I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.

When Christian pushes into the brick wall of the building catty-corner to the rear of BB&B—first left on the Dark Zone side—and disappears, I melt down in a fit of the giggles. I toss a rock at the spot where he vanished. It bounces off the brick and clatters to the cobblestone. I'm feeling twenty shades of Harry Potter's train station, especially when he pokes his head out of the wall and says impatiently, "Come on, lass. This is hardly my favorite place to be.

I'd vowed years ago to go to the grave the same way I'd been born, just a lot more wrinkly.

I am a kite in a tornado, but I have a long string.

You are what you are. Deal with it or change.

I don't make sonic booms. I want a whip. I like the idea of walking around making sonic booms everywhere.

The battle had been invisible to the naked eye, but the hardest ones are.