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A Caress Of Twilight :: Гамильтон Лорел
Страница: 1 из 236Аннотация: Private Investigator, Princess Meredith, is heir to a throne, if she can live long enough to claim it. For a deadly game is being played in the Faerie court and whoever produces an heir first wins the crown. Then, in her adoptive home, in the City of Angels, people start dying in mysterious ways.
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Laurell K. Hamilton
A Caress of Twilight
(the 2nd book in Merry Gentry series)
This one's for J., who brought me endless cups of chai and, for the first time, watched the process from beginning to end. He loves me still, and for all of you married to us artistic types, you know just how much that says about both of us.
Acknowledgments
For Shauna Summers, my new editor, thanks for the professionalism. Darla Cook, who helped proof this book when there wasn't time to send it around. To my long-suffering writing group: Tom Drennan, Rhett MacPherson, Deborah Millitello, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner. Thanks for having patience with me while my world fell apart and remade itself.
Chapter 1
Moonlight silvered the room, painting the bed in a hundred shades of grey, white, and black. The two men in the bed were deeply asleep. So deeply that when I'd crawled out from between them, they'd barely stirred. My skin glowed white with the kiss of moonlight. The pure bloodred of my hair looked black. I'd pulled on a silk robe, because it was chilly. People can talk about sunny California, but in the wee hours of the night, when dawn is but a distant dream, it's still chilly. The night that fell like a soft blessing through my window was a December night. If I'd been home in Illinois, there would have been the smell of snow, crisp enough, almost, to melt along the tongue. Cold enough to sear the lungs. So cold it was like breathing icy fire. That was the way air was supposed to taste in early December. The breeze crawling through the window at my back held the dry tang of eucalyptus and the distant smell of the sea. Salt, water, and something else, that indefinable scent that says ocean, not lake, nothing usable, nothing drinkable. You can die of thirst on the shores of an ocean.
For three years I'd stood on the shores of this particular ocean and died a little bit every day. Not literally — I'd have survived — but mere survival can get pretty lonely. I'd been born Princess Meredith NicEssus, a member of the high court of faerie. I was a real-life faerie princess, the only one ever born on American soil.
---------------------------------------------
Laurell K. Hamilton
A Caress of Twilight
(the 2nd book in Merry Gentry series)
This one's for J., who brought me endless cups of chai and, for the first time, watched the process from beginning to end. He loves me still, and for all of you married to us artistic types, you know just how much that says about both of us.
Acknowledgments
For Shauna Summers, my new editor, thanks for the professionalism. Darla Cook, who helped proof this book when there wasn't time to send it around. To my long-suffering writing group: Tom Drennan, Rhett MacPherson, Deborah Millitello, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner. Thanks for having patience with me while my world fell apart and remade itself.
Chapter 1
Moonlight silvered the room, painting the bed in a hundred shades of grey, white, and black. The two men in the bed were deeply asleep. So deeply that when I'd crawled out from between them, they'd barely stirred. My skin glowed white with the kiss of moonlight. The pure bloodred of my hair looked black. I'd pulled on a silk robe, because it was chilly. People can talk about sunny California, but in the wee hours of the night, when dawn is but a distant dream, it's still chilly. The night that fell like a soft blessing through my window was a December night. If I'd been home in Illinois, there would have been the smell of snow, crisp enough, almost, to melt along the tongue. Cold enough to sear the lungs. So cold it was like breathing icy fire. That was the way air was supposed to taste in early December. The breeze crawling through the window at my back held the dry tang of eucalyptus and the distant smell of the sea. Salt, water, and something else, that indefinable scent that says ocean, not lake, nothing usable, nothing drinkable. You can die of thirst on the shores of an ocean.
For three years I'd stood on the shores of this particular ocean and died a little bit every day. Not literally — I'd have survived — but mere survival can get pretty lonely. I'd been born Princess Meredith NicEssus, a member of the high court of faerie. I was a real-life faerie princess, the only one ever born on American soil.