"Scott Westerfeld - Uglies 02 - Pretties" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

ditched the party rather than vote for her. Paranoid thoughts began to plague her, and she kept catching
glimpses of someone lurking in the shadows, half-hidden by the crowds, but always there. Every time she
turned around, though, the gray silk costume slipped out of sight.
Tally couldn't tell whether it was a boy or a girl. The figure wore a mask, scary but also beautiful,
its cruel wolf eyes glinting in the low, flickering party lights. The plastic face jarred something in Tally, a
painful memory that took a moment to gel.
Then she realized what the costume was supposed to be: an agent of Special Circumstances.
Tally leaned back against one of the cool stone walls, remembering the gray silk coveralls that
Specials wore and the cruel pretty faces they were given. The sight made her head spin, which was the
way Tally always felt when she thought back to her days in the wild.
Seeing the costume here in New Pretty Town didn't make any sense. Besides herself and Shay,
hardly anyone had ever seen a Special. To most people they were just rumors and urban legends,
blamed whenever anything weird happened. Specials kept themselves well hidden. Their job was to
protect the city from outside threats, like soldiers and spies back in the days of the Rusties, but only total
criminals like Tally Youngblood ever met them in person.
Still, someone had done a pretty good job on the costume. He or she must have seen a real
Special at some point. But why was the figure following her? Every time Tally turned, it was there,
moving with the terrible and predatory grace she remembered from being hunted through the ruins of the
Smoke on that awful day when they had come to take her back to the city.
She shook her head. Thinking of those days always brought up bogus memories that didn't fit
together. The Specials hadn't hunted Tally, of course. Why would they? They'd rescued her, bringing her
home after she'd left the city to track down Shay. The thought of Specials always left her spinning, but
that was just because their cruel faces were designed to freak you out, the same way that looking at
regular pretties made you feel good.
Maybe the figure wasn't following her at all; maybe it was more than one person, some clique all
dressed the same and spread out across the party, which made it feel like one of them was lurking her.
That idea was a lot less crazy-making.
She caught up with the others, and joked with them as they searched for the rest of the Crims.
But as Tally kept one eye out for figures in the shadows, she slowly became sure that it wasn't a clique.
There was always exactly one, not talking to anybody, totally lurking. And the way the figure moved, so
gracefully…
Tally told herself to calm down. Special Circumstances had no reason to follow her. And it made
no sense for a Special to come to a costume party dressed as a Special.
She forced a laugh from herself. It was probably one of the other Crims playing a joke on her,
one who'd heard Shay's and Tally's stories a hundred times and knew all about Special Circumstances. If
so, it would be totally bogus to go all brain-missing in front of everyone. Better to ignore the fake Special
altogether.
Tally looked down at her own costume, and wondered if the Smokey clothes were helping to
freak her out. Shay had been right: The smell of the old, handmade sweater brought back their time
outside the city, days of back-breaking work and nights staying warm by the camp fire, mingled with
memories of the aging ugly faces that still brought her awake screaming sometimes.
Living in the Smoke had totally done a job on Tally's head.
No one else mentioned the figure. Were they all in on the joke? Fausto kept worrying that his
sparklers were going to run out before any of the other Crims saw them. "Let's see if they're in one of the
spires," he said.
"At least we can call them from a real building," Peris agreed.
Shay snorted and headed toward the nearest door. "Anything to get out of this bogus pile of
rocks."
The party was spilling outside, anyway, expanding beyond the ancient stone walls. Shay led them
toward a party spire at random, through a cluster of Hairdos with beehive wigs, each with its own swarm