“Then my rescuer turned to look at me and I felt his eyes reach right down into my guts and tangle them up in knots.With that look I knew I'd jumped straight from the kettle into the fire.”

“Another person, more or less, thinking I'm crazy wasn't going to make me lose sleep. But the look I got from Mr. Shaw wasn't "she's a whack-job," it was more like "hmmm.""What else can you do?"Now it was my turn to stare. "Uh, well, I have a freakshow ability to fall through spirals into other times. Is that what you mean?""Must be a little disconcerting, that.""A little. The puking's fun though." Mr. Shaw laughed. I'd made the man laugh. Score one for the Clocker.”

“Fortunately, by the time I'd gotten to the stairs I had finished gasping and stepping on dead people, so I was pretty prepared for the next thing to startle me out of my skin.”

“Cool. I was hanging out with a lunatic I'd found lurking over a dead person. I had a choice here. I could roll with this and somehow figure out how to get back to my real life, or I could freak out and lose it right here, probably be committed with him, and end up in a loony bin of truly epic Victorian ugliness, never to be seen again.”

“The gas mask keeps me looking like any other tagger - skinny, fast, and vaguely male. Someone would have to be pretty close to tell I'm a girl, and frankly, no one ever gets that close.”

“The three of us blended with the clientele as well as a fifteen year-old ex-thief, a girl from the future masquerading as a young man, and a second-son of a Lord-turned-student could.”

“So how do you know Vampires aren't just some legend made up to scare little kids into minding their parents?" Adam's voice was full of scorn. "Because you and I exist and we're descendants of Fate and Time.”