Sometimes, Ms. Lane," he said, "one must break with one's past to embrace one's future. It is never an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims. Letting go of what was, to survive what is.

I hope when I'm ninety-five the only things I want are free: love, family, a good home-cooked meal.

Keeping vigil over her are two monsters of very different breeds but monster just the same. Death on her left. Devil on her right.

I felt the electricity of his body behind me as he reached around me and took the card from my hand. He didn't move away, and I battled the urge to lean back into him, seeking the comfort of his strength. Would he wrap his arms around me? Make me feel safe, if only for a moment, and if only a delusion?

I couldn’t move. It’s something I’m still ashamed of. You always wonder how you’ll handle a moment of crisis; if you’ve got what it takes to fight or if you’ve just been deluding yourself all along that somewhere deep inside you there’s steel beneath the magnolia. Now I knew the truth. There wasn’t. I was all petals and pollen. Good for attracting the procreators who could ensure the survival of our species, but not a survivor myself. I was Barbie after all.

I have a box inside me now that never used to exist. I never needed it before. It's down in my deepest, darkest corner, and it's airtight, soundproofed and padlocked. It's where I keep the thoughts I don't know what to do with, that could get me into trouble. Eating Unseelie hammers on the inside of that lid incessantly. I try to keep kissing Barrons in that box, too, but it gets out sometimes.

Being nearly naked around Barrons felt a lot like going to a shark convention lightly basted in blood.