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She reached for his arm, expecting him to pull away. He stilled when she tugged up his sleeve, where rivulets of shadow crept up his golden skin, swallowing the words inked upon his arm. His hand was warm in hers. "'All right' is when you're bleeding black but it's not as bad as bleeding red. When the world crashes but you're not alone when it does."

BEFORE THE FLICKER OF THE FIRE, KIFAH'S DARK skin glowed as she gave Zafira a share of the roasted meat. Nasir was nowhere to be seen. Benyamin had drifted off to sleep. He had been a ghost of himself ever since she had put him on the spot. She didn't know how to make amends. She was too tired to even think.
Altair was in a similar state, eating in silence, glancing furtively at her every so often.

Benyamin tugged at the keffiyah, adjusting it beneath a black circlet before he pushed away from the tree and sauntered toward her with sinuous grace. She found it surprising he didn't have a tail to curl around his feet.
"This is the Arawiya of old. Before the snows blanketed Demenhur, before the sands of Sarasin darkened and Zaram was cut off from the sea. Before the ever-fertile lands of Pelusia were sickened."

She was beginning to forget that he was not her friend. This was not her zumra. They were allies by circumstance, nothing more.
Zafira suspected that Altair's demeanor was what kept the prince glued to his side. Despite his growling and cool indifference, Nasir likely tolerated Altair's taunts not because he couldn't do a thing about it, but because he craved them.

"Shut up," the Huntress snapped when she drew near.
Altair flinched, to Nasir's satisfaction.
"I came back only because I know you'll follow me otherwise, and I'm tired of the two of you breathing down my neck."
"Do you even know what it feels like to have a man breathing down your neck?" Nasir asked.

The so-called great safin--with their pointed ears, heightened abilities, and endless lives--had abandoned Arawiya when the people needed them most. The caliphates had relied on magic the way a drunk man relied on his glass--except for Alderamin. And now that magic was gone, the safin lived as fine a life as they had before, selfishly hoarding their resources and turning their noses from Arawiya's suffering.

"You escaped and they didn't? That's it? Why were they even there? They could've been assassins, Zafira."
She doubted that. "They seemed a little too big for hashashins."
"Oh, so you're an expert on hashashin sizing now? Sarasins know what they're doing?"
"If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't have been trying to capture me for the sultan," she said. "I've done nothing wrong to be persecuted."

She saw Jin first, then Flick. Both of them had been expected. She hadn't expected Matteo, blond and pale and almost ghostly. And certainly not the figure before them: a vampire with a trim beard and dark, shoulder-length hair tied at the base of his skull. He had a cravat set with a ruby knotted at his throat and a gold hoop in his right ear that glinted in the lamplight.

Though Jin had flipped the OPEN! sign to CLOSED on Spindrift with a heavy heart, reassuring himself that they would only remain closed until they retrieved the ledger, not a single member of the crew had a moment's rest as Arthie delegated tasks int he lead-up to the Athereum's Festival of Night.
Today he was getting those handwriting samples for Flick. He hopped out of a hansom cab in Admiral Grove, tipping his hat.

She had a curious nightmare, unlike any dream she'd had before in this house, even if her nights had been rather restless.
She dreamed that the door opened and in walked Howard, slowly, each of his steps like the weight or iron, making the boards creak and the walls rumble. It was as if an elephant had trampled into her room. She could not move. Her eyes were closed but she could see him.

Noemi watched him shuffle toward the head of the table and sit down. Virgil sat too, by his father's right, his chair at such an angle that he remained half enveloped in shadows.
The maid didn't bring a plate for the old man, only a glass of dark wine. Maybe he'd already eaten and had ventured downstairs for her sake.
"Sir, I'm Noemi Taboada. It's nice to meet you," she said.
"And I am Howard Doyle, Virgil's father."

When she saw the bear, she was very upset. "The mountain of fur with teeth! It's following us!"
"Stupid chicken!" he growled and snapped at her as they started off. Gisella tried to reassure April that he was a friend, but she continued to glance nervously over her shoulder at him limping along behind them.
It began to rain. In the rattle and patter of water on leaves, Quick's small humming was soon lost.

He moves against me, his hands still gripping my suit jacket, and he breaks the kiss when he lowers down from where he'd risen up on his toes. His eyes are shut, his breathing still hard and fast.
"Coal," he says, coarse, and it tugs at the base of my stomach. "You're very good at that."
I smile and lean in to kiss one of his shut eyelids, the skin paper-thin and so delicate. "Good at what?"
"Going--ah, going slow."

"Prince Hex?" comes Wren's voice from the hall. "I have your itinerary for the day."
Her presence crashes over me.
I'm in Hex's room.
At six-something in the morning.
And he's still playing the role of unwilling fake possible fiance to Easter to stop Dad from screwing things with their collective, and I'm doing that too. And I'm holding the Halloween Prince while we're both in our pajamas.

Holidays come and go. Traditions change and what was once a celebration of a god becomes a celebration of a harvest, evolving with the ways people grow, or forcibly, with colonization. And while the Holidays listed in Dad's file have waned, they aren't in any way slipping into obscurity, and neither is Christmas, not by a long shot.
They're failing now, though, because of Dad's demanded tithes.

