If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely you should be friend to my friend.

Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.

Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.

Magic gives you a lot of choices," Grandad says. "Most of them are bad.

You okay?" Anton asks, looking at me like he's trying to figure out if I'm drunk. His plans depend on me. I look as blank as possible and hope that it freaks him out. No point in my being the only miserable one.

The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke.