"Lackey, Mercedes - Born To Run" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

He watched her, still a little bothered by something, something not quite right. Then, as he saw her stop and talk to a businessman who shook his head abruptly—and ignore a SCAD student who half-made an approach, it dawned on him.
She was a hooker.
He'd thought he was beyond shock, but this stunned him. So damned young—
He watched her make her way around the floor, most of her attention on the band, but obviously a part of her keeping an eye out for a potential john. Don't try and turn a trick in here, honey, please, he pled silently with her. He might be wrong—but the more he watched her, the surer he became. At that age—out here on a school night, dressed like she was—it was long odds against her being on River Street for the fun of it. If you get too obvious, or bother the customers, they'll throw you out. Stay cool. It's cold and mean out there, and if one of the soft-hearts sees you, they'll get you something to eat and you'll be safe a little longer. . . .
Sam asked him a question, and he answered it absently. “Well, what's happening is that some of the elves—with Keighvin leading the pack by a length—are trying to build up a kind of immunity to Cold Iron—or a tolerance, at least. I can think of half a dozen, actually, who can handle it with a minimum of protection, and two that can actually tolerate it well enough to work on and drive a stock car.”
Donal, he thought fondly. Wish you were here, man. You could pick up this poor little chick and glamorie her into coming back to Fairgrove with you, tuck her away Underhill until you'd talked some sense into her. And if you couldn't your brother could.
The more he watched the girl, the less comfortable he felt. She was wandering around the area of the stage, and although she wasn't making any full-fledged tries at picking up the customers, it was pretty obvious that if anyone that she thought had money responded to her tentative overtures, she wouldn't turn him down.
“Keighvin says the Folk have to adapt or die, it's that simple,” he concluded, as the band finished a wild polka and went into a still wilder reel. “They haven't got a choice anymore. He thinks if they withdraw, they'll do worse than stagnate, they'll fade away. Just—disappear.”
“Is that possible?” Sam asked, sounding surprised. Tannim pulled his attention away from the girl long enough to catch his eyes. He nodded, slowly.
“It's already happened,” he said seriously. “Mostly in Europe, but even over here, there've been enclaves of the Folk that went Underhill and just vanished after a while. Nobody's heard from them, nobody can find them.”
“Couldn't they just have closed themselves off?” Sam wanted to know. “If they became that anti-social, maybe they even got tired of other elves. I mean, what is this Underhill, anyway? We used to say the Fair Folk lived in the mounds, but what you're saying, it sounds more like Underhill is everywhere. Couldn't the missing Folk have just shut the door and turned off the phone, so to speak?”
Tannim shook his head. “Underhill doesn't work that way. It's hard to describe. It's kind of—another world, one magicians can touch, and sometimes get into. A kind of parallel world, I guess. Lots of magic; I mean, of power, and it's readily available, like electricity, only it's like—” He thought for a moment, as the crowd began clapping in time to the music. “It's like having all the power-stations and the power-grid in place and running, only there's nobody manning it, and no electric company to make you pay for what you take. It's yours for the tapping into. The only 'cost' involved is in tapping into it and in using it.”
Sam shook his head, but not in disbelief, exactly. “Sounds like free lunch, to me.”
Tannim looked around for the girl, but she'd gotten lost behind a screen of taller people. Not that that was hard, as tiny as she was. He thought he knew where she'd moved to, though, by the path of mild disturbance along the bar. “Not really; the cost to the individual of tapping in and using it is high, and you have to have the ability in the first place. Kind of like solar energy. Keighvin thinks that's where the power created here that doesn't get used leaks off to—if you think of it as bio-energy, the kind that makes Kirlian auras, you're close enough to the truth.”
Sam closed his eyes for a moment in thought. “All right,” he replied, opening them again. “That much I can believe in. What's it like in there?”
