“They were tricky, those demons. Could they be trusted? Of course they could be trusted. She'd created them. She owned them. They wouldn't lead her astray.”

“She'd been trained as a child no to trust anyone, but he'd just saved her life, and she was freezing. He could be a yeti for all she cared.”

“Besides, how could I trust them, when I couldn't even trust myself?”

“Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.”

“He was yelling at them all to follow. Claire didn't want to; she didn't trust them, any of them. But the boy took her hand, and said, "Trust me, Claire," and she felt something inside her that had been howling in fear...go quiet.”

“They appear somewhat unreliable," he murmured."Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to.""Are you sure?""She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?”