Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3)

by Jim Butcher

Fear has a lot of flavors and textures. There’s a sharp, silver fear that runs like lightning through your arms and legs, galvanizes you into action, power, motion. There’s heavy, leaden fear that comes in ingots, piling up in your belly during the empty hours between midnight and morning, when everything is dark, every problem grows larger, and every wound and illness grows worse. And there is coppery fear, drawn tight as the strings of a violin, quavering on one single note that cannot possibly be sustained for a single second longer – but goes on and on and on, the tension before the crash of cymbals, the brassy challenge of the horns, the threatening rumble of the kettle drums.

I’d hate to find out that the universe really wasn’t conspiring against me. It would jerk the rug out from under my persecution complex.