What happened?” she breathed, staring at me. “I got hit in the face with a pie,” I said. Mags stopped, blinking. “You got...hit in the face with a pie,” she repeated. “I...what? I’m sorry, but I’ve been in charge of this Library for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of really ridiculous things. I lived in Wales. And there is no way being hit with a pie should have turned you human.” “It was a really evil pie,” I said.

Never steal another reporter's story; never take the last of another reporter's ammo; never mess with another reporter's computer. Those are the rules, unless you work for a tabloid, where they replace "never" with "always".

You really can't go home again. Sometimes, that's a good thing. Sometimes, when you try, you find out that home isn't really there anymore... but that it wasn't only in your head before. Home actually existed. Home wasn't just a dream. Sometimes, that's the best thing of all.

Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.)

I am, in fact, immortal when annoyed.

It is what it is. Isn't that how these things always go? They are what they are. We just get to cope.

Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.