"Shanna Swendson - Enchanted, Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swendson Shanna)

appeared in front of me with a poof and a flash of light that lingered for a second. I
looked up at Owen, then he waved his hand and a red rose appeared on the tray next
to the goblet. "Or would you prefer coffee, perhaps?" The goblet disappeared and
was replaced by a steaming mug. "Cream or sugar?" he asked with a mischievous
smile that was almost as cute as the grin I'd seen Tuesday.

I tried to think of a way this could be a trick. I was sure there was some way he
could have staged that. Maybe there was something in the table that could spring up
at the touch of the right button. That might explain the initial appearance of the tray
when I hadn't been looking, but I wasn't sure how the coffee could have just
appeared. I tried to keep my hands from trembling as I reached to pick up the coffee
mug. I brought it to my lips, but I could tell as it got near that the coffee would be
too hot to drink.

"Too hot for you?" Owen asked, then waved his hand, and I felt a puff of cool air
sweep past me. Now the coffee was just the right drinking temperature. I would have
dropped the mug in shock, but the coffee smelled too good to waste just for the
sake of a dramatic gesture.

"I don't suppose you can conjure up some Valium?" I asked, trying to keep my
voice steady.

"Does this mean you believe us?" the head honcho asked.

I thought about his question. I knew that the more I considered things, the more
excuses I could come up with to explain everything away, but I'd reached the point
that any explanation I could come up with would only be hideously complicated,
something worthy of Agent Scully. I'd spent my college years yelling at the television
and complaining about how someone so supposedly smart could be so dense and
insist on disregarding evidence that was so obvious.

The only noncomplicated way I could think of to explain people with fairy wings, the
unreasonable attraction of every woman in sight to a man I found repulsive at the
time, and the sudden appearance of refreshments out of thin air was that I was the
victim of the latest television reality show. There could be hidden cameras recording
my reactions. But then I remembered that I'd seen weird stuff from the moment I got
to New York. They couldn't have been following me all that time.

No, chances were very good that this was real. "Yeah, I do think I believe you," I
said at last. "But where do I fit into all this?"

"It's like Owen said the other day," Rod put in. "We need a reality check. We need
someone who can tell us what's really there. Imagine if someone wrote a clause into
a contract, then veiled it so we couldn't see it. But you could. If we compare what
we see to what you see, we have a better chance of getting to the truth."

"So what you're saying is that my superpower is that I'm totally ordinary and
unmagical?"

"That's pretty much it," Rod said with a grin. "What do you think?"