Painted Devils (Little Thieves, #2)

by Margaret Owen

But you know that feeling? The one where your entire brain melts out through your earholes because your head is on fire, and the rest of your body overcompensates by freezing on the spot, and the only thing left in your skull is a ghost marching in a circle and banging two pots together? That’s about where I’m at.

“Like bouncing a penny off a boulder. Not a single thing gets through.”

I bury my face in my hands. A moment later, the vague phantom of a word escapes between my fingers, briefly taking the form of “penis” before evanescing into the ether.

‘A child’s eye fears the painted devil, but an elder wields the brush.’ We fear what we’re taught to fear, not necessarily because it’s worth fearing. I see a devil on the wall. Real or not, the question that matters is who put it there.”

For most of my life, I’ve held to a theory I call the trinity of want. It states that people are desired for three reasons: power, pleasure, or profit. If you provide three of those, others serve you. Provide two, they see you. One, they use you.

‘An ant does not concern itself with the weight of a mountain.’”

This calls for someone who’s a lot better at threading truth through the eye of a liar’s needle.

Some part of me has always held back, clinging to the fear that I cannot be both known and wanted, that I will always have to surrender to one.