Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?" She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance. Instead, he kissed her.

She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.

What's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.

The things you think about when you're a hair's breath away from getting yourself killed.

I am a ghost in a land of phantoms and forgotten nightmares.

Sometimes you don't know what you need until it's gone

The grief in her green eyes slips then hardens and, for an instant, Pendleton sees the woman she has become and has no right being, not at sixteen.