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

vendor, Nick told Liane that he wanted her to work for him. Billy and Kayla weren't his style . . . Billy
was too mean-looking, with that knife-scar on his chin and that cold blue-eyed “Don't mess with me”
look, a trick that he said he'd learned from his old man, who was currently up for armed robbery in
Folsom. Not at all like the pretty boys on Melrose Avenue. And Kayla, with her long brown hair and
green eyes that were too big for her face, knew she just wasn't cute enough for the chickenhawks, either.

Liane, on the other hand, was drop-dead gorgeous, blond and with the face of an angel. And she
attracted men like a magnet. Especially slimeballs like Nick.

Maybe Billy telling Nick to go sit and spin wasn't the best idea,she thought. Billy and Nick had
screamed at each other for fifteen minutes. Nick had stormed away, and they were walking down the
street two hours later when he and some friends had pulled up in Nick's blue Chevy, waving a pistol at
them. It'd been a fast run through the back streets of Hollywood, with Nick screaming curses in two
languages at them, until they'd managed to lose him by climbing over several fences and hiding in a
gardening shed in someone's backyard.

But, even after a night like that, she knew that getting out of that latest foster homehad been a good idea.
The lady who ran the place was nice enough, but her husband was slime, and he'd -already started hitting
on Liane, not even two days after she arrived there. True, every straight guy with hormones tried to hit on
Liane, she was just too pretty for her own good, but this place was a foster home. It was supposed to be
safe. Especially for someone like Liane, who was just a little too quiet, too easily spooked by people
yelling, and scared of crowds and people standing too close to her.

Liane was quiet and shy, and it had surprised Kayla that the blonde girl had been the one who'd first
talked about running away, about how she, Billy, and Kayla could go out on their own. It had started out
easily enough, stealing enough money to take the bus from Orange County to downtown L.A. From
there, they went to Hollywood, mostly because Liane wanted to see the Chinese Theater. It was Kayla
who'd spotted the abandoned office building across the street from Mann's Chinese, and now Suite 230
(formerly an insurance agency, by the stationery they'd found in a closet) was their new home.

It wasn't bad: running water, though no showers or bathtubs, and plenty of old carpet padding to use for
blankets. Kayla just wasn't certain how long all of this could keep working out for them, though—she
knew they were balancing on the edge, with too many people like Nick waiting around to catch them if
they fell.

Billy was the one who kept them together. Billy, who knew all about shoplifting and jimmying locks and
using Sterno to heat up cans of chili. He treated them like his kid sisters, though sometimes Kayla caught
him looking at Liane in a way that wasn't very brotherly. Kayla knew that she and Liane would never
have made it on their own without him.We're lucky he was at that foster home, too, she thought.I don't
think I would've been brave enough to leave there without him. . . .

Billy's words broke into her thoughts. “Hey, Kay, there's the QuickStart. Didn't you want some
-aspirin?”

“Yeah, sure.” Though she was sure that it wouldn't help. Nothing seemed to help, not anymore. “You
guys hang around up front, I'll get the pills.”

The headaches weren't the worst of it; she could live with the pain, not a problem. It was the weird
dizziness that hit her every so often, making her feel like she'd touched a live electrical wire. She was sick
with something, she knew that, but it didn't pay to worry about it . . . there was no way she could go to a