Ordinary Monsters (The Talents Trilogy #1)

by J.M. Miro

White folk, it wasn’t just that they were rich, or talked however they wanted, or went wherever they wished to go. It wasn’t just their geldings and coaches and liveried servants. It was more than that. They walked through the world as if it was a place that didn’t have to be the way it was, as if it could change, the way a person could change. That was the difference, he’d always thought.

Scared is just your head telling your heart to be careful. It’s not a bad thing. It’s what you do with it that matters.

Folk just liked to look down on other folk.

“You’s lucky as a cricket, Charlie. Berghast’s man were just in here, lookin for some papers. I reckon you’d of got to meet him directly if you was just a minute or two faster.” She watched as Charlie took this in. He nodded in that uncertain way he had. “I fell,” he said. “Else I’d have been here faster.” Ribs laughed. “Then thank God you ain’t agile like me. Else I’d of had to poke old Bailey with the fire sticker and run for the ladies’ toilets.”

“We wasn’t doing nothing,” said Ribs. “It ain’t against the law to get rained on.”