look like it." Her smile faded as she tapped the papers against her
thigh. "Why didn't Smythe identify himself when I didn't recognize him?"
"Better question, why didn't you recognize him?"
"I was tired, I was wet, and I had a headache," she pointed out defensively.
"All I could think of was getting out of that storm."
"You think he fuzzed you?"
"Where would he get the power? I was distracted, all right? Let's just leave it
at that." After another short struggle with the sofa, Claire managed to heave herself
back up onto her feet. "Since the site's in the hotel-or Smythe wouldn't have bothered
deeding it to me-and since I can't sense it, I'm guessing that it's so small it never
became enough of a priority to need a Keeper and Smythe finally got tired of waiting.
I'll close it, and we'll move on."
"And the hotel?" Austin reminded her.
"After I seal the site, I'll give it to young Mr. Mclssac."
"You think it's going to be that easy?"
"Isn't it always?" She picked up a squat figurine of a wide-eyed child in
lederhosen playing a tuba, shuddered, and put it back down. "Come on."
"Come on?" Trotting to the end of the table, he jumped over a plaster bust of
Elvis, went under a set of nesting Chinese tables, and beat her to the door. "Where are
we going?"
'To get some answers."
"Where?"
"Where else? Where we were told not to go."
Austin snorted. 'Typical."
Room six was on the third floor. As well as the standard lock, the door also
boasted a large steel padlock on an industrial strength flange. Both locks had been
made unopenable by the simple process of snapping the keys off in the mechanism.
"Seems like a lot of fuss over a small site," Austin muttered, dropping down
from his inspection.
"Well, he could hardly have guests wandering in on it regardless of size."
Releasing the padlock, Claire straightened. There were a number of ways she could
gain access to the room, but most of them were labeled "emergency use only" as they
involved the kind of pyrotechnics more likely to be deployed during small Middle
Eastern wars. "I wonder if young Mr. Mclssac has a hacksaw."