C.E. Murphy

“Since I didn't have any world-class fencing skills, I kicked Cernunnos in the nuts again. I didn't have to know how to use a sword to do that, and he was standing there like he was asking for it, so it seemed justified. Shock and rage filled his green eyes all over again and he doubled. I guess there must be rules that people fighting gods usually followed. Next time, maybe someone would give me a primer.”

“...we lay there in the dark for a split second before the beast galumphed toward us. Meabh, always quick with a sword, sprang to her feet and charged the dragon head-on while I mostly just wondered who or what I'd offended in a past life that this one was peopled by dragons. Except I didn't have any past lives, so apparently I'd offended somebody in this life and was facing instant karma. That didn't really improve anything, in my ever so humble opinion.”

“Logic was puny in the face of my wrath. Logic was puny and magic was mighty: I had just gotten rebirthed, refilled and renewed, and was fast on my way to resentful.”

“In the past, my brain babbling at such length had meant there was something it either didn't want to think about--which things numbered in the dozens right now--or it was working out some extreme cleverness that would at any moment leap out and surprise me. Much to my dismay, nothing leapt out.”

“Nobody who loved life and new experiences that much was ever going to get old, not really. Wiser and eventually dead, maybe, but not old.”

“It wasn't that I didn't feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn't do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, 'A wee little bit,' instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do.”

“You ever get the feeling your life is a string festooned with bells and tie4d to hundreds of others you don't know anything about? And that sometimes somebody pulls their string, and your bells ring?" Gary looked at me a long moment before rather gently saying, "Yes and no, darlin'. We all get that feeling from time to time. Difference is, with you, it could be real.”

“I opened my eyes to find Gary and my mother sitting cross-legged up against a half-fallen wall, both of them laughing so hard they had tears running down their faces. My mother had Gary’s forearm in one hand as she wheezed, “She didn’t, she didn’t!” and wiped tears away with the other, and Gary nodded so merrily it appeared his head would go bobbling off. It was so completely incongruous with the farewell I’d just experienced I just sat there, offended on general principles, and waited for them to notice I’d woken up. Instead my mother threw her head back and shrieked like a delighted banshee, laughter bouncing off the crumbling walls. I looked upward. The surviving banshees still sat in the oak rafters, many of them with expressions of accusation. This was not how things were done, and it was clearly all my fault.”

“Desert heat or not, the idea that my younger self was facing her last moments was a bucket of cold water in the face. I didn’t like her, but she appeared to have her shit together in a way I hadn’t for a long time, and she had, frankly, deserved better than me. I tried to wet my lips, had nothing to do it with and croaked, “Sorry.” “Don’t be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.”

“Yes " Morrison said dryly. "I'm sure it would have helped with flying the car, if any of us had been calm and rational enough to think of taking a drum out and performing some theme music for your Jame's Bond meets Harry Potter special effects. But since we weren't, now I'm going to drum till you stop looking like something the cat dragged in. Don't argue with me.”

“He rallied a little. "Who are you? What do you know about this? Disease control is our job, not yours. Who are you?""My name," I said, mostly uner my breath, "is Siobhan Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick, and I'm the answer to all your prayers.”

“Alban’s eyes widened, palpable shock rolling off him. “Daisani’s assistant? That Vanessa Gray?” “That one.” Alban whistled, a long high sound of wind howling through stone, and Margrit looked at him in surprise. “You can whistle?” His eyebrows wrinkled. “Can’t you?” “Of course, but it’s so frivolous. You’re sort of stolid. I wouldn’t have thought whistling was in a gargoyle’s nature.” Alban chuckled. “I don’t do it often.”

“I’m a lawyer. I meet people every day who are on the surface considerably worse than you are. You, Janx, Alban, you’re really all so…normal. You can do stuff I can’t, but so can Michael Jordan.” Dismay hit her palpably enough to make her want to step back, though she held her ground even as she groaned. “Please don’t tell me he’s one of you.” Daisani’s shoulders rose and fell, a single admission of silent laughter. “I believe Mr. Jordan is as human as you are, Miss Knight.”

“You fought demons?" Jane said incredulously, "And I thought my life was weird.""You turn into a giant panther. Your life is weird.”

