دانلود رمان انگلیسی “مسحورکننده”

BACK THEN, WHEN I was a young woman, there were still witches. That was what Nana Alba used to say when she told Minerva bedtime stories; it was the preamble that led into a realm of shadows and mysteries. Shortly after Minerva first arrived at Stoneridge, she’d looked toward the thick mass of trees that constituted Briar’s Commons and heard a shrill cry that sounded like an infant’s wail. For a moment she’d shivered in fear, thinking of her great-grandmother’s tales of witches who drank the blood of the innocent on moonless nights. But it had been only a peacock. She was used to the birds now, the gray peahens and the beautiful males with their dazzling displays of iridescent feathers. They’d sun themselves on the lawn in front of Ledge House and sometimes they’d even sit on the porch of the old mansion. The story went that when the college acquired the building and turned it into a dorm, the peacocks had been part of the deal. A superstitious old dean reckoned they were lucky. Thus it had become tradition to keep a few of them by the dean’s house, though the birds liked to drift toward other buildings and roamed the campus with impunity. Now as she stood near the window, she heard the same cry. She couldn’t see where the peacock was stationed. It was likely somewhere by the entrance, watching the last of the students make their exodus from Ledge House. Her friends had told her she’d never get used to the cold and the snow of New England, hailing as she did from the temperate climate of Mexico City, but she’d handled the winter without misfortune. It was the summer that made her anxious.