“Parts are like a bad sf novel,” Tannim laughed, without humor. “Like some of the old pulp writers described an alien planet. Parts of it are like an architect's wet-dream.” He spread his fingers wide for emphasis. “Mostly it's a kind of chaos, a place where things are always changing, always dangerous, and that's where the Unseleighe Court creatures go. Then there's stretches of order, walled gardens or even small countries, and that's where the Seleighe Court enclaves are.”
“And those?” Sam prompted.
Tannim sighed, but this time at the memories Sam's question invoked. “I've only been there a couple of times, and each time it was different. Figure every description you've ever heard of Elvenlands, Morgan Le Fay's castle, the Isles of the Blest—that's what those Underhill enclaves are like.” He felt his eyes sting with remembrance and the inevitable regret that he hadn't stayed, and pushed the memory away. “Incredible—and they require elven-mages of very high power and a great deal of will to force the chaos out, and the area into that shape. That means they leave a mark on the world of Underhill, very visible, like the Red Spot on Jupiter. When someone like Keighvin goes Underhill, he knows where all the other pockets are, at least the ones created by other Folk. Always. He might not be able to get into them without invitation, but he knows where they are.”
Sam took a sip of his beer before replying. “So it doesn't matter if the Folk in that place don't want to be bothered, they can't hide themselves. At least not on purpose.”
Tannim nodded. “Right. So with the ones that faded out, the places that have gone missing—well, they're not there anymore. Maybe they died, maybe they went to still another world, and maybe they just dissolved back into the chaos. Even if there are still Folk alive in there, nobody can reach them, and they can't find their way back to the rest of us, nor to the real world. Likeliest—according to Keighvin—is that they faded until they were easy prey for the Unseleighe Court critters.”
Sam toyed with a napkin, looking troubled. “You mean—they—”
Right on cue, Terra Nova launched into “Sidhe Beg and Sidhe Mor;” a tune that sounded lighthearted—but was about a war between elves of the Seleighe and Unseleighe Courts. The body count, as Tannim recalled, had been pretty high.
He raised an eyebrow at the band. Sam chewed his lip, as the meaning of the tune came home to him. “The Unseleighe Court plays for keeps, and every time they kill a Seleighe Court creature, or a human, they add his life-energy to their own power. Elves can die; they can be killed. Ever think about where the word 'banshee' came from?”
Sam's eyes widened. “Bane-Sidhe?”
“Right. 'Bane' or 'death' of elves. And it's not just a name.” Tannim was just glad he'd not had any personal experiences with one. The descriptions were bad enough.
“The stories my grandmother told me—she said some banshees actually came for people.” Sam looked a little embarrassed, as if he'd been caught believing in the bogeyman.
Who also exists.
“They do that too; they'll do their damnedest to scare you to death,” Tannim said grimly. “That's how they get their energy; from your fear and from your dying.”
“Oh.” Sam blinked, as if he wasn't sure how to take that. He'd accepted danger last night—but that was with Keighvin, in Fairgrove territory. He was here now, the “real world,” in the middle of a pub full of noisy people and a Celtic-rock band.
And a thirteen-year-old hooker.
She appeared again, this time giving up all pretense of working the crowd, just standing close to the stage and hugging herself, as Trish sang “Buachaill on Eire” with a voice an elven Bard would have paid any price to display.
A glitter of Trish's half-closed blue eyes, and the set of her chin, betrayed the fact that she was watching the girl too, and Tannim relaxed minutely. Trish didn't pick up on street-sparrows often, especially not now that she was managing “Acadia,” but when she did, she was very kind to them. Like the way she'd adopted that monster wolfhound of hers, letting it take over her life to the point of buying a house just so the dog would be able to stay with her. She wouldn't let the girl get away without at least trying to see she got something to eat. With luck, she'd keep the child busy until Tannim could take over.
