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.

Failure to die is always appreciated.

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".

I really don’t think you should put your hand inside the manticore, dear. You don’t know where it’s been.” –Enid Healy

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.)

Remember what I said about the mosquitoes?" "Which part" asked Maggie. "The scary part, the really scary part, the legitimately terrifying part, or the part that makes suicide sound like an awesome way to spend the evening?

No one wants to set out to be a hero, and discover that they've been a villain all along.