Ronan kept staring at Whelk. He was good at staring. There was something about his stare that took something from the other person.

I am standing here in the shed, and I'm waiting to see if my seeds are going to poke out ofthe dirt. I don't know if it's too early to look for signs of life or if, this time, winter has claimed my family for good.

I felt like I was watching the transfomation of two people: Victor to wolf, and Cole to someone else. I was the only one here, staying the same.

He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark. It made me think of Isabel, back at her house. We didn't have what Sam and Grace had. We weren't even close to having it. I didn't think what we had could get to this, even if you gave it a thousand years.

His lips tasted cool and sharp, peppermint, winter, but his hands, soft on the back of my neck, promised long days and summer and forever.

When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood.

Flustered, she replied, "You're not my - my - grandmother, or something." "You'd talk about this with your grandmother? I can't possibly imagine discussing my dating life with mine. She's a lovely woman, I suppose. If you like them bald and racist.