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I guess I do tend to leave an impression.” “More of a smoldering crater,” Bertram grumbled.
He saw auras and energies—the reality behind the mask, he called it. He saw the truth, no matter how improbable. Making sense of any of that truth to anyone else was another matter entirely.
“Questions are good,” Jackaby said. “Questions are to the clever mind as coal is to the stoker. I will worry more when we run out of them.”
“Precisely—white vinegar! Nothing better for a stain. Except that the carpet is never quite like it used to be, is it? Even if you can’t see the red anymore, there’s always something about that spot. It’s a little too clean for the rest of the rug, and it keeps that lingering vinegar smell, right? Now a healthy suspension of sodium bicarbonate might help with that, but there’s always something left behind.”
Curious, isn’t it? How the monsters always seem to prey on the innocent and the weak? Perhaps it’s because goodness and love are so unlike monstrosity. It is the ugliest aspect of human nature that we fear what is most different from ourselves with such violent contempt.”
“If you ever see her again,” my employer growled, “you will remember that monsters pick on the weak and the harmless because it is the monsters who are afraid.” He held the final stone in his fingers and stepped to the edge of the bubbling pool. “And they are right to be afraid.”
“I have great respect for the medical profession, Miss Rook,” he said soberly, “but it is not for doctors to tell us who we are.”
“People often feel more alone than ever when they first arrive in a new place,” Jackaby continued, “but we are never alone. We bring with us the spirits of our ancestors. We are haunted by their demons and protected by their deities.”
This city is alive. It has a soul, and that soul is a glorious mess of beliefs and cultures all swirling together into something precious and strange and new.”
“Like Monet,” I said. “Nothing like Monet,” said Jackaby. “What’s a Monet?” “A painter. He’s French. My mother met him once at a gala in Paris. They had a few of his works in the museum back home. He uses a hundred little daubs of color, and then from a distance they all melt into one big lovely picture. When you’re right up close, though, it’s just beautiful madness.” “Oh. Yes.” Jackaby smiled. “Just like Monet. Exactly like that. I prefer to walk because I like to be right up close to the beautiful madness.”
“My, my—you’re looking for a lot of answers, young lady. Information is expensive in my line of work, but I would be happy to arrange a trade.”
Others are generally wrong.”
“Beautiful madness,” he reminded me with a wink. “We’re still in the middle of our Monet, remember? Just wait. The picture is there around us.
it’s hard to argue with a brick.” “You have no idea,” said Jenny, shaking her head. “And yet after all these years I keep trying.”
“You keep trying—and in the end I think maybe that’s the only right thing anybody can do.”
Charon let the river drift past for another moment. “So,” he said finally. “Who had it right?” “They all did,” I said. “Just not the whole of it.” “Good answer.”
“Thank you, Nellie,” I said. “We miss you, you know.” “Don’t!” she chirped. “Just make it down here on your own terms eventually, and be sure you’ve built up a few amazing stories to tell me in the meantime.”
“I’ve always been strongest when I was being strong for other people,” Jenny said casually. “And that’s not a bad thing.
“But somebody reminded me today that it’s okay to be strong for myself.”
We took his teeth when we bested Pavel and we bound his hands when we bested Morwen. If this king wants my eyes he’ll need to come out of the shadows to get them himself.
“I learned what I needed to learn. I learned that we make our own luck, Miss Rook. It wasn’t the coin. It was finding something to believe in. There is real power in that.”
