Anne Rice - The Mayfair Witches 3 - Taltos

VIP免费
2024-12-06 0 0 2.77MB 361 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Taltos
One
It had snowed all day. As the darkness fell, very close and quickly, he stood
at the window looking down on the tiny figures in Central Park. A perfect circle
of light fell on the snow beneath each lamp. Skaters moved on the frozen lake,
though he could not make them out in detail. And cars pushed sluggishly over the
dark roads.
To his right and his left, the skyscrapers of midtown crowded near him. But
nothing came between him and the park, except, that is, for a jungle of lower
buildings, rooftops with gardens, and great black hulking pieces of equipment,
and sometimes even pointed roofs.
He loved this view; it always surprised him when others found it so unusual,
when a workman coming to fix an office machine would volunteer that he'd never
seen New York like this before. Sad that there was no marble tower for everyone;
that there was no series of towers, to which all the people could go, to look out at
varying heights.
Make a note: Build a series of towers which have no function except to be
parks in the sky for the people. Use all the beautiful marbles which you so love.
Maybe he would do that this year. Very likely, he would do it. And the libraries.
He wanted to establish more of these, and that would mean some travel. But he
would do all this, yes, and soon. After all, the parks were almost completed now,
and the little schools had been opened in seven cities. The carousels had been
opened in twenty different places. Granted, the animals were synthetic, but each
was a meticulous and indestructible reproduction of a famous European
handcarved masterpiece. People loved the carousels. But it was a time for a spate
of new plans. The winter had caught him dreaming ...
In the last century, he had put into material form a hundred such ideas. And
this year's little triumphs had their comforting charm. He had made an antique
carousel within this building, all of the original old horses, lions, and such that
had provided molds for his replicas. The museum of classic automobiles now
filled one level of the basement. The public flocked to see the Model T's, the Stutz
Bearcats, the MG-TD's with their wire wheels.
And of course there were the doll museums-in large, well-lighted rooms on
two floors above the lobby-the company showcase, filled with the dolls he'd
collected from all parts of the world. And the private museum, open only now and
then, including the dolls which he himself had personally cherished.
Now and then he slipped downstairs to watch the people, to walk through
the crowds, never unnoticed, but at least unknown.
A creature seven feet in height can't avoid the eyes of people. That had been
true forever. But a rather amusing thing had happened in the last two hundred
years. Human beings had gotten taller! And now, miracle of miracles, even at his
height, he did not stand out so very much. People gave him a second glance, of
course, but they weren't frightened of him anymore.
Indeed, occasionally a human male came into the building who was in fact
taller than he was. Of course the staff would alert him. They thought it one of his
little quirks that he wanted such people reported to him. They found it amusing.
He didn't mind. He liked to see people smile and laugh.
"Mr. Ash, there's a tall one down here. Camera five."
He'd turn to the bank of small glowing screens, and quickly catch sight of
the individual. Only human. He usually knew for certain right away. Once in a
great while, he wasn't sure of it. And he went down in the silent, speeding
elevator, and walked near the person long enough to ascertain from a score of
details that this was only a man.
Other dreams: small play buildings for children, made exquisitely out of
space-age plastics with rich and intricate detail. He saw small cathedrals, castles,
palaces-perfect replicas of the larger architectural treasures-produced with
lightning speed, and "cost effective," as the board would put it. There would be
numerous sizes, from dwellings for dolls to houses which children could enter
themselves. And carousel horses for sale, made of wood resin, which almost
anyone could afford. Hundreds could be given to schools, hospitals, other such
institutions. Then there was the ongoing obsession-truly beautiful dolls for poor
children, dolls that would not break, and could be cleaned with ease-but that he
had been working on, more or less, since the new century dawned.
For the last five years he had produced cheaper and cheaper dolls, dolls
superior to those before them, dolls of new chemical materials, dolls that were
durable and lovable; yet still they cost too much for poor children. This year he
would try something entirely different ... He had plans on the drawing board, a
couple of promising prototypes. Perhaps ...
He felt a consoling warmth steal through him as he thought of these many
projects, for they would take him hundreds of years. Long ago, in ancient times as
they called them, he had dreamed of monuments. Great circles of stone for all to
see, a dance of giants in the high grass of the plain. Even modest towers had
obsessed him for decades, and once the lettering of beautiful books had taken all
his joy for centuries.
