Let her alone,' said the enkanto, 'or I will curse you blind, lame, and worse.' The old man laughed. 'I'm a curse breaker, fool.' The elf grabbed one of the Jim Beam bottles from the table and slammed it down, so that he was holding a jagged glass neck. The elf smiled a very thin smile. 'Then I won't bother with magic.

Philip Sharpe was a soldier in God's army," says the minister. "Now he marches with the angels.

Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways.

She knew what it felt like to tremble like that before touching someone -- desire so acute that it became despair.

We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That's why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.

Poisonous jealousy thrummed through my veins.

Downstairs, Grandad's warning Barron about something. His voice swells, and I catch the words, "In my day we were feared. Now we're just afraid.