"Mercedes Lackey - Urban Fantasies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

smiling tiredly. “I'm calling it a night. You might want to buzz Collins and get him ready to process this
kid. I doubt anyone would want to drive her over to Juvie at this hour.”

“You're probably right about that. Thanks for the coffee, Nichelle, I'll need it. Good night.”

“Good luck,” the policewoman said with a grin.

Elizabet picked up her briefcase and her jacket and headed over to Simmons' office. Ten feet away from
the office door, she stopped, closing her eyes for a brief moment.

She knew.
 She'd felt it earlier, an “incident” in the city, magical power like a flare going off, as someone called down
magic with all the subtlety of a high-explosive rocket. She'd wanted to go investigate, but with the boy to
escort to the airport, there had been no chance. But now . . .

It was this girl. She could feel it already, even though she couldn't see the girl through the closed office
door. But even at this distance, the sensation of power sparked around her, tingling and alive. Whoever
this girl was, she was a little powerhouse, and probably remarkably dangerous because of it.

Maybe she was the cause of the double homicide?

No . . . she could sense the child's power, and it burned clean and incandescent. The girl was bright with
power and promise, with no taint of death around her. Instead, it was something else that she sensed,
something that she only saw dimly sometimes when looking in the mirror, moments when she could see
herself and her own magic glowing within her. . . .

The child has magic!

Elizabet opened the door and walked into the -office. The girl looked up from where she was seated
with her elbows propped on the table. She didn't look like much, just a street kid wearing jeans and a
denim jacket over a stained T-shirt, long tangled brown hair, and large green eyes. Those eyes followed
Elizabet as she draped her blue suit jacket over the back of the chair and then sat down across from her.

“I'm Elizabet Winters,” she said. “Elizabet is a mistake on my birth certificate that I've lived with all these
years. You're Kayla, right?” She -extended her hand. The kid didn't move, just sat and watched her with
those terrified eyes. Elizabet withdrew her hand, wondering how to handle this.

“Who are you?”

The girl's voice was surprisingly soft, Elizabet thought. “I'm a psych therapist working with the police
department,” she said. “Usually I help the relatives of victims of crime, or work with people who have
been through a traumatic experience. Like what you went through tonight. Do you want to talk about
that?”



Yes, I'd like to talk about it, but I also don't want to spend the rest of my life in a padded room,
Kayla thought, looking at the woman across from her. Elizabet Winters was a beautiful black woman in
her fifties, black and silver hair coiled up in a braid. She sat silently, apparently waiting for Kayla to say
something.