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“But I think that losing their mobile phones and their wallets will teach them a valuable lesson about... um... you know... respecting the homeless.” “You don’t think they learned that by having the crap beaten out of them by a homeless woman?” asked Andrea. “To say nothing of a chick who can turn into oxygen?” “You know what would make this lesson extra-special?” said Felicity after a moment. “We should take their shoes as well.” The Asian Pawn shook her head disapprovingly, then shrugged. “Yeah, all right.”
there seemed to be enough room in the tub for a party of six good friends, seven extremely good friends, or fifteen pedigree jellyfish. Instead of a bijou orgy or some purebred Olindias formosa, however, it currently contained Odette and about fourteen hundred liters of thick, viscous slime.
“I couldn’t see it, and I couldn’t see through it. You know there are a few things my abilities don’t work on. Water. The wood of the cedar tree. Salmon. Air.”
over the centuries the Grafters had remained something of a bogeyman to new recruits. This was no mean feat, given that many of the new recruits themselves could be considered eligible for the title of bogeyman.
“So, yes,” Odgers said firmly, “we are going in. We are the troops of the Checquy, we are trained, we have supernatural powers, and we have big fucking guns. This is what we do.”
It was an ideal place for the young and wealthy to stand around and eye one another over kumquatinis.
He could report these developments to his lord and master, the king. That would be the proper thing to do, bureaucratically speaking. But His Majesty Carlos II, king of Spain; duke of Milan, Lothier, Brabant, Limburg, and Luxembourg; count of Flanders, Hainaut, and Namur; and count palatine of Burgundy, the anointed sovereign to whom the governor-general owed his sworn allegiance, was, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucking useless. Indeed, he was so inbred that he could barely function as a human being, let alone as a king.
“The difference between a security guard and a prison guard is one order from the boss,”
They explained that the baby was not dead, that he was in the care of the government, and that there would be some more duties for me here at the hospital. If I took on those duties and kept it all secret, then I would receive a good deal of money and the gratitude of the nation. If I didn’t — well, they never actually said what would happen. But I understood it wouldn’t be nearly as nice.”
“And so, Rook Thomas, it appears that the man was strangled to death by his own beard.” “By or with?” asked Myfanwy, frowning. “By.” “Well, that definitely sounds worthy of some attention,”
He tapped away at the screen, and a frown grew on his face. “Oh, dear,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, dear, oh, dear.” “What?” asked Odette nervously. “Is there a problem?” “Not with your foot,” he said absently. “I’m just checking the cricket scores, and the West Indies are thrashing us.”
Pawn William Goode, after being disemboweled by a Grafter, haughtily re-emboweled himself and then backhanded his opponent, sending him flying nine miles.
Every child on the Estate grew up on stories of the heroism and badassitude of the Barghests. Every child on the Estate wanted to be a Barghest, until they found out that most of the coffins at Barghest funerals didn’t contain bodies. Instead, they contained parts of bodies, jars of puree, bits of rubble, or, in one memorable and bewildering case, the shattered remnants of a Louis XIV chair.
Pawn O’Brien led her through their barracks, which were equipped with a weight room, a sprung-floor movement studio, a sprung-ceiling movement studio, an indoor shooting range, a sauna, a steam room, a fog room, a small cinema, a large lounge, and a medium-size woman who stood up from a desk to greet them.
Something about a computer that’s eating the Internet. Good riddance, I say — it’s all smut and people whining.
Four and a half hours later the Barghests charged back into the barracks, loudly singing some sort of victory song in Latin.
She had nine confirmed kills of people and two confirmed kills of creatures who, although they wore trousers, were not counted as people by the Checquy.
The supernatural is always secret, always discreet. Up until it eats you.
and a drunk individual whom no one seemed to know but who kept muttering about some goddamn beekeeper and the dynamics of rocks in space.
this is clearly an allusion to someone famous, but I can't work out who it is!
