I just . . . knew, the way you know how to breathe or to pull your hand back from a hot stove.
I pulled in a soft breath. My lungs were starving, crying out for air. I lay still, and a cough tickled at the back of my throat. It always happens when you're hiding, a cough, a sneeze, something. It's stupid. The body decides to screw around with you, even though it knows being quiet is the only way it's going to go on living.
Maybe handling her memory every day for five years had made it fade, like the mortal thing it was.
What you can't run away from, you have to face.
When a Were moves in like that it means they're offering support. Cat and canine weres are very touch-feely and bird Were have a whole elaborate protocol for brush ad flutter. Snake Weres like to get right up into your aura and breather in your face, all but rubbing noses like Eskimos. And let's not even talk about Werespiders. I shivered.
His eyebrows drew together. He was perilously close to unibrow; I guess nobody had held him down and administered a good plucking to the caterpillar climbing across his forehead.
God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution—to just not relax—was kind of sucking.
I'd rather get eaten by an epileptic shark.
He kissed her, over and over, printing blood-flavored kisses on her cheek, her throat, her jaw, her mouth.
He hadn't told me everything, but I'd left him for dead. I guess we were just about even.
I don't believe in getting clothes that just look pretty or that'll fall apart—they have to stand up to a lot of abuse.
I went to the entrance to the restroom, where the hallway did a sharp bend so nobody could peek into the girls' pee-palace.
I dislike the thought of damage to you.
You can't ever stop thinking something quick enough. Something that hurts always gets the knife in too fast for you to slam a lid on it and shove it away.
It wasn't easy, but she was used to swallowing.
What do you say when someone takes on a really bad ass, murdering sucker for you? There just aren't words for that.
I guess since the groin is the center of a guy's world, he rarely guesses it isn't the center of yours.
I got the idea she'd done her makeup up special for this. Not that she needed much. She was utterly and completely beautiful, except for the hate shining in her eyes.
He wiped away the tears, tenderly, and I forgot to weep as he told me silently everything I always wanted to hear.
Better to be strong than pretty and useless.
The lie tasted of brass, and she suddenly longed for a glass of decent wine and an exceedingly sensational and frivolous novel, read in the comfort of her own bed.
My head felt like it was going to crack down the middle, like some demented dwarf was driving glass pins through my brain.
Would I be as strong as that once I did that thing Christophe was talking about? Blooming? Would I smell like a bakery item? Or was that just him? Did he use pie filling for cologne?
Who. Hit. You?
Sometimes, as much as writing saves one's own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another's. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.
He laughed. The laugh could strip the skin off an elephant in seconds.
Christophe, with the careful tone of an adult telling a kid not to pet the nice foaming-rabid pooch.
You learn to have a high weirdness tolerance as a witch. Some luck isn't bad or good, it's just luck, the way the pebble falls or the coin flips, the way the cue ball rides. Luck or gods, it didn't matter.
Some days, a killing spree seems like a good idea.
Oh, the testosterone. You could have cut it with a cafeteria spoon.
I'm getting really tired of bleeding. Someone stop the world, I want to get off.
If a man seeks to drink enough to blind his conscience, tis acquavit or nothing.
Sometimes you can pick who buys you, and for how much. That's what power really is.
First one's free.
I try not to sleep. It disturbs the circles I'm growing under my eyes.
With twenty-twenty hindsight I could solve every fucking problem, couldn't I?
But it's a whole lot easier to keep[secrets] when you've got someone else who knows breathing in the same room. Carrying them alone is like having a huge spiky weight digging into your shoulders and chest, a weight you can't shift even while you're sleeping.
Goddamn. Well, let's call that an experiment and chalk it up to experience. All hail Jill Kismet the scientist.
She reached for the glass, realized it was smudged. More pointless revulsion.
Still, even idiots get lucky sometimes. I felt lucky tonight. Or maybe just reckless.
Almost sure wasn't good enough. Almost sure, in my experience, is the shortest road to oh fuck.
No matter how much time goes by, missing someone never gets any better. You just learn to work around it.
You learn to have a high weirdness tolerance as a witch.
Chess isn't one of my favorites, it takes a cool calculating hatred to play well, and I'm not good at that.
Fight scenes are very physical for me. Sometimes I require my own body to move through them before I can tell where a character's likely to feel it.
Tristan. The killspell is meant for him. Protect him, just as he would protect you.
Lucas went even paler. Then you're on the track to suicide, he whispered. Take my advice, Valentine. Run. Run as fast as you can, for as long as you can. Steal whatever bit of life you can. You're already dead.
The only place their voices were left was in my head. It was better than being alone but it was so, so lonely.
The smell of apple pies didn't quite fill the house, but it was there, a thread under everything else. It was kind of hard to take Christophe seriously when he smelled like baked goods. I wondered if other djampjir smelled like Hostess Twinkies and sniggered to myself.