But in these playthings of the modern world, these dolls, these tiny images
of people, not children really, for dolls never really did look like children, he had
found a strange and challenging obsession.
Monuments were for those who traveled to see them. The dolls and toys he
refined and manufactured reached every country on the globe. Indeed, machines
had made all sorts of new and beautiful objects available for people of all nations-
the rich, the impoverished, those in need of comfort, or sustenance and shelter,
those kept in sanitariums and asylums which they could never leave.
His company had been his redemption; even his wildest and most daring
ideas had been put into successful production. Indeed, he did not understand why
other toy companies made so few innovations, why cookie-cutter dolls with vapid
faces lined the shelves of emporiums, why the ease of manufacture had not
produced a wilderness of originality and invention. Unlike his joyless colleagues,
with each of his triumphs he had taken greater risks.
It didn't make him happy to drive others out of the market. No, competition
was still something he could only grasp intellectually. His secret belief was that
the number of potential buyers in today's world was unlimited. There was room
for anyone marketing anything of worth. And within these walls, within this
soaring and dangerous tower of steel and glass, he enjoyed his triumphs in a state
of pure bliss which he could share with no one else.
No one else. Only the dolls could share it. The dolls who stood on the glass
shelves against the walls of colored marble, the dolls who stood on pedestals in
the corners, the dolls who clustered together on his broad wooden desk. His Bru,
his princess, his French beauty, a century old; she was his most enduring witness.
Not a day passed that he didn't go down to the second floor of the building and
visit the Bru-a bisque darling of impeccable standards, three feet tall, her mohair
curls intact, her painted face a masterpiece, her torso and wooden legs as perfect
now as they were when the French company had manufactured her for the Paris
market over one hundred years ago.
That had been her allure, that she was a thing for hundreds of children to
enjoy; a pinnacle had been reached in her, of craft and mass production. Even her
factory clothes of silk represented that special achievement. Not for one, but for
many.
There had been years when, wandering the world, he had carried her with
him, taking her out of the suitcase at times just to look into her glass eyes, just to
tell her his thoughts, his feelings, his dreams. In the night, in squalid lonely rooms,
he had seen the light glint in her ever-watchful eyes. And now she was housed in
glass, and thousands saw her yearly, and all the other antique Bru dolls now
clustered around her. Sometimes he wanted to sneak her upstairs, put her on a
bedroom shelf. Who would care? Who would dare say anything? Wealth
surrounds one with a blessed silence, he thought. People think before they speak.
They feel they have to. He could talk to the doll again if he wanted to. In the
museum, he was silent when they met, the glass of the case separating them.
Patiently she waited to be reclaimed, the humble inspiration for his empire.
Of course this company of his, this enterprise of his, as it was so often
called by papers and magazines, was predicated on the development of an
industrial and mechanical matrix which had existed now for only three hundred
years. What if war were to destroy it? But dolls and toys gave him such sweet
happiness that he imagined he would never here-after be without them. Even if
war reduced the world to rubble, he would make little figures of wood or clay and
paint them himself.
Sometimes he saw himself this way, alone in the ruins. He saw New York
as it might have appeared in a science-fiction movie, dead and silent and filled
with overturned columns and broken pediments and shattered glass. He saw
himself sitting on a broken stone stairway, making a doll from sticks and tying it
together with bits of cloth which he took quietly and respectfully from a dead
woman's silk dress.
But who would have imagined that such things would have caught his
fancy? That wandering a century ago through a wintry street in Paris, he would
turn and gaze into a shop window, into the glass eyes of his Bru, and fall
passionately in love?
Of course, his breed had always been known for its capacity to play, to
cherish, to enjoy. Perhaps it was not at all surprising. Though studying a breed,
when you were one of the only surviving specimens of it, was a tricky situation,
especially for one who could not love medical philosophy or terminology, whose
memory was good but far from preternatural, whose sense of the past was often
deliberately relinquished to a "childlike" immersion in the present, and a general
fear of thinking in terms of millennia or eons or whatever people wanted to call
the great spans of time which he himself had witnessed, lived through, struggled
to endure, and finally cheerfully forgotten in this great enterprise suited to his few
and special talents.
Nevertheless, he did study his own breed, making and recording meticulous
notes on himself. And he was not good at predicting the future, or so he felt.
A low hum came to his ears. He knew it was the coils beneath the marble
floor, gently heating the room around him. He fancied he could feel the heat,
coming up through his shoes. It was never chilly or smotheringly hot in his tower.
