“The dank smell of death in that alleyway haunted her senses, her memories. She kept thinking this was the end—this was what death felt like, what death looked like. Death was a …‘Vampire,’ she whispered.”

“You're beautiful this morning," Archer said, stopping before her, kissing her nose. "You're impossibly sweet in my shirt."That might be but she felt like death. She would gladly make the trade; how blissful it would be to feel impossibly sweet and look like death.”

“I know what death smells like. Death smells like gasoline, singed hair and fingernails.It smells like cooking meat. My meat.”

“Eyes like streams of melting snow, cold with the things she does not know. Heaven above and Hell beneath, liquid flames to hide her grief. Death, death, death with no release. Death, death, death with no release.”

“You're like a doll I had when I was a kid. She was all stiched together and her head kept falling off, but I loved that doll. That's what you look like. Like somebody just loved you to death.”

“Hatred had invaded her entire being; every cell in her body had hatred in it. She wondered if everyone could smell it on her. It smelled like death and coffee, like lilies and dirt, and it permeated her.”