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There was something mildly unsettling and yet profoundly comforting about the slight lack of reality in this space.
“Fortune favors the bold, Abigail!”
If we insist on being ordinary, we can never be truly extraordinary.”
saturnine?”
exigency?”
“I can see why you’re fond of Jackaby.” “Hah! He’s as rare a breed as they come
The night was cloudless, and the moon and stars cast more than enough light to illuminate the path. With murder and mystery still hanging in the air, I might have found the walk intolerably eerie—but the happy energy of the evening hung around us.
“Why, Mr. Lamb, how kind of you to notice.” Miss Fuller put a hand to the jet-black curls peeking out beneath her hat. “I was hoping for a come-hither look this morning. Of course, if my hair is preventing you from carrying out your work, I would be happy to stuff it up under my hat. Then again, if your opinions on women prevent me from carrying out my work, then I would be more than happy to suggest a place for you to stuff them.” She gave the professor a saccharine smile and a polite nod.
Alliteration always looks sharp in typeset.
“The trick about falling is to catch yourself before you hit the dirt.”
We’re not walking the path. We are the path. We are all of the roads and all of the intersections. Of course you can choose both.”
if I hear any more nonsense about your allowing other people to decide where you’re going in your own life, I will seriously reconsider your employment. You were hired for your mind, Miss Rook. I won’t have an assistant incapable of thinking for herself.”
Silhouetted against the firelight, it was almost possible to imagine that he was some brave knight from the storybooks. My desperate mind could turn his ragged coat into a cape and the rusty blade into a sword—although it refused to let the atrocious knit cap become a shining helmet. Even delusions have their limits.
“Miss Rook,” he said, “the greatest figures in history are never the ones who avoid failure, but those who march chin-up through countless failures, one after the next, until they come upon the occasional victory.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Failure is not the opposite of success—it’s a part of it. And as failures go,” he added with a lopsided grin, “this one was really spectacular, wasn’t it?”
I merely wish to remind you of what I said about failure. Chin up. March right through it. The only paths you can’t travel are the ones you block yourself—so don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying in the first place.
“I have work to do,” I said. “I matter. What I do matters.
Dangerous irregularities have been occurring with alarming . . . regularity. It is troubling to consider a criminal manufacturing paranormal mayhem.
