The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.

Look, how come he showed up now? When you have other fairies in the woods? And does that sound crazy when you say it out loud, or what?

If I was getting harder, it was in response to the world around me.

All the pictures on the walls, they all white as lilies and smiling like alligators.

I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over." I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?" That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it.

I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people. Hugo really couldn't imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us. I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.

I added to my mental list of the odd things I'd done that day. I'd entertained the police, sunbathed, visited at a mall with some fairies, weeded and killed someone. Now it was powdered-corpse removal time. And the day wasn't over yet.