“He stands in the kitchen doorway, a black figure surrounded by the yellow light background, the small details of his face unseen from the darkness of the living room. His left shoulder leans slightly against the threshold, a pistol suspended from the left hand, dangling in the yellow space between the hip and the dark.”

“He looked at her and tilted his head very slightly in wonder. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, how beautiful she was. Her hair was held away from her face by the ruby and gold headband that crossed her dark brows. Her skin was flawless and so fair as to be translucent. She dressed as always in an imitation of Hephestia, but it was far easier to imagine the impersonal cruelty of the Great Goddess than to see cruelty in the face in the Queen of Attolia. Looking at her, Eugenides smiled. Attolia saw his smile, without any hint of self-effacement or flattery or opportunism, a smile wholly unlike that of any member of her court, and she hit him across the face with her hand. His head rocked on his shoulders. He made no sound but sank to his knees...”

“From outer darkness to outer darkness, a feathered meteor through a moment of light...”

“Logan licked a glob of strawberry jelly from her lower lip and smiled upat Odin. Only one comment seemed to perfectly fit her current situation. “Isee dead people.”He leaned forward, hands on his hips. “Me, too. It’s the only explanationfor what’s standing in front of me. Unless some high school kids broke intothe anatomy closet and stole the classroom skeleton, stretched some cadaverskin over that bitch then cast an ancient ritual to animate it.”

“I'm left wondering just how far away from his heart he would let her go.”

“His determined face, guitar at his hips, legs shoulder-width apart, his black hair & dark eyes, the emotion in his voice...”

“The whole right side of his face was smashed in, concave forehead and crushed cheekbone and one eye bugging precariously from a broken socket. He was purplish-black, and dirty white: Maggots seethed from every pore and crawled across him in excited wriggly piles, blowflies waving and blooming and wilting, the bits of bone they'd scraped clean glinting like tiny mosaic tiles. Scraps of jeans and a leather jacket clung to the sticky seething mess of his flesh. He was big, big shouldered, a good foot taller; chit-chitter, he went, even standing still.”