The creature was mottled gray and brown. Its shape put Odette in mind of a lumpy butternut squash, if a butternut squash were several stories high and smelled like the gym socks of a lesser god.
Very peculiar, but the preliminary tests have revealed no unusual properties.” “No unusual properties?” repeated Odette incredulously as she looked up at the wall of skin. “Well, no radiation or internal toxicity,” amended the doctor. “Temperature, gravity, light levels, and the rate of time passing all remain normal in its vicinity. None of the attending personnel have reported any medical problems or abrupt shifts in their height, weight, or sexual orientation.”
“I’m afraid the fact that you’ll be examining a dead supernatural creature of demonstrated malignancy makes it an automatic category C,” said Roff apologetically. Felicity shrugged. Category C meant that she would be supervised by a doctor, a lawyer, and a guard, each of them armed with a handgun and a machete. Once the observation was over, she’d have to submit to weekly medical, toxicological, psychological, and religious examinations for a month. It was inconvenient, but she’d been through worse. Category E would have meant she’d need to receive a series of nuclear-style decontamination
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The key, as when one interacted with kindergartners, was not to acknowledge the immeasurable horror of what you were dealing with.
The interior of the animal was much as one would expect: close and dark and damp, with an odd smell. It was rather, Odette thought, like trying to enter a really popular nightclub on New Year’s Eve.
For one terrifying, beautiful moment, Odette thought she had died and left behind all the problems she had in the world. But she wasn’t dead. Instead, she found herself in a brand-new, totally incomprehensible situation with some brand-new, totally incomprehensible problems.
“You can smell blood?” asked Thomas. “Interesting. Do all of you have super-smell?” “It’s not super-smell,” said Marcel. “It’s a heightened olfactory capacity keyed to specific biological compounds.” “Right,” said the Rook. “Super-smell.”
She carefully spooned a dollop of Devonshire clotted cream onto her scone and then placed a teaspoon of strawberry jam into the center. “Some would call that heresy, you know,” remarked the Lady of the Checquy. She herself appeared to be of the “jam, then cream” school. “I’m not bound by the petty strictures of society,” said Myfanwy, and she took a delicious bite.
Felicity wondered anxiously if she was going to be witness to the first executive-level battle since the last time the Americans came for dinner.
“When I announced that the Broederschap would be joining forces with the Checquy, there were some protestations.” “Did you tell them about the pension plan?” asked Chevalier Whibley. “It’s index-linked.”
So, you clone things?” “We can,” said Marcel. “We don’t, though, not usually. Of course, we grow bits of people, but we don’t make whole people.” “Why not?” asked Eckhart. “We prefer to have sex,” said Ernst, causing Pawn Clements to choke on her orange juice.
“Plus, anyone who wants to clone himself is usually an asshole. You don’t want any more of those running around than absolutely necessary.”
“Because when you clone something, you end up with an embryo that is an exact physical copy.” Marcel looked at Marie sourly. “Provided you haven’t made any unprofessional errors.” “I made one error!” exclaimed Marie. “When I was nineteen! God! And may I say, that cat lived a long and happy life!” “It certainly lived a quiet life,” remarked Marcel. “You know, there are cats born naturally that don’t have ears!” said Marie.
“I don’t care what you people say!” Felicity burst out suddenly, and everyone in the room jumped. “We are not using a font that does not have fucking serifs!”
This is probably my favourite line in the entire book, and there are a lot of great lines in this book.
They regarded the dress in respectful silence. It was the kind of respectful silence heard at ceremonies held to commemorate disasters. “I’m no expert in dresses,” said Felicity finally, “but that... that’s not a good dress, is it?” “I know what I want to say,” said Leliefeld, “but I am mindful of my role as a diplomatic envoy here to make peace between our peoples.”
“I know of at least two instances where footage of real harpies fighting in the Shetlands was criticized online for being poorly executed. People didn’t even call it a hoax — to them, it was simply low-quality CGI.”
