“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”