“The Assassin moved quietly from roof to roof until he was well away from the excitement around the Watch House. His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.”

“His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.”

“A Ford motorcar is a magical thing in the night with the spraying lamps against the pitch road and the smell of metal and perfume under the clothy roof.”

“It was as if he could feel, in the deepest pit of his being, the very air in the room, filling the space like water, streaming through cracks in the frame of the window, cold, like ice-blue vapor. The sensation expanded and he sensed the wind moving around the turret that housed the sleeping quarters. It was alive, swirling over the conical roof, channeling into missing shingles and exposed rafters.”

“Man, that did his ego good. Matter of fact, she hit him with anything like that again, he was going to feel like he could bench-press a city bus. With a jet plane on its roof.”

“Master Stuart made his letters into paper darts and launched them page by page from the roof of the house-watching them descend and fade into the green ravine below...Some he saved to trade at school for other artifacts of war sent home by other elder brothers like his own-but only the letters mailed from France were worthy of this exchange. They had to have the smell of fire.”