“We need a bigger gun.”“We need a shower,” Raphael said.“Gun first. Shower later.”Ten minutes later I walked into the Order’s office. A group of knights standing in the hallway turned at my approach: Mauro, the huge Samoan knight; Tobias, as usual dapper; and Gene, the seasoned former Georgia Bureau of Investigations detective. They looked at me. The conversation died.My clothes were torn and bloody. Soot stained my skin. My hair stuck out in clumps caked with dirt and blood. The reek of a dead cat emanated from me in a foul cloud.I walked past them into the armory, opened the glass case, took Boom Baby out, grabbed a box of Silver Hawk cartridges, and walked out.Nobody said a thing.”

“Twenty minutes later, I walk out of Melinda's hotel with a plate of finger sandwiches, a bag of prostitute clothes, and a weird wedge on my head that makes me look like you could tip me upside down and fill it with cream of mushroom.I need another donut.”

“I was waiting for my body receipt when Morelli walked in. He nodded to Ranger and grinned at me in my whiteness. “I was at my desk, and Mickey told me I had to come out to take a look,” Morelli said. “It’s floor,” I told him. “I can see that. If we add some milk and eggs, we can turn you into a cake.”

“You need a name.” I covered the receiver for a moment. “We need a team name.” “Hunters,” Raphael said. “Valiant Knights of the Fur,” Dali said. “Justice Group,” Jim said. “Since Justice League is taken.” “Fools.” Doolittle shook his head. “Fools,” I said into the receiver.”

“Shall we amaze them?” I said, looking out into the crowd.Shane smiled down at me. “Grace, trust me, they were amazed just by you walking in.”

“And I felt next to nothing as I walked to the village; I paid my respects to the countryside yet was unable to detect solemn sympathy in its quiet or reproach in its stillness. Usually that road brought me miles of footage from the past: the bright-faced ten-year-old running for the Oxford bus; the lardy pubescent, out on soul-rambles (i.e. sulks), or off for a wank in the woods; the youth, handsomely reading Tennyson on summer evenings, or trying to kill birds with feeble, rusted slug-guns, or behind the hedge smoking fags with Geoffrey, then hawking in the ditch. But now I strode it vacantly, my childhood nowhere to be found.”