With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare's head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys.

I might never ride Corr again. I don't know who I am without him.

It seemed like the best weapons in my life had always been the most innocuous: empty plastic bins, a blank CD, an unmarked syringe, my smile in a dark room.

The guitar," I said, "will only obey its master." "Yeah," Cole agreed, "but Grace isn't here." He grinned at me slyly.

Eleanor's voice was below zero. 'My finest horse to whichever faerie in this room brings me that woman's left eye.' My thoughts exactly.

His heart hurt with the wanting of it, the hurt no less painful for being difficult to explain.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master. This was the important thing. It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.