Emily McKay

“The Vampires have a plan to take over the world?" I asked. I felt a bit dumb, gasping in surprise at every twist to the story and incredulously repeating all the important of bits. But somehow Carter's version of things made sense. I felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz when the green curtain is pulled back to reveal the truth.”

“You just told me you didn't intend to love me. You didn't want to love me. You got yourself arrested to keep yourself away from me. That's not love. That's a compulsion. And, by the way, kudos on coming up with the worst pickup line of all time.”

“I worry about Lily, sluggish as she is. Will she see Carter's truths? Will he tell her? God knows she won't hear them. She's moving too fast to hear anyone's music but her own. She's so set, but I know he could make her settled. I tried to sync their noise into music, but they both pushed back. Too obdurate to be oblong.Silly Lily. How can she resist someone who brings gum and sounds like math?”

“What can I say to convince you that I'm on the up-and-up?""Why don't you just start at the beginning and I'll stop you when you've won me over.”

“Carter may have just beaten the crap out of me, he may have shot me in the back, but he'd bought me Dr. Pepper. I know it was effed up, but somehow, it balanced out.”

“His presence makes me feel thin. Not model slender. But worn, like an old cotton housedress. Thin like a specimen pressed between two plates of glass. Like a bug squashed beneath the marching boot of a soldier.Thin and worn and silence like I've never known.This is how I know he is not a Tick.They are as pitiable as they are inhuman. They are fear personified. Their emotions and minds given over to rage and hunger. They are all noise. He is none.If he is not a Tick, does that make him a Tock?”