“maybe not insane, just stupid. "Eighteen. She moved us when I was still and infant. I thought everyone knew all about the nosoul."He winced. "You shouldn't call yourself a nosoul. New doesn't mean you don't have a soul. The Soul Teller would have know the day you were born.”

“Who am I?" My first spoken words."No one," she said. "Nosoul.”

“you're thinking too hard about how to respond to my stupidity. Have to be polite don't you?”

“Sam." I felt like I was choking. Or drowning. Maybe some of both. He stopped walking, at any rate. "You asked how I'd know who you were."Silence."I'll always know.”

“Sam hauled open the library door."There you are!" Whit pushed up from the desk he'd been hunched over. "We thought you two had given up on us.""Unlike some people I know," I said, removing my mittens and scarf, "we don't live here.""She says that now." Sam followed me toward Whit's and Orrin's desks, where they worked over flat electronic screens. "But the first thing she said when I showed her the library was that we should move in."Orrin lifted an eyebrow, oddly delicate for someone so large. "The acoustics would be terrible.”

“Not insane, just stupid.”

“Ana. I want you to know I'd choose you. If it were up to anyone, if what I wanted counted for anything, I'd have chosen you.”