“What's going on here?" Miles demanded, pushing his way past the last of the stampeding throng. "And why is Santa worshiping that elf?”

“And I want you to know," Max said kindly to him, "I don't hold you in any way responsible."Lysander frowned. "For what?""For sending me an assistant who wanted to take over New York with the help of a virgin-raping,mundane-eating demon."Lysander stiffened. "I am not 'in any way responsible' for that!""You did authorize the assignment," I reminded him."Well, I— I—" Lysander cleared his throat. "The decision was made at headquarters. All I did was signthe standard paperwork.”

“Why are you only wearing one shoe?" he asked."I lost the other. It upsets me to talk about it.”

“Aren't you going to answer it?" Lopez asked."I'm afraid it's my mother," I said."She calls on Sundays?""No, she calls whenever things are going badly.”

“I pictured myself saying in a court of law, "Well, Your Honor, there wasthis evil sorcerer's apprentice and a flesh-eating, power-granting demonhe summoned from a primordial dimension . . ."Even I couldn't see a way to make that script work.”

“The fact that I had killed a man was really putting a crimp in my lovelife.Well, okay, to be strictly accurate, I hadn't killed him. But I hadhelped. And I had watched enough of the Emmy Award-winning cops-andlawyersdrama Crime and Punishment on TV to know that cops weren't veryunderstanding about that sort of thing. I had even auditioned for therole of a murderess in a C&P episode the previous year, but I didn't getthe part. So, since I had never even played a killer, actually being onenow was something of a novelty.”

“Stella's?""It's a restaurant called Bella Stella in Little Italy."He frowned. "On Mulberry Street.""You know it?" That didn't surprise me. It was a pretty famous place."Of course I know it, Esther. There've been two mob hits there in thepast five years, and Stella Butera launders money for the Gambello crimefamily."Okay, so it was notorious as well as famous.”