“She'd grown up believing in hell in an abstract nightmare way; but west Texas had given her something more concrete upon which to dread the afterlife.”

“Oh, it doesn't work at all. That's the problem! It's an endless, halting parade of inspections, bribes, and nonsense—but if you're aboard a Texas vessel, you'll find less inconvenience along the way." "It's because of their guns!" declared Mr. Henderson, once more escaping his reverie, bobbing out of it as if to gasp for air. "Concise, my love." Mrs. Henderson gave him a smile. "And correct. Texans are heavily armed and often impatient. They don't need to be transporting arms and gunpowder to create a great nuisance for anyone who stops them, so they tend to be stopped…less often.”

“Adrian had a Guinness because I guess he felt like drinking a loaf of bread or something. That's what it smelled like, anyway.”

“Surreal. It was his word of the week. "This must be one of the circles of hell Dante accidentally left off the list.”

“I don’t see why not,” I all but snapped at him. “His body was experimented upon, and there are records of it. What else would you call it?” “I don’t know. Necropsy?”

“They obviously weren't trying to recruit us, which was sort of a shame. I imagined a full unit of vampire soldiers and I got a little giddy, and distracted. Bad idea, maybe. But it'd be epic, wouldn't it?”

“Did you even use anything at all in that bag of yours?""No, but I might use some of it later." And I almost certainly would, once I got rid of this crybaby and picked up my drag queen.”