“Kathleen," he calls, his voice a groan.There is magic in names. Can she hear him?"Kathleen," he calls again, louder.Behind him, the denizens of Twilight murmur."KATHLEEN," he cries. His anguish batters the shining wall, shifting the starstruck colors from rose and lapis to deep purple and bloody magenta, but it remains inviolable.Shadowman drops his scythe in the waters. He'll scream forever, if need be, until the day the walls tumble into the ocean."Hey, you."Shadowman's attention whips to the top of the wall some distance down the shoreline to his left. An angel is perched on the edge - fair hair, fair-eyed, skin a soft café. A recent crossing."Trade you," Custo says.Shadowman has no words."You want in or don't you? Heaven's no place for me, and I'm not hanging around until they figure it out." The angel glances over his shoulder.The murmurs of Twilight grow louder, sharper, but Shadowman pays them no mind. Not anymore. They've already done their worst."I do," Shadowman says.Custo flashes a grin. "Meet me at the wall.”

“You’re mine,” I told him, kissing each of his eyes before I looked at him. “No one gets you anymore; no one touches you anymore. Right?”He nodded, and I felt his heated breath fan over my face. “Put me up against this wall.”“No.” I shook my head. “No one sees you but me. No one hears you but me. All of you, your skin, your smell, your cum, all of it is mine, and especially your voice when you scream my name.”

“He has a really consistent routine. He comes in in the morning at around 8:30. He reads five newspapers. He reads The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Omaha World Herald. Then he has a stack of reports on his desk from the companies Berkshire owns, and some trade press like American Banker or oil and gas journals, and through the rest of the day, he alternates between flipping through this stuff and then talking on the phone to people either who call him or who he calls. He never calls his managers; they can call him. He is really accessible, but he leaves them alone.Then he has CNBC on all day long with the crawl, with the sound muted and if he sees his name cross along the bottom and they are talking about him, he will turn the sound on to find out what they are saying. That is his day. He doesn't do meetings -- there are no meetings.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kath protested, getting to her feet. Keath was telling her how to kill him.“I just need you to know.” Keath got to his feet too. He reached out and up his hands firmly on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. She wanted to look away but she couldn’t. There was something in Keath’s eyes. He was afraid of something, something he didn't want to tell her, as though he didn't want to scare her anymore.“I want to know that if it I need to be stopped,” Keath continued. “You will be able to stop me. Just promise me that you will, Kathleen.”

“He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or murmur soft love curses; but he whispered in his ear.'As you love me, Buck. As you love me,' was what he whispered.--Call of the Wild”

“He sank to his knees. "I don't know how to handle this. I don't know what you want from me. Quoi tu veux," he murmured, over and over, until the whirring noise slowed and his fingers curled deep into the mud.~Remy”