The coils took care of him. If only such comfort could belong to the entire world
outside. If only all could know abundant food, warmth. His company sent millions
in aid to those who lived in deserts and jungles across the seas, but he was never
really sure who received what, who benefited.
In the first days of motion pictures, and later television, he had thought war
would end. Hunger would end. People could not bear to see it on the screen before
them. How foolish a thought. There seemed to be more war and more hunger now
than ever. On every continent, tribe fought tribe. Millions starved. So much to be
done. Why make such careful choices? Why not do everything?
The snow had begun again, with flakes so tiny he could barely see them.
They appeared to melt when they hit the dark streets below. But those streets were
some sixty floors down. He couldn't be certain. Half-melted snow was piled in the
gutters and on the nearby roofs. In a little while, things would be freshly white
again, perhaps, and in this sealed and warm room, one could imagine the entire
city dead and ruined, as if by pestilence which did not crumble buildings but
killed the warm-blooded beings which lived within them, like termites in wooden
walls.
The sky was black. That was the one thing he did not like about snow. You
lost the sky when you had it. And he did so love the skies over New York City,
the full panoramic skies which the people in the streets never really saw.
"Towers, build them towers," he said. "Make a big museum high up in the
sky with terraces around it. Bring them up in glass elevators, heavenward to see
..."
Towers for pleasure among all these towers that men had built for
commerce and gain.
A thought took him suddenly, an old thought, really, that often came to him
and prodded him to meditate and perhaps even to surmise. The first writings in all
the world had been commercial lists of goods bought and sold. This was what was
in the cuneiform tablets found at Jericho, inventories ... The same had been true at
Mycenea.
No one had thought it important then to write down his or her ideas or
thoughts. Buildings had been wholly different. The grandest were houses of
worship-temples or great mud-brick ziggurats, faced in limestone, which men had
climbed to sacrifice to the gods. The circle of sarsens on the Salisbury Plain.
Now, seven thousand years later, the greatest buildings were com-mercial
buildings. They were inscribed with the names of banks or great corporations, or
immense private companies such as his own. From his window he could see these
names burning in bright, coarse block letters, through the snowy sky, through the
dark that wasn't really dark.
As for temples and places of worship, they were relics or almost nought.
Somewhere down there he could pick out the steeples of St. Patrick's if he tried.
But it was a shrine now to the past more than a vibrant center of communal
religious spirit, and it looked quaint, reaching to the skies amid the tall, indifferent
glass buildings around it. It was majestic only from the streets.
The scribes of Jericho would have understood this shift, he thought. On the
other hand, perhaps they would not. He barely understood it himself, yet the
implications seemed mammoth and more wonderful than human beings knew.
This commerce, this endless multiplicity of beautiful and useful things, could save
the world, ultimately, if only ... Planned obsolescence, mass destruction of last
year's goods, the rush to antiquate or render irrelevent others' designs, it was the
result of a tragic lack of vision. Only the most limited implications of the market-
place theory were to blame for it. The real revolution came not in the cycle of
make and destroy, but in a great inventive and endless expan-sion. Old
dichotomies had to fall. In his darling Bru, and her factory-assembled parts, in the
pocket calculators carried by millions on the streets, in the light beautiful stroke of
rolling-ball pens, in five-dollar Bibles, and in toys, beautiful toys sold on
drugstore shelves for pennies-there lay salvation.
It seemed he could get his mind around it, he could penetrate it, make tight,
easily explainable theories, if only-
"Mr. Ash." It was a soft voice that interrupted him. Nothing more was
required. He'd trained them all. Don't make a sound with the door. Speak quietly.
I'll hear you.
And this voice came from Remmick, who was gentle by nature, an
Englishman (with a little Celtic blood, though Remmick didn't know it), a
manservant who had been indispensable in this last decade, though the time would
soon come when, for security's sake, Remmick must be sent away.
"Mr. Ash, the young woman's here."
"Thank you, Remmick," he said in a voice that was even softer than that of
his servant. In the dark window glass, if he let himself, he could see Remmick's
reflection-a comely man, with small, very brilliant blue eyes. They were too close
together, these eyes. But the face was not unattractive, and it wore always a look
of such quiet and non-dramatic devotion that he had grown to love it, to love
Remmick himself.
