Quotes from Joe Schreiber

The last of Zahhara's patients died that night. In the end it happened very quickly. About half of them had been human, the others different alien species, but it didn't make a difference. In the last moments some of the nonhumans had reverted to their native languages, some had clutched her hand and talked to her passionately- if brokenly, through uncontrollable coughing-as if she were some family member or loved one, and she'd listened and nodded even if she didn't understand a word of it.

Your husband had something he meant to pass on to you," Zahara said. "I just wanted to make sure that you got it." Reaching into her pocket, she handed the woman a single tattered sheet of flimsi.

Hated them worse than he'd ever hated Sartoris or Aur Myss or anything in his life. Hated them with an intensity he'd never imagined himself capable of. It was as if all the molten fear he'd suffered up till now had hardened into glassy black peaks of pure rage.

You know, my sister heard you calling somebody about buying guns one night.""Annie is a wonderful girl,"Gobi said. "She reminds me of . . .""Who?"She hesitated and shook her head. "No one. You are fortunate to have such a wonderful sister.

Zo shook her head. It wasn't going to happen like this, she wanted to say, it didn't get to end this way. He didn't get to win.

It is safer with me.""Forget it,"I said. "I'm still not going in.""Then you are being very stupid.""I got twenty-two hundred on my SATs,"I said. "How stupid is that?""Stupid enough not to realize when someone cares about you.""Meaning what, exactly?"She looked at me. "What do you think it means?

My conscious mind absorbed what my instincts had already realized: one of the girls was Gobi; the other was so similar that she could have been her twin. I couldn't exactly say how I knew which was which; some nuance of the smile, a subtle glint of humor that the other, more earnest girl didn't reveal. I held the photo directly up to my eyes, looking more closely. Both girls were wearing pendants around their necks. Half-hearts. I am Death.

Now it was brisk and didactic, like that of an obedience instructor training an obstinant dog, and I hated him for it, the hate momentarily eclipsing all fear and reason.

The face was bulbous and pink and hairless, utterly unremarkable, a Sunday school teacher's face, and that was the most unsettling part of it. Although he was probably my dad's age or older, the slack, anonymous complexion and dead eyes made it impossible to exactly pinpoint his age. He could have been a wax statue, a young actor made up to look old, or an amateurishly embalmed corpse.

The truth is more complicated than that,"she said, "not as neat.

It was as if the door to an asylum had been flung open inside his skull, allowing a wave of incoherent screams, individual cries, and desperate fragmented phrases into his mind.

What's your real name?" I asked. "Zusane," she said. "Zusane Zaksauskas. But now I am Gobija, goddess of fire.

You are very bold," he said, gripping her hand. "We will see how bold you are when I rip your nails out." "Go ahead," she said. "I feel nothing. I am already dead." Now Slavin's grin became real again. Real and hungry.

The innocent suffered while evil thrived, and to the victors went the spoils.

She walked past the TV, the smoky blue light illuminating the sharp planes of her face, and I saw that her eyes had the dazed, insomniac glassiness of a long-term drug user or someone who'd been abused so long that she'd ceased to feel anything at all.

New York was still here, but it had changed in our absence. It was long after midnight, and vast walls of fog off the river shimmered along the sidewalks like the ghosts of tenements that had long ago been leveled to make way for the parking garages and office buildings. It was a spectral Manhattan, a double-exposed landscape where the past folded back over on itself in overlapping decades.

Color had flushed back through her cheeks, and the metallic brightness in her swollen eyes wasn't entirely rational, but it was alive, watchful.

If you knew it was there, why didn't you just take it before now?" "You would have noticed. You are a smart boy." A lie, and we both knew it.

And now,"she said, raising her hand for a cab, "your wish has been granted. You may go home and forget I ever existed."A taxi swung up to the curb. "Whatever happens next is not on your conscience." "Wait,"I said. "Gobi . . ." She leaned forward, kissing me briefly on the mouth. "Au revoir, Perry." "Wait,"I said. But she didn't. She climbed into the taxi. She didn't look back.

In her mind, the orchid was still screaming.

She was completely soaked in blood. Her hair swung in red tangles around her shoulders, and her face was a gleaming mask, her eyes like hard diamonds. I am Death.

I have nightmares about it now. I probably will for months. And I think …" She shook her head. "… what if it isn't over? What if the Sickness that Darth Scabrous created … got out somehow?

Do you always ask so many questions?" "My guidance counselor says it's the sign of an intellectually curious mind.

Scopique leaned in close. "Lord Scabrous." "What about him?" "If he is abducting students for his own purposes," Scopique said, "then someone needs to find out who might be next.