The phone rang. I picked it up. "Kate Daniels" "It's me," Curran said. "I—" I hung up.

Andrea: "....I think a dog is a great idea. I just never pictured you with a mutant poodle.” Kate: “He isn’t a poodle. He’s a Doberman mix." Andrea: “Aha. Keep telling yourself that.

Im's offspring stare at stars and make clocks that calculate useless happenings like the angle of a hawk's claws as it strikes its prey. They demonstrate their contraptions and everyone marvels. My children get drunk, confuse a herd of cows with an enemy regiment, and slaughter the lot, screaming like lunatics until the entire army panics.

A girl half my age swept by and slammed two giant tankard filled with beer on the table. Ragnvald held his up. I smashed my tankard against his. Beer splashed. We raised the tankard and pretended to take much bigger gulps than we did.

The decorator of Las Colimas must have been a great admirer of both early Aztec and late Taco Bell architectural styles.

It was the kind of place you went when your earthly troubles became too much for you and you were looking for a creative way to commit suicide.

One day I'll kill him, you know. I glanced at her. She was deadly serious.