“There was no answer. I looked up.Epsilon’s light shone out onto a picture on the wall.A round picture in a square frame.The golden symbol of O. The One. The symbol of perfection.The symbol of eternity. The One without beginning or end.The One who is the beginning and the end.The One to whom time is meaningless. The One who could do whatever he wanted with time. What had Mrs. Shiling said, in the kitchen, a year ago?“Time is nothing. Not to him. A moment in time. What is that t him?”Quivering from head to toe, I stared up at that simple O.”

“The O was not a number – a zero. It was a letter – the first letter of the word One. But it was far more than that. It was a symbol in itself – the symbol of unity. The perfect circle. Of the complete unit. The never ending. The One.And the snake? The snake was not a perfect circle. It could never be unified – not even if it began to eat its own tail. The symbol of one who depends only upon itself for nourishment.”

“But … even if I did – which I didn’t – how could I have found them myself, found them old and faded? If I only wrote them down myself – later? How can Sebastian have found them a hundred years ago – if I hadn’t even written them yet? And where did the information come from?”

“Why on earth do adults have to laugh so loudly at everything? Hyena laughs, the women worse than the men—except for the times the men were worse than the women.”

“What the tide takes away, the tide brings back.”

“Aidan’s hands itched to strangle the woman. He had known Marie from the moment of her birth—sixty two years ago—and they had never exchanged a cross word. And he suddenly wanted to strangle her. He should have ripped Ivan’s throat out. Flowers. Why hadn’t he thought of flowers? Why hadn’t Marie mentioned it to him first? Why had she accepted them? Whose side was she on, anyway? Flowers! He had the urge to rip those petals off one by one.“Look,” Marie cooed, “he even had the thorns removed so you wouldn’t hurt yourself. What a thoughtful man.”“What time did you tell the police we would see them?” Aidan interrupted, afraid that if he didn’t he would erupt into violence. He detested the way Alexandria kept caressing the petals of one of the white roses.”

“Holding each other, the rain cooling their bodies, they laughed like children. "I expected steam this time," Jacques said, crushing her to him."Can you do that?" Shea fit the back of her head into the niche of his sternum. One hand idly slid over the heavy muscles of his chest."Make us so hot we turn the rain to steam?" He grinned boyishly down at her, for the first time so carefree that he forgot for a moment the torment he had suffered.”