“I felt like I was hobbling, like one oof the old crones from Act I of Macbeth - God knows my hair felt scraggy enough that I must have looked the part.”

“How the hell could Rhiannon keep people loyal to her if she was such a bitch?”Alanna gave me a knowing look.“I mean female people. It’s obvious how she kept her men happy.” My hands were planted on myhips and I was tapping my foot in time with my anger. (I looked very teacherish—as a matter of fact, I felt the sudden desire to reprimand a teenager. But there’s never one around when you need one.)”

“Yeah, I got the instructions straight from Seoras. That and a bunch of smart-ass comments about my education being sadly lacking and something about not knowing my arse from my ear or my elbow, and also something about me being a fanny, and I don't know what the hell that means.""Fanny? Like a girl's name?""I don't think so . . .”

“The Fomorians skittered backward, away from me, looking justifiably confused. I mean, really, how many human women actually run to them? And I was a human woman covered in swamp yuck, with wild red hair sticking out in matted hunks and arms flailing like a demented Bride of Frankenstein. I'd run from me.”

“I waited for my thighs and butt to uncramp. Of course, they didn't know the loosening rule. They were screaming things like *Are you crazy? Do you know we're thirty-five years old? Sit down and feed us a Twinkie!”

“I don’t like the way he looks at you.”My stomach lurched. “What do you mean? How does he look at me?”“Like you’re not a student and he’s not a teacher.”

“What if all I'd ever known was how it had been for the past three years - me being an unwanted outsider in my own family?I might have turned out like Aphrodite, and I might still be letting my parents control me because I was hoping desperately that I would be good enough, make them proud, so that some day they would really love me.”