Knight takes Knight,” I called into the cloudy night air. “Check.

I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable.

Here's where I ask why don't you spend your time doing something safer and more boring. Like maybe administering suppositories to rabid gorillas.

There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.

Polka will never die.

I've done smarter things in my life. Once, for example, I threw myself out of a moving car in order to take on a truckload of lycanthropes singlehandedly." ~Harry Dresden

Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry." I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.