"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Beautiful Damned" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

the lack of shine of the bumpers, the crude design of a model year now done.
The
attendant was polite as he took my place, but lacked the enthusiasm he had
shown
over a Rolls just moments before.

Ari stared at the house, her tiny mouth agape, her eyes wide. The lights
reflected in her pupils like a hundred dancing stars. She left my side
immediately and ran up the stairs as if I were not even there.

I tipped the attendant and strode in, remembering Rita's admonishment. The
faces
that looked familiar had a photographic edge to them --the patina of images I
had seen a thousand times in books, in magazines, on film. But as I scanned, I
could not see Ari. It was as if she had come into the mammoth house and
vanished.

I grabbed a flute of champagne from a passing waiter and wandered onto the
patio. The orchestra was playing "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and the woman with
the marcel danced in the center, alone, as if she were the only one who
understood the music.

Beside me, a burly man with dark hair and a mustache that absorbed his upper
lip
spoke of marlin fishing as if it were a combat sport. A lanky and lean man who
spoke with a Mississippi accent told a familiar story about a barn-burning to
a
crowd of women who gazed adoringly at his face. Behind him, a tiny woman with
an
acid tongue talked in disparaging terms of the Algonquin, and another man with
white hair, a face crinkled from too much drink, and a body so thin it
appeared
dapper, studied the edges of the conversation as if the words were written in
front of him.
They all had skin as pale as Fitz's, and a life force that seemed to have more
energy than substance.

There were others scattered among the crowd: a man with an unruly shock of
white
hair who spoke of his boyhood in Illinois, his cats, and the workings of
riverboats powered by steam; the demure brown-haired woman wearing a long
white
dress, standing in a corner, refusing to meet anyone's gaze. "She's a poet," a
young girl beside me whispered, and I nodded, recognizing the heart-shaped
face,
the quiet, steady eyes.

In that house, on that night, I never questioned their presence, as if being
in
the company of people long dead were as natural as speaking to myself. I