There's something about a roof isn't there? It makes you feel like it doesn't matter what's going on below. All of those things that get in the way of your dreams - you're above them. Anything is possible.

Hope is a dangerous thing, Raisa thought. Once kindled, it's hard to put out. It makes wise people into fools.

A fiction writer is never entirely alone. Her characters are constantly whispering in her ear.

Falling in love was like falling off a cliff. It felt pretty much like flying until you hit the ground.

His aster-blue eyes shown out from a face blackened by bruises and soot, his fair hair glittering in the firelight. Dressed all in black, silhouetted against flame, he looked rather like a demon, raised from the dead, trading for souls on the other side.

Her clothes still smoked from the wizard’s assault. But to him, she always smelled of flowers.

Leicester stared fixedly at the image before him, the color bleached from his face by its brilliance. Seph sensed the headmaster's mind questing out, trying to discover and destroy the wizard behind the image, but finding nothing, no trail of magic, no stone, no flesh and blood to focus on. Jason Haley, the puppeteer, was safely ensconced in the gallery above.