There were lots of dolls in the world with eyes too close together-in
particular, the French dolls made years ago by Jumeau, and Schmitt and Sons, and
Huret, and Petit and Demontier-with moon faces, and glittering glass eyes
crowding their little procelain noses, with mouths so tiny they seemed at first
glance to be tiny buds, or bee stings. Everybody loved these dolls. The bee-sting
queens.
When you loved dolls and studied them, you started to love all kinds of
people too, because you saw the virtue in their expressions, how carefully they
had been sculpted, the parts contrived to create the triumph of this or that
remarkable face. Sometimes he walked through Manhattan, deliberately seeing
every face as made, no nose, no ear, no wrinkle accidental.
"She's having some tea, sir. She was terribly cold when she arrived."
"We didn't send a car for her, Remmick?"
"Yes, sir, but she's cold nevertheless. It's very cold outside, sir."
"But it's warm in the museum, surely. You took her there, didn't you?"
"Sir, she came up directly. She is so excited, you understand."
He turned, throwing one bright gleam of a smile (or so he hoped it was) on
Remmick and then waving him away with the smallest gesture that the man could
see. He walked to the doors of the adjoining office, across the floor of Carrara
marble, and looked beyond that room, to yet another, also paved, as were all his
rooms, in shining marble, where the young woman sat alone at the desk. He could
see her profile. He could see that she was anxious. He could see that she wanted
the tea, but then she didn't. She didn't know what to do with her hands. "Sir, your
hair. Will you allow me?" Remmick touched his arm. "Must we?"
"Yes, sir, we really ought to." Remmick had his soft little brush out, the
kind that men used because they could not be seen using the same kind of brush as
women, and reaching up, Remmick brought it quickly and firmly through his hair,
hair that ought to be trimmed and cut, Remmick had said, hair that fell sloppily
and defiantly over his collar.
Remmick stood back, rocking on the balls of his feet.
"Now you look splendid, Mr. Ash," he said with raised eyebrows. "Even if it
is a bit long."
He made a soft chuckle.
"You're afraid I'll frighten her, aren't you?" he asked, teasingly,
affectionately. "Surely you don't really care what she thinks."
"Sir, I care that you look your best always, for your own benefit."
"Of course you do," he said quietly. "I love you for it."
He walked towards the young woman, and as he drew closer, he made a
polite and decent amount of noise. Slowly she turned her head; she looked up; she
saw him, and there came the inevitable shock. He extended his arms as he
approached.
She rose, beaming, and she clasped his hands. Warm, firm grip. She looked
at his hands, at the fingers, and at the palms.
"I surprise you, Miss Paget?" he asked, offering her his most gra-cious
smile. "My hair has been groomed for your approval. Do I look so very bad?"
"Mr. Ash, you look fabulous," she said quickly. She had a crisp California-
style voice. "I didn't expect that ... I didn't expect that you would be so tall. Of
course, everyone said you were ..."
"And do I look like a kindly man, Miss Paget? They say this of me too." He
spoke slowly. Often Americans could not understand his "British accent."
"Oh, yes, Mr. Ash," she said. "Very kindly. And your hair is so nice and
long. I love your hair, Mr. Ash."
This was really very gratifying, very amusing. He hoped that Remmick was
listening. But wealth makes people withhold judgment on what you have done, it
makes them search for the good in your choices, your style. It brings out not the
obsequious but the more thoughtful side of humans. At least sometimes ...
She was plainly telling the truth. Her eyes feasted on him and he loved it.
He gave her hands a tender squeeze and then he let them go.
As he moved around the desk, she took her seat again, eyes still locked upon
him. Her own face was narrow and deeply lined for one so young. Her eyes were
bluish violet. She was beautiful in her own way-ashen-haired, disheveled yet
graceful, in exquisitely crushed old clothes.
Yes, don't throw them away, save them from the thrift-shop rack, reinvent
them with nothing more than a few stitches and an iron; the destiny of
manufactured things lies in durability and changing contexts, crushed silk beneath
fluorescent light, elegant tatters with buttons of plastic in colors never achieved
within geological strata, with stockings of such strong nylon they could have been
made into braided rope of incalculable strength if only people didn't rip them off
and toss them into wastebaskets. So many things to do, ways to see ... If he had
the contents of every wastebasket in Manhattan, he could make another billion
just from what he would find there.
"I admire your work, Miss Paget," he said. "It's a pleasure to meet you at
last." He gestured to the top of the desk. It was littered with large color
photographs of her dolls.
