Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1)

by Seanan McGuire

She’s not being sarcastic. Sarcasm will come later, after the world has kicked her more.

The unspoken pieces of language are sometimes the most painful.

Three creations of terrible alchemy sit crammed into a booth in the all-night Denny’s, pressed against the red vinyl seats, looking at their menus.

What Dodger is doing isn’t math in the truest sense of the word, and at the same time, it’s a deeper, truer arithmetic than she’s done in years. It is the instinctive math of children weighing parental disapproval against the rapidly setting sun, and the heartbroken math of sailors measuring the holes in their boat against the distance to the shore. This is the math that moves the universe, the measure and countermeasure that dances over and around the numbers. Dodger holds this kind of math in her bones, and her fingers dance through the blend of vegetable and mineral scattered in front of her, separating them from one another with almost thoughtless swipes. Bit by bit, the figures she is pulling from the bone and char blending are becoming paler, losing the charcoal tint of the pepper.