“He fell ass over tea Kettle”

“start with one true thing”

“You went back in time,” he repeated, “and you expect his cell phone to work?”“Well, no, I just, I mean, I came back and he hasn’t! Shouldn’t he have?”Morrison, very steadily, said, “Were you together?”“No! I just said he went to fight the Morrigan!”“I see.” There was a pause. “The man is seventy-four years old, Joanie. He can take care of himself. If you were,” a great and patient pause filled the line before he went on, “time traveling. If you were time traveling and got separated, then I can’t think of any reason he would necessarily come back to the present at the same time you did.”“Except I was the focal point, it was my fault, it --!”“Joanne. Siobhan. Siobhan Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick.”I didn’t think anybody had ever said my name like that before. I gulped down a hysterical sob and whispered, “Yeah?”Morrison, with gentle emphasis, said, “I love you. Now pull yourself together and go find the bad guy,” and hung up.”

“She hissed, right there behind my ear, and I had the horrible idea she was spitting maggots into my hair. Why maggots were a problem when I was about to be dead, I didn’t know, but the idea completely grossed me out. “In the womb I heard you die, for no one lives when a banshee cries.” I wasn’t just going to die. I was going to be rhymed to death. That simply wasn’t fair.”

“I swear on Annie’s grave,” Gary repeated to Mel, “this ain’t my fault. They were like this when I picked ’em up at the station.”

“He can’t keep this up forever, Joanne. Stop fucking around." Did other people have little voices in their heads that said things like that?”

“Find anything about the Blade?” Billy let out an explosive sigh and creaked back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. “Comic book references. Stuff about some swordsman named Bob Anderson. Wesley Snipes pictures.” “Really?” I perked up, edging around his desk to try to get a look at the screen. “Any half-naked ones?” “Joanie!” I drooped. “I didn’t think so. There wasn’t nearly enough half-naked Wesley in those movies, anyway.”

“it took Coyote a very long time indeed to show up, or that he looked distracted when he did. How a dog could look distracted, I didn’t know, but there you had it. “I’m not,” he said for the umpteenth time, “a dog.”

“Billy, I can’t even pick my nose without using a finger.” Sometimes my mouth should stop and consult my brain before it says anything. Billy got this wide-eyed look of admiration that belonged on a nine-year-old boy. It said, Wow, that was really gross, and, more important, How come I didn’t think of it? My mouth consulted my brain this time, and I asked, “I don’t suppose you could just forget I said that?” “No,” Billy said, in a tone that matched the admiration still in his eyes. “I don’t think I can. I’m going to have to tell that one to Robert.” “Melinda will kill you.”

“To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly to the frustration meter. Trying to explain to men that no, I wasn't being manipulative, I just couldn't stop my eyes from leaking salt water, only added to the aggravation.”

“I suppose I knew on an intellectual level that graves weren't especially made for getting out of. I mean, you start with a hermetically sealed casket and then you dump six feet of dirt on top of it. Over time the earth gets compacted, which can't make it easy to dig through. So even if you're a very angry and determined zombie, you've kind of got your work cut out for you just escaping from the grave.Which was, I suppose, why we got hit with an initial wave of zombie bugs, birds and rodents. I bet some people would say if you've never picked undead mosquitoes out of your teeth, you've never lived. Under that definition, I'd be just as happy to have not lived, thanks.”

“I'm not a dog”

“One forgets the fear of heights when one cannot fall”

“They're constants, aren't they?" ... "Books are. That's why we like them so much. They seem immutable. They're not, of course. Not from the author's first draft to the tenth printing, but they seem like it.”

“I'm not a goddamned faith healer! I don't talk to God! I'm a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken!--Joanne ”

“Rita folded her arms around herself and peered up at me. “If you’d asked methree months ago I’d have said you were hitting the bottle too hard. But then Igot stabbed and should have died, but instead a bunch of cops and ambulancepeople showed up because somebody who wasn’t even there sent them on ahead to save my life. If something like that happens to someone like me, you start tohave a little faith in something bigger. I don’t know if I believe in magic or miracles all the time. But I believe in you, Detective Walker. I believe in you.”

“He lets me fly.”

“Why do airline pilots always call passengers "folks"? I don't usually take umbrage at generic terminology--I'm one of those forward-thinkers who believes that "man" encompasses the whole darned race -- but at whatever 0'clock in the mornning. I thought it would be nice to be called sometihng that suggested unwashed masses a little less.”

“She had a body that even I coveted in a strictly Platonic sense.”

“friends don't threaten friends' distributor caps”

“Thank God genuine video phones hadn't been invented. I hadn't even grabbed a towel. Ford Prefect would despair of me.”

“In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting. In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.I liked the Irish way better.”