“Dick Elpinoy and I didn't get along. He was too hoity-toity for my tastes; I didn't follow rules well enough for his. But now we were united in villainy. Or something.”

“Well, Dr. Elpinoy will never admit it, but he suffers from performance anxiety-""Oh, shut up, you old cad," Elpinoy said, finally uncrossing his arms.”

“I broke away from Samedi and sprinted down the gangplank, screaming out Bram's name. His head turned, and he started limping toward me."Nora!" I heard someone yell.Bram met me halfway. He scooped me up with one arm and pulled my head toward his. I didn't fight it in the least. He kissed me harshly, and I returned it, leaping up on my toes, seeking out his chapped, broken lips with my own, inexpertly, needfully. And then he just held me as I cried, soaking his dirty T-shirt with my tears, his cheek on my head. "I thought you were gone," I managed to get out. "I thought you were really gone...""I thought I was, too," he said, laughing weakly. "But I'd never leave you if I had the choice. I was going to get back to you, or grind to dust trying.”

“Why didn't you go with your parents?" I shouted at Michael."Because I knew they were all right!" he shouted back, fixing his eyes on me. "I wasn't so sure about you! I couldn't call on you after your arrest. All I could do was vouch for you."I blinked. "You vouched for me?" New Victorians charged with crimes could get out of paying bail or remaining imprisoned if they had someone powerful and aristocratic enough to speak on their behalf."Yes! Didn't you parents tell you? I met them at the courthouse the day your counsel summoned them."I shook my head, and committed a note to memory: If parents survive, kill them.”

“It was five minutes of screaming, slamming myself against the door, and stamping my feet-and a minute of contemplating the cold, horrible idea that I might have to leave the room to find anyone, and maybe this had been their plan all along, and Oh God, Oh God-before I heard Dr. Elpinoy's nervous voice.”

“I got a demerit, professor." There was a kind of naughty amusement in her eyes that I found myself really liking.I smiled slowly. "Why did you do, Miss Dearly?""She henpecked Elpinoy in a most spectacular fashion," Renfield offered. "I think at one point she was actually hanging on his back." Nora made a sound of annoyance. "Alas, I was looking at a computer screen with Dr. Samedi at the time, and thus I'm afraid that neither of us can vouch for this with certainty."The laughter bubbled out of me before I could hold it back. "Were you?" I asked her."Define 'hanging.'""Bra,." Elpinoy appeared in one of the lab doorways. He gestured to the exterior doors. "Take her out. Now. Never in my life have I encountered such a little-""Lady?" I asked, trying to keep a straight face."Out.""'Phone call,'" Nora said, affecting his tone of voice and looking right at him. "'Let-ter.'""Not until Wolfe orders it!" Elpinoy marched into his lab again and slammed the door behind him.Nora stood up, her skirt bouncing a bit atop its puffy petticoat. "That man is an infuriating ponce.""And you're an excellent judge of character.”

“Later that evening, back at the airship, I cut a hole in a ribbon Beryl had given me and attached the cuff link, before tying it around my neck.Symbols are powerful.When he saw this, my father finally decided to ask after the extent of my loss. "I feel," he said, glancing across the rain-speckled deck of the ship, "like I have lost a on." His hand was trembling, a it always had whenever he admitted to great emotion. "I take it that you'd grown fond of him as well? He was such a noble young man.""Something like that," I confessed brokenly/”