Was it possible she hadn't noticed these? She seemed overcome with
pleasure, her cheeks reddening. Perhaps she was even a little infatuated with his
style and manner, he wasn't sure. He did tend to infatuate people, sometimes
without trying to do it.
"Mr. Ash," she said. "This is one of the most important days of my life."
She said it as if trying to realize it, and then she became silently flustered, perhaps
because she thought she had said too much in saying what really mattered.
He let his smile brighten, and dipped his head slightly, as he often did-a trait
people remarked on-so that he appeared to be looking up at her for a moment,
though he was much taller than she.
"I want your dolls, Miss Paget," he said. "All of them. I'm very pleased with
what you've done. You've worked so well in all the new materials. Your dolls
aren't like anyone else's. That's what I want."
She was smiling in spite of herself. It was always a thrilling moment, this,
for them and for him. He loved making her happy!
"Have my lawyers presented everything? Are you quite sure of the terms?"
"Yes, Mr. Ash. I understand everything. I accept your offer, completely.
This is my dream."
She said the last word with gentle emphasis. And this time she did not falter
or blush.
"Miss Paget, you need someone to bargain for you!" he scolded. "But if I've
ever cheated anyone, I don't remember it, and I would honestly like to be
reminded so that I could correct what I've done."
"I'm yours, Mr. Ash," she said. Her eyes had brightened, but they were not
filling with tears. "The terms are generous. The materials are dazzling. The
methods . . ." She gave a little shake of her head. "Well, I don't really understand
the mass-production methods, but I know your dolls. I've been hanging around in
the stores, just looking at everything marketed by Ashlar. I know this is simply
going to be great."
Like so many, she had made her dolls in her kitchen, then in a garage
workroom, firing the clay in a kiln she could barely afford. She had haunted flea
markets for her fabrics. She had taken her inspiration from figures in motion
pictures and in novels. Her works had been "one of a kind" and "limited edition,"
the sort of thing they liked in the exclusive doll shops and galleries. She had won
awards, both large and small.
But her molds could be used now for something utterly different-half a
million beautiful renditions of one doll, and another and another, out of a vinyl, so
skillfully worked that it would look as lovely as porcelain, with eyes painted as
brilliantly as if they were real glass.
"But what about the names, Miss Paget? Why won't you choose the dolls'
names?"
"Thc dolls have never had names for me, Mr. Ash," she said. "And the
names you chose are fine."
"You know you'll be rich soon, Miss Paget."
"So they tell me," she said. She seemed suddenly vulnerable, indeed fragile.
"But you have to keep your appointments with us, you have to approve each
step. It won't take so much time, really ..."
"I'm going to love it. Mr. Ash, I want to make-"
"I want to see anything that you make, immediately. You'll call us." "Yes."
"But don't be sure you will enjoy the process here. As you have observed,
manufacture is not the same thing as crafting or creating. Well, it is. But seldom
do people see it that way. Artists don't always see mass production as an ally."
He did not have to explain his old reasoning, that he did not care for the
one-of-a-kinds and the limited editions, that he cared only for dolls that could
belong to everyone. And he would take these molds of hers, and he would
produce dolls from them year after year, varying them only when there seemed a
reason to do it.
Everyone knew this about him now-that he had no interest in elitist values
or ideas.
"Any questions about our contracts, Miss Paget? Don't hesitate to put these
questions directly to me."
"Mr. Ash, I've signed your contracts!" She gave another little riff of
laughter, distinctly careless and young.
"I'm so glad, Miss Paget," he said. "Prepare to be famous." He brought up
his hands and folded them on the desk. Naturally, she was looking at them; she
was wondering at their immense size.
"Mr. Ash, I know you're busy. Our appointment's for fifteen minutes."
He nodded as if to say, This is not important, go on.
"Let me ask you. Why do you like my dolls? I mean, really, Mr. Ash. I
mean-"
He thought for a moment. "Of course there's a stock answer," he said,
"which is wholly true. That your dolls are original, as you've said. But what I like,
Miss Paget, is that your dolls are all smiling broadly. Their eyes are crinkled; their
faces are in motion. They have shining teeth. You can almost hear them laugh."
"That was the risk, Mr. Ash." Suddenly she herself laughed, and looked for
one second as happy as her creations.
"I know, Miss Paget. Are you perhaps going to make me some very sad
children now?"
"I don't know if I can."
