Rita folded her arms around herself and peered up at me. “If you’d asked me three months ago I’d have said you were hitting the bottle too hard. But then I got stabbed and should have died, but instead a bunch of cops and ambulance people showed up because somebody who wasn’t even there sent them on ahead to save my life. If something like that happens to someone like me, you start to have a little faith in something bigger. I don’t know if I believe in magic or miracles all the time. But I believe in you, Detective Walker. I believe in you.

Music, unleashed, can uplift and create and destroy, stripping away pretenses and leaving raw, exposed vulnerability behind.

To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly to the frustration meter. Trying to explain to men that no, I wasn't being manipulative, I just couldn't stop my eyes from leaking salt water, only added to the aggravation.

Logic was puny in the face of my wrath. Logic was puny and magic was mighty: I had just gotten rebirthed, refilled and renewed, and was fast on my way to resentful.

start with one true thing

She had a body that even I coveted in a strictly Platonic sense.

I'm not a goddamned faith healer! I don't talk to God! I'm a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken! --Joanne