"Holly Lisle - Sympathy for the Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

desk.
Lucifer glanced through the hefty sheaf of papers—Vice, Usury,
War, Disease, Famine, Telephone Solicitation . . . all the big evils
were there.
The Lust and Fornication American Quarterly report showed
good movement in the Lust Department. Mini-skirts and see-through
blouses were back in, sexual harassment suits were on the rise,
and Agonostis had opened some very clever new markets by taking
advantage of cutting-edge technology—pornographic CD-ROMs,
computer sex-games, and online sex services were skyrocketing.
Agonostis’ R&D people were doing wonders with virtual reality
technology, too, and expected to have their full-sensory-stimulus
products on the market even before any practical VR applications
became available.
Lucifer frowned when he saw the Fornication numbers, though.
Fornication had been the blue-chip market since time began—an
absolute sure thing guaranteed to produce steadily increasing
revenues no matter what else was going on in the world. As long as
there were more people (and there were always more people)
fornication kept right on increasing. Yet Agonostis’ numbers were
down—markedly down. If Lucifer remembered correctly, they had
trended downward in the past two quarters as well.
The Archfiend tapped a few keys on his keyboard to bring up
Quick’N’Dead, Hell’s soul-accounting program, then ran through the
graphs for Fornication for the last year, then the last three years,
and finally the last five. He grew angrier with every new set of
graphs. He should have checked this earlier—Agonostis had
managed to counterbalance his Fornication numbers with his Lust
numbers so that his reports still showed a net damnedsoul increase,
but Lucifer discovered Fornication had been dropping off in fits and
starts for five straight years. A five-year drop in a blue-chip asset
could only come from poor management.
It was about time to remind Agonostis that not all jobs in Hell were
desk jobs.
Lucifer nibbled on one long, pointed talon and contemplated risky,
difficult field assignments.
Agonostis needed one.
 Chapter 5
Dayne stripped out of her scrubs and threw them in a pile on the
floor. She fished through the dryer and found a T-shirt, a pair of
shorts and a pair of thick socks; she tugged those on angrily, then
stormed around until she managed to locate her sneakers. She
didn’t pet either of the cats that twined around her ankles hoping for
attention. She didn’t check the messages on her answering
machine, though the blinking light indicated that there were
four—more than usual.
She ran up the stairs two at a time to the second floor of her
two-story apartment, into the spare bedroom that she used as a
gym, and moved the setting on her stair-stepper up to fast.
She was furious—angrier than she had ever been. She was