“Then Jix locked eyes with him and said very calmly, "If you hit her, I will open my mouth wide enough to swallow you whole, force you through my bowels, then out my other end."Avalon scowled at him. "You can't do that.""Try me," Jix said. Avalon backed off, then angrily stormed away, and Jix winked at Jill. "One in five.”

“So the gods must mean something else,” said Jix.“God, not gods!” insisted Johnnie.Nick threw up his hands. “God, gods, or whatever,” said Nick. “Right now, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Jesus, or Kukulcan, or a dancing bear at the end of the tunnel. What matters is that we have a clue, and we have to figure it out.”“Why?” Johnnie asked again. “Why does God – excuse me, I mean ‘the Light of Universal Whatever’- why does it just give us a freakin’ impossible clue? Why can’t it just tell us what we’re supposed to do?”“Because,” said Mikey. “the Dancing Bear wants us to suffer.”

“Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn’t tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer.”“I think,” said Nick, “they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don’t they? I mean, when it’s an accident or out of ignorance, or something.”Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. “You’re a lot smarter than you were back in the cage,” Clarence said. “You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you’re almost a person.”“Thanks . . . but ‘almost’ is still ‘almost.’”“Yeah, well, we’re all almost something.”

“Connor tries to hold her arm to give her support, but she shakes him off and throws him a nasty gaze. "If I want your help, I'll ask. Do I look feeble to you?" "Actually, yes.""Looks are deceiving." she says. " After all, when I saw you, I thought you looked reasonably intelligent." "Very funny.”

“And," added Mikey. "she's my sister."The others looked at him for a moment, and broke out laughing."Yeah, yeah," Squirrel scoffed, "and the McGill is my cousin."Now Allie burst out laughing, which made Mikey more annoyed."If the McGill was your cousin," Mikey said, "I can guarantee he'd disown you.”

“You know," he said, his voice making me feel cold in spite of the heat, "this city can get ahold of you and pull you back no matter how hard you try to climb out. Like a grave.”

“When I touched that boy, I felt something. Something awful. Something I can’t describe.”“We all felt it,” Nick said.“You may have felt it, but I caused it.” Then both his eyes seemed to go far away. “Something changed out there. I don’t know what it was, but something in the world changed because that kid didn’t deserve what I did to him—and the powers that be know that I did it.” Nick watched as a tear fell from his Everlost eye and disappeared through the living world table.“What if,” said Nick, not even sure what he was going to say yet, “what if you were that kid and you were told you could change the world, but you would have to sacrifice yourself to do it?”Clarence chuckled at the thought. “I believe that question was already asked a long time ago, and that creepy kid did not look anything like Jesus to me.”“But you do think that something changed. . . .”“I don’t know whether it’s good or bad.”“What if it’s neither?” suggested Nick. “What if we get to make it one or the other?”