“[Zelden] turned to me. “Wait here. Inform Marcus that we will be setting up in the first-floor kitchen. I believe it may function as a portal to the other realm.”“The demons crawl out of the oven,” Annalise whispered to me as she passed.”

“​Crying on the kitchen floor, she looked up and gasped for breath, raking tears from her pale cheeks. “I need you,” she whispered. “Someone.”

“The first time I hung out with [David Blaine], he took me to this condemned building, and it had a pizza oven and he crawled into the pizza oven and turned the heat on to 400 degrees or something like that, and he stayed in it for I guess a half hour. He came out, and except for one or two second-degree burns, he was unscathed. You meet a lot of musicians and filmmakers and actors, but it's rare to meet someone who can step inside a pizza oven and take the heat. I was intrigued by that.”

“I’m hypoglycemic and squeamish and liable to pass out at the first sign of blood. That happened this morning. I came into the kitchen and found blood on the floor, right next to a few dead hookers.”

“Cassio,” she whispers. “Get me out of here.”

“I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned.”