“Sure. Focused. Let's totally ignore any possible other avenues and just tunnel-vision our way along. Maybe we'll get lucky and blunder into a Lamaru hangout, right?”

“Shit. Well, maybe taking her jeans off would make him more inclined to say she could check out his tunnels.Of course, he was pretty much guaranteed to say yes if she let him check out her tunnel again, but ... no.”

“You let people into your life and you ended up getting hurt. Or hurting them. Either way, the road to pain was paved with other people, and she wanted no part of it anymore”

“She was alive, and she was stuck in this fucking tunnel, and she had just broken a fuck of a hex ward, and now she was going to have to walk through the toad-door into who-the-fuck-knew-what with someone who touched her only under duress. Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed.”

“Chess lied to herself every day; it was just something she did, like taking her pills or making sure she had a pen in her bag. Little lies, mostly. Insignificant. Of course there were big ones there, too, like telling herself that she was more than just a junkie who got lucky enough to possess a talent not everyone had. That she was alone by choice and that she was not terrified of other people because they couldn’t be trusted, because they carried filth in their minds and pain in their hands and they would smear both all over her given half the chance.”

“A promise to the Church is far more important than any other promise. Not just because the Church protects you, but because the Church is always watching you." - The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 1340”

“I’m not into danger, either.” “Aw, Chess. You so into it you ain’t climb out with a rope. Why else you do your job, live down here, buy from Bump?” “It’s just—I mean—I just do, is all.” Her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have let him come in here. She should have just sent him home and let him wash his stupid shirt himself. “No shame in it. Some of us needs an edge on things make us feel right, else we ain’t like feeling at all, aye?”