"Tanya Huff - We Two May Meet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

"Is not."
Shaking her head, Kali went out into the hall. Not only was the tower
missing but two of the hall's four doors opened into the garden and the door that
should have returned her to the kitchen led sequentially to the sitting room, the
bathing room, Joah's old room, and a room the demon didn't recognize although,
from the piles of debris, it appeared to be a storeroom of sorts. A halfgrown
calico cat meowed indignantly down at her from a stack of crates.
"I have no idea," she said, closing the door again. If the house vvas causing
the cats problems, things were even more serious than they appeared.
A fifth attempt finally took her back to the kitchen. Magdelene-one was
licking the jam spoon while Magdelene-two made notes on Kali's recipe slate.
"The house," she announced, "is out of control."
"That's just so unlikely," Magdelene-one scoffed stickily.
"Nevertheless, Mistress, it is the case."
Sighing heavily, Magdelene-one heaved herself up out of the chair and
sauntered over to the door, Magdelene-two following close behind, arms folded
and lips pressed into a thin line. They walked out of the kitchen and stood in a
square hall, warmly lit by the large skylight overhead.
"Sitting room, bathroom, stairs to the Netherhells . . ." The doors opened
and closed showing the rooms behind them as they were named. ". . . stairs to
the tower." Magdelene-one rolled her eyes and headed back to the kitchen.
"You guys make such a fuss over nothing."
As the door closed behind her, the house shifted and the green-and-gold
lizard who had moments before been sunning himself in the garden stared up at
Magdelene-two in shock.
"You're right," she told it. "The situation is completely unacceptable.
Fortunately, a reasoned analysis finds a simple solution." Opening a door, she
reached into the kitchen, grabbed her other self by the back of the vest and
hauled her into the hall. The lizard disappeared, the doors returned. "Clearly,
we must stay together in order to maintain the house."
"Clearly," Magdelene-one mocked. "Why?"
"Let me think . . ."
"Oh, you're thinking. I can smell the smoke." Magdelene-two ignored her.
"As you observed previously, there is still only one of us, we have merely
been separated into pieces. It's therefore logical to assume that our power has
been equally divided between us. Together, we remain the most power-ful
wizard in the world. Separate, we are merely powerful—and not powerful
enough to mindlessly support old magics."
"That sort of sucks."
"Indeed. We need answers." Clutching her other self's elbow,
Magdelene-two threw open a door and marched them both up the steps to the
cupola on the top of the tower.
"Stairs; what was I thinking?"
From the outside, the turquoise house on the headland seemed to be only
one story tall. From the cupola, the two wizards had an uninterrupted view of
the surrounding countryside from fifty feet in the air.
Magdelene-one gazed down at the cove and the fishing village that hugged
the shore. "Nothing much happening there. Wait a minute, that's Miguel working
on his boat. Would you look at the shoulders on the man. And the ass—you
could bounce clams off that ass." Leaning forward, she whispered something as