Emily, there are enemies everywhere. We have to be on our guard, especially for the next couple of weeks._ Theo sighed unhappily. __his is going to be the longest fortnight of my life._ __hat__ saying something,_ I joked, __iven how long you__e lived._ __xactly,_ he said, without smiling.

The feel of her skin as she struggled beneath, the life inside, the death without. The breaching of life and death, of survival uncaged inside him: a dark beast with violence and sex in its soul. In his soul.

Velva wasn__ merely a rose among the thorns, the lily of the valleys, she was Empress amongst the stars and planet.

and the wind gathered the leaves as a mother gathers her children and blew them irrevocably, lovingly, into the haunted wildness

There was a naked jock on my bed and a thing with tentacles coming out of my toilet. One of these things did not belong, and if you tell me that it was the naked jock, you shouldn't be reading this story.

That's what I'm trying to do; it's like counting stars, only so much prettier.