Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love.

Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.

The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.

Growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize there are more flavors of pain than coffee. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. And everything that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one way or another.

Everyone stopped to blink at that for a second. I mean, come on. Impaled by a guided frozen turkey missile. Even by the standards of the quasi-immortal creatures of the night, that ain't something you see twice. "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils.

Every soul is special. They’re all beautiful. They’re all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they’re acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don’t have bad souls. They’ve just given up on keeping in touch with them.

Ah. Medieval-style ransom.” Toot looked confused. “He did run some, but I stopped him, my lord. Like, just now. In front of you. Right over there.” There were several conspicuous sounds behind me, the loudest from my apprentice, and I turned to eye everyone else. They were all either covering smiles or holding them back— poorly. “Hey, peanut gallery,” I said. “This isn’t as easy as I’m making it look.” “You’re doing fine,” Karrin said, her eyes twinkling. I sighed. “Come on, Toot,” I said, and walked over to Hook.