"Make what you want. I'm behind you. Don't make sad children. Too many
other artists do that well."
He started to rise, slowly, the signal of dismissal, and he wasn't surprised
when she rushed to her feet.
"Thank you, Mr. Ash," she said again, reaching for his hand-his huge, long-
fingered hand. "I can't tell you how much ..."
"You don't have to."
He let her take his hand. Sometimes people didn't want to touch him a
second time. Sometimes they knew he wasn't a human. Never repelled by his face,
it seemed, they were often repelled by his big feet and hands. Or, deep in their
subconscious, they realized his neck was just a little too long, his ears too narrow.
Humans are skilled at recog-nizing their own kind, tribe, clan, family. A great part
of the human brain is organized around merely recognizing and remembering
types of faces.
But she was not repelled, merely young and overwhelmed, and anxious over
simple transitions.
"And by the way, Mr. Ash, if you don't mind my saying it, the white streaks
in your hair are very becoming. I hope you don't ever color them out. White hair is
always becoming on a young man."
"Now, what made you say that, Miss Paget?"
She flushed once more, but then gave in to laughter. "I don't know," she
admitted. "It's just that the hair is so white, and you're so young. I didn't expect
you to be so young. That's what is so surprising-" She broke off, unsure; he had
best release her before she tumbled too quickly into her own imagined failures.
"Thank you, Miss Paget," he said. "You've been very kind. I've enjoyed
talking with you." Reassurance, blunt and memorable. "I hope to see you again
very soon. I hope you'll be happy."
Remmick had come to spirit the young woman away.. She said something
else hastily, thanks, avowals of inspiration and determina-tion to please the whole
world. Words to that sweet effect. He gave her one final sober smile as she went
out and the bronze doors were shut behind her.
When she got home, of course, she would drag out her magazines. She
would do addition on her fingers, maybe even with a calculator. She would realize
he couldn't be young, not by anyone's count. She'd conclude he was past forty, and
carefully fighting fifty. That was safe enough.
But how must he deal with this in the long run, for the long run was always
his problem? Here was a life he loved, but he would have to make adjustments.
Oh, he couldn't think of something so awful just now. What if the white hair really
began to flourish? That would help, wouldn't it? But what did it really mean, the
white hair? What did it reveal? He was too content to think of it. Too content to
court cold fear.
Once again he turned to the windows, and to the falling snow. He could see
Central Park as clearly from this office as from the others. He put his hand on the
glass. Very cold.
The skating lake was deserted now. The snow had covered the park, and the
roof just below him; and he noticed another curious sight which always made him
give a little laugh.
It was the swimming pool on top of the Parker Meridien Hotel. Snow fell
steadily on the transparent glass roof while, beneath it, a man was swimming back
and forth in the brightly illuminated green water, and this was some fifty floors
perhaps above the street.
"Now that is wealth and that is power," he mused quietly to him-self. "To
swim in the sky in a storm." Build swimming pools in the sky, another worthy
project.
"Mr. Ash," said Remmick.
"Yes, my dear boy," he said absently, watching the long strokes of the
swimmer, seeing clearly now that it was an elderly and very thin man. Such a
figure would have been the victim of starvation in times past. But this was a
physically fit individual-he could see it-a businessman, perhaps, snared by
economic circumstances in the bitter winter of New York, swimming back and
forth in deliciously heated and safely sanitized water.
"Phone call for you, sir."
"I don't think so, Remmick. I'm tired. It's the snow. It makes me want to curl
up in bed and go to sleep. I want to go to bed now, Remmick. I want some hot
chocolate and then to sleep and sleep."
"Mr. Ash, the man said you would want to speak to him, that I was to tell
you ..."
"They all say that, Remmick," he answered.
"Samuel, sir. He said to tell you that name."
"Samuel!"
He turned from the window, and looked at the manservant, at his placid
摘要：

TaltosOneIthadsnowedallday.Asthedarknessfell,verycloseandquickly,hestoodatthewindowlookingdownonthetinyfiguresinCentralPark.Aperfectcircleoflightfellonthesnowbeneatheachlamp.Skatersmovedonthefrozenlake,darkroads.nothingcamebetweenhimandthepark,except,thatis,forajungleoflowerbuildings,rooftopswithgar...

展开>> 收起<<
Anne Rice - The Mayfair Witches 3 - Taltos.pdf

共361页,预览10页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：361 页 大小：2.77MB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-06

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 361
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注