Erlking,” I told her. “Big-time bad guy. Wants to eat me.” “Why?” she asked. “Well. I met him,” I said.

A bunch of people are gonna be mad at me, I’ve got some kind of medical issue that’s going to kill me in a while if I don’t deal with it, oh, and the island’s blowing up tomorrow and taking a whole lot of the country with it if I don’t fix it.” Thomas gave me a steady look. “So,” he said. “Same old, same old.

There should be a rule against your own inner monologue throwing around that much sarcasm.

He seemed to be at that most dangerous of ages, where strength, skill, and confidence met naïveté and idealism; when young men skilled at the crafts of violence could be manipulated into employing those skills with brutal efficiency--and without questions.

Go back,” he said. “Can’t. Stand aside?” “Can’t.” “So it’s like that?” I said. Fix exhaled. Then he nodded. “Yeah.” And for the first time in a decade the Winter Knight and Summer Knight went to war.

There aren't any magical words, really. Words just hold the magic.

Something like this will test you like nothing else," Mac said. "You're going to find out who you are, Harry. You're going to find out which principles you'll stand by to your death--and which lines you'll cross." He took my empty glass away and said, "You're heading into the badlands. It'll be easy to get lost.