Maybe I can get her to Keighvin. I can't get him out of Fairgrove territory, not yet, but if can get her to him, he'll take care of her. Not for the first time, he wished that he could just lie to the kid, get her into his car and make off with her, but to take her away from whatever life she had chosen, he had to have her consent, and she had to know what she was choosing. Conal and Donal wouldn't have worked that way, but they were Sidhe, and trickery was a part of their nature. Not his. It couldn't be by deception. Even Keighvin could work that way, but he couldn't; he was bound by a different set of rules. Self-inflicted, but nevertheless real. He hadn't liked being lied to, or manipulated, even with good intentions, when he was younger. He wouldn't do that to another kid. Besides, small incidents have a way of turning around and biting my ass. If the wrong person saw me getting into my car with an underage hooker, it could mean big-time trouble later. Trouble we can't afford.
As the band finished the set, he saw with relief that Trish definitely had her eye on the girl. As soon as they'd finished their bows—and before the child had a chance to escape—she was down off the stage and beside the kid. She made it look completely casual, and Tannim gave her high marks for her subtlety.
“What's wrong?” Sam asked, startling him. He tore his eyes off the girl for a moment to stare at his companion.
“What do you—”
“Oh, come now,” Sam interrupted. “You haven't had more than half your attention on me for the past fifteen minutes. And you've got a frown on your face, so it can't be that you're watching a pretty girl, or that you're enthralled by the band. So what's the problem?” As Tannim paused, debating how much to say, he lost his half-smile and began to frown, himself. “Is it something I should know about?”
Tannim sighed. “Over there, with Trish, from the band. See that other girl?”
“The one that's made up like a cheap tart?” Sam asked, disapproval thick in his voice. “Girls these days—ah well. What about her?”
“She's not only made up like a cheap tart, she probably is a cheap tart,” Tannim replied wearily. And before Sam could reply to that, added, “Take a good look under all the paint. She's not only underage, she's hardly gotten away from playing with Barbie dolls. What's a kid like that doing out here hooking? And more than that, why? She has to be a runaway—what's she running from that's bad enough for her to be turning tricks at fourteen?”
Sam started to make some snap reply, but it looked as if some of what Tannim had been talking about—the abused kids and all—had penetrated. Tannim could almost read his mind from the fleeting expressions that passed over his face. First, contempt—then disgust—but then a moment of second thoughts, followed by worry. “I don't like it,” he said.
“Neither do I,” Tannim told him, “but we're going to have to be careful about this. She could be bait in a trap; she could be a trap herself. Some of the Unseleighe Court things can look like anything they want. I don't See any magic around her, but that doesn't mean she's not one of them, or even a human kid they picked up to use against me. This is one of my regular hangouts, and everybody knows it.”
And they know my soft spots.
“So what do we do?” Sam asked. A frown line was forming between his brows. Obviously he wasn't used to the kind of the multitudinous layers of deceit the Unseleighe Court creatures used by habit.
“We let Trish handle her. If she's after me, she'll find a way to get Trish to bring her over here. If she's a real kid in real trouble, she'll act like one.” He watched the two of them, without seeming to. It looked as if the singer was warning the girl against soliciting; Trish was nodding her head so emphatically that her black hair bounced, while the child blushed under all the makeup, and hung her head. But the singer didn't leave things there; she took the girl to a table in the corner, and got her a sandwich and a cola, standing over her and talking until the food arrived. By then, it was time for the next set, and Trish abandoned the girl for the stage.
The kid finished the food in about three seconds flat. Tannim had never seen a kid put away food so fast, and the way she cleaned up every crumb argued that it might well have been the first meal she'd had today. She lingered over the dregs of her cola until Trish was obviously wrapped up in her song. Then a look of bleak determination passed over her face, and she slid out of her seat; and without a single glance at Tannim or even in his direction, she went back to the bar.
Tannim sighed, half in relief, half in exasperation. All right, he said to himself. She's genuine. Now what am I going to do about her?

CHAPTER FIVE
Just as Tannim asked himself that question, the girl found a mark.