Three Kings. Группа авторов

Чтение книги онлайн.

      It wasn’t the cold grey misty day that made Constance cross. London weather was so predictably appropriate for a funeral. It wasn’t even the crush of mourners – that was to be expected when a celebrity died. It was knowing that Glory lay in the casket before her, that the flowers on Glory’s head – the expression of her joker – were rotting away, soon to be joined by Glory’s flesh.

      With a shudder, Constance remembered the time Glory’s flowers had been brutally shorn from her head. The blood. The dying lilies. Constance tried to shy away from the memory, but it was still there, same as ever, sharp and clear as glass.

      Bobbin took her hand in his. It was warm and surprisingly soft despite his constant handling of fabric. He was careful not to squeeze too tightly. The bony protrusions between his long, spindly fingers – so useful when he was sewing – could also hurt like nothing else. She glanced down and was amazed by their wrinkled, veiny hands. When had they become so old? She didn’t feel old at all. It was but a breath in time, and here she was seventy-six and Bobbin only a few years behind her.

      Bobbin tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, then gave it a pat. The small gesture almost made her cry. But Constance wasn’t a crier, at least not in public. If there was any crying to be done, she’d do it in private, where such things belonged.

      ‘How’re you holding up, m’dear?’ Bobbin asked. His face, as familiar to her as her own, was blessed by beautiful and kind gold-rimmed cerulean eyes. She let that kindness wash over her. Normally, she might have shied back from it – even with Bobbin she was careful not to get too close – but today was an exception.

      He knew the answer to his question. After all, they’d known each other for forty years. He knew her moods. Knew when to jolly her along and when to let her be. She leaned on him. Depended on him. And yet had kept one thing from him. (Not just one thing, my girl, she thought.) The dark, secret thing she and Glory shared.

      She studied the mourners. The cast from Wannabe A Hero were clumped together. She appreciated them showing up. Glory had been a guest judge on the episode in which the American ace, Golden Boy, had humiliated all comers – just as he had on the American version of the show.

      But the majority of the mourners were jokers. Normal people whose lives had been destroyed by the alien wild card virus.

      Certainly, there were jokers who had managed to do just fine. Jokers like Turing or the woman with the talk show, Peregrine. But that wasn’t the bulk of them. And her anger grew, because she burned with hatred for the Takisians and – fair or not – that included Dr Tachyon.

      And hating jokers? It didn’t supplant the old animosities, it just gave people an extra, new thing to hate.

      Bobbin squeezed her hand again and she managed a quick smile at him and some of her rage drained away.

      Bobbin had grown so important to her and the business that making him her partner seemed sensible. And in addition to hiring as many female tailors as they could, they also made a point to hire jokers, no matter the gender. If you wanted a Constance original, then you had to accept that it was lovingly made by women and/or jokers.

      But that all seemed rather unimportant standing here beside Glory’s casket. At the head of the casket was Mick Jagger in his lycanthrope form. It seemed as if time had taken its toll on him only in the sprinkle of white on his muzzle. Tears wetted the fur under his eyes, turning it dark.

      A massive blanket of white roses covered the casket. Constance knew this gesture was Mick’s because Glory had sprouted those flowers whenever he was near her. He might have had a lot of other women, but his one true love had been Glory. And that had been a tragedy.

      At moments like this Constance wished she’d never acquiesced to Bobbin’s suggestion and become an online presence. She knew her thousands of followers on Twitter and Instagram would be expecting her to say something about the funeral, especially with so many celebrities present, but they were going to be disappointed. This was personal. This was private.

      On the other side of the casket, hanging back near the edge of the cemetery, she saw Green Man. He was shadowed by a few dangerous-looking jokers. But then he was almost always in the company of dangerous-looking jokers. She knew he was a gangster and might even have ties to the Fists. Everyone in the East End suspected as much. It didn’t matter that she’d moved away decades ago, she still had deep roots in the community and was perfectly well aware of what was happening there.

      The vicar began intoning yet another prayer. Constance tuned him out. Her eyes burned, and things got blurry. She told herself it was because the wind had picked up, but that was shite and she knew it. The sharp pain of losing Glory wouldn’t leave and, unconsciously, she gripped Bobbin’s hand tighter, not even noticing when his thorns pierced her knuckles.

      ‘I’m СКАЧАТЬ