The Hexologists (The Hexologists, #1)

by Josiah Bancroft

We know who suffers when heaven squabbles—the vulnerable.

Revolution may chasten the rich, but uncertainty torments the poor.”

The hex-caster, whose power lay in the drawing of complex rosettes, could ease ailments, improve environments, facilitate studies, and assist births.

That’s because we don’t throw up our hands when we’re blindsided. We punch back. Now, show me the letter, or go away.”

I deliver answers, but I answer to no one.”

Professor Wilby was perennially restless and seldom at home.

Mood

Administrators are oblivious and generally get in the way; effective employees learn to work around them.

“Exactly. This is about a carpet.”

Isolde is everything

“Shall we proceed with caution?” “Now, where’s the fun in that?”

Solitude, at least in her formative years, was Isolde’s preferred state. Left to her own devices, Iz would forgo meals, sleep, and commitments, electing instead to sit in isolation before a window, where she would gaze not out at the world but inward at landscapes all her own. Though such bouts of introspection often began with some intelligent purpose, they soon lapsed into a sort of fatalistic exposition as one bleak observation led to a darker question that begat a whole abysmal inquiry.

She continues to be a mood

“Oh, I collect grudges for a living. One more can’t hurt.

But then, what were words but the surrogates of sensation, the emissaries of feeling?

“I couldn’t take you with me today, but I still felt like you were there.” He sat back with a grunt of satisfaction. “Oh, I am everywhere! I am a vapor in tweed.”

Iz’s habit of soiling and drowning her clothes made having ready backups a must.

“Splendid, Iz. Splendid. But first, let’s find me a new stomach. I’m finished with this one. God, I’ll never eat eggs again.”

Isolde stopped herself from replying that they both sounded like a euphemism for venereal disease.

Her hair would always pursue its shape, and she would chase her answers.

What a MOOD

There was little in the world Isolde despised more than a surprise.

“If you beat manners into a child early and long enough, the resulting neurosis becomes indistinguishable from a personality.