You'd better hurry up to the Gard and back. God knows what depravity we might get up to here without your guidance.

Usually I'm remarkably good natured. Try me on a day that doesn't end in y.

There is no god, not a god who would create the things I saw

You know how the bonds of family are, my lady... They cling as tightly as vines. And sometimes, like vines, they cling tightly enough to kill.

Will speechless for once, a glass of water frozen halfway to his lips

Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on your clothes?" Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt.

The Sisters vanished entirely then, and Aunt Harriet was standing over Tessa, her face flushed with fever as it had been during the terrible illness that had killed her. She looked at Tessa with great sadness. "I tried," she said. "I tried to love you. But it isn't easy to love a child that isn't human in the least...." "Not human?" said an unfamiliar female voice. "Well, if she isn't human, Enoch, what is she?" The voice sharpened in impatience. "What do you mean, you don't know? Everyone's something. This girl can't be nothing at all.