“What about the whiskey?" Jack said as they ran. "Won't it keep them out?"The Green Maidens don't drink anything but blood." Bob's disembodied voice floated after them. "The whiskey magick won't affect them."Wonderful," the old actor muttered, a tremor of fear in his voice. "I should've poured a Bloody Mary.”

“There must be blood, the girl thought. There must always be blood. The Green Wind said that, so it must be true. It will be all hard and bloody, but there will be wonders, too, or else why bring me here at all? And it's the wonders I'm after, even if I have to bleed for them.”

“I won't fatten them in cages, though. I won't ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won't change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won't drain out their life's blood. They can do all those things for themselves.”

“It ain't that you get religion. Religion gets you and then milks you dry. Won't let you drink a little whiskey. Won't let you make no fat-assed girls grin and giggle. Won't let you do a damn thing except work for what you'll get in the hearafter. I live in the here and now.”

“But there's a juicy artery in your groin," he said after a pause to regroup, his voice as slithery as a snake on a slide."Don't you talk dirty," I told him. "I won't listen to that.”

“My heart lost rhythm at the flicker of phantom in the whiskey-stained voice.”