“It came charging toward me, several hundred pounds of angry-looking monster, and I did the only thing any reasonable wizard could have done.I turned around and ran like hell.”

“You can't be angry with me, because I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again.”

“I call it Dante’s Syndrome,” John said. I had never heard him call it any such thing.“Meaning I think Dave and I gained the ability to peer into Hell. Only it turns out Hell is righthere, it’s all through us and around us and in us like the microbes that swarm through yourlungs and guts and veins. Hey, look! An owl!”We all looked. It was an owl, all right.”

“We passed by a few workers, who did double takes as we ran past. I supposed that the image of a hairless cat in a sweater being followed by a stressed-looking chick in stiletto boots could have been funny. I was too anxious to get the hell out of there to see any humor in it.”

“Todd came toward me with the squad trailing behind him like a street gang of angry thugs with breasts.”

“Ok, she was close to being right. I did have a thing about cats. And I didn’t particularly have a good reason for feeling that way. It was as if it was, innate. Tara on the other hand had this freakish affinity towards them, or should I say, they towards her. It was like she had the fresh scent of salmon that only cats could smell. It was endearing, and a little creepy.”