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Personally, I would have gone with something like “Portent of Doom in the Form of a Man” or “Terrifying Fucking Killing Machine,” but unfortunately, nobody asked me.
And she would tarnish too. Always famous but always fading, the way old movie stars were, carrying ghosts of their younger selves in their faces. It was a strange thing, to know with certainty that you had peaked.
“I’m tired of being special,” Albie said with a shaky laugh. “I’m tired of being celebrated for the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
And maybe that was the entire problem with them—he didn’t see her; he saw who she could be with a few adjustments, and all she wanted was to stay busted and be left alone.
Sometimes she felt like Albie was the only person in the world who knew her. And it was because he wanted nothing from her, not sex, not love, not secrets. There was no currency between them.
We are animals, after all. And don’t let your housecat fool you into thinking that animals are nothing more than fuzzy, whiskered creatures who wish us no ill. Nature is bloody, and as a whole, it favors strength over compassion.
You dealt with it the same way you dealt with the cold when you didn’t have the right jacket: you let the chill pass through you, digging deep into your bones, until you could no longer feel it.
All she could think about was how everything that happened now—including getting pulled into a parallel dimension—would be After Albie. Like a new era. Sloane AA. Some things split your life in half.
“Shut up.” It wasn’t Sloane who interrupted him this time, but Esther. She wiped her cheeks dry and tugged at the neck of her stiff blouse to draw attention to her siphon. “Or I will set you on fucking fire.”
In other words, magic is a mirror. It reflects us back to ourselves, and we may not always like what we see.
You don’t pick the act and then force the desire. You know the desire—the exact shade of it—and then choose the act accordingly.”