"What do you want to do after you graduate?" I ask. "Just like--for real. Do you know?"
Iris squints. "I'm pretty sure I'm doing it, Coal."
"Not your duties. I mean what do you really want to do. There has to be something? You wanted to go to art school once." It's bothering me that Kris didn't answer that question.
It's bothering me more that I don't have an answer to that question.

JULIAN ARRANGED TO TAKE ANNA FOR A DRIVE THAT WEEK, NOT out on the Promenade at the fashionable hour but on Hampstead Heath at the preposterous time of ten in the morning, when they could let the horses have their heads. He pulled up in his new phaeton, enameled glossy black except for the cherry-red spokes of its enormous wheels, with a high-spirited pair of matched grays between the traces.

Imagine her surprise when Anna grew stronger every day and it was Julian who got the worst from their skirmishes. Not that the Dowager wanted him hurt, of course, so much as shake up, forced to see beyond his own rigid perspective. There was no faster way to ruin a man than for the world to agree with him all the time.
Don't be ridiculous! she told herself sternly. Julian's far from ruined.

A month ago, Julian would have laughed if anyone had told him he would spend an afternoon teaching a reluctant young woman how to waltz. If anyone would have had the guts to suggest he'd enjoy the activity, that his boots would ring out with haste as he strode across town to his grandmother's townhouse, he would have leveled them with a stare.

She was smiling.
At him.
He'd seen her small and ghastly social smiles, the kind usually reserved for disliked relatives. He'd had more than enough of her polite and faintly haughty nods, and very occasionally he'd surprised her into laughter, the slight, reluctant sound more satisfying than it had the right to be. But never once had she looked right at him and smiled openly. No hesitation, no wariness, no barriers.

At 10:00 on Sunday morning Jonasson came into Salander's room.
"Hello, Lisbeth."
"Hello."
"Just thought I'd warn you: the police are coming at lunchtime."
"Fine."
"You don't seem worried."
"I'm not."
"I have a present for you."
"A present? What for?"
"You've been one of my most interesting patients in a long time."
"You don't say," Salander said sceptically.

"We've been doing our own investigation at Milton. I understood from Holger Palmgren that you had some information. but it seems you were far ahead of us."
Blomkvist hesitated before he said: "Can I trust you?"
"How do you mean exactly?"
"Are you on Salander's side or not? Can I believe that you want the best for her?"
"I'm her friend. Although, that's not necessarily the same thing as saying that she's my friend."

Bublanski set the wheels in motion. He called the Sodertalje police and gave them Paolo Roberto's directions to a dilapidated warehouse southwest of Lake Yngern. Then he called Holmberg--he lived in Flemingsberg and was closest of the team to Sodertalje--and asked him to join up with the Sodartalje police as soon as he possibly could to assist with the crime scene investigation.
Holmberg called back an hour later.

"You have to say the most horrible things out loud. That's how they lose their power. That's how you turn them from nightmares into problems to solve." She thought a moment. "Either that, or we egg your grandfather's gravestone?"
For the first time since her grandfather died, Anna laughed. "Yes, let's!"
Charlotte peeped over at her. "Do you really lose everything in six months?"

"We have a problem, "Borgsjo said. "The last time we spoke, we said that the job would start on August 1. But the thing is, our editor in chief, Hakan Morander, whom you would be replacing, is in very poor health. He has heart problems and has to cut back on work. He talked to his doctor a few days ago, and this weekend I learned that he's now planning to retire on July 1."

"To sum up," Ekstrom said when Faste was finished, "we have fingerprints on the probable murder weapon from a woman who during her teens was in and out of psychiatric units, who is understood to make her living as a prostitute, who was declared incompetent by the district court, and who has been documented as having violent tendencies. We should be asking what the hell she's doing out on the streets at all."

Advokat Nils Erik Bjurman set down his coffee cup and watched the flow of people outside the window of Cafe Hedon on Stureplan. He saw everyone passing in an unbroken stream, but observed none of them.
He was thinking of Lisbeth Salander. He thought often about Salander.
What he was thinking made him boil with rage.
Salander had crushed him. He was never going to forget it. She had taken command and humiliated him.

When they walked to their seats, Jack had said to all three of them, "The cameras will be all over us, so try not to show emotion, especially if things ain't going Two-J's way."
Joe had nodded, but doubted that he, Frannie or Emmy could keep their game faces on. They were only human. He and Frannie were Jess's parents, and Emmy, a girl who loved their boy. Anyway, the cameras would mostly focus on Jess.

At 10:00 a.m. Thursday, the Mets' PR department announced top pitching prospect Jess Singer, son of all-time team great, Joe Singer, was being promoted from Syracuse and would start Friday against the Phillies. At 7:05 a.m. in Santa Rosa, where Joe was crunching extra shirts into his suitcase, his cell phone began blowing up. How did the New York press get his number? Jess? Mac? The Mets' front office?

When Jack answered at nine in the a.m., his son said, "Hi, Dad."
Uh-oh, Jack thought. This is bad. "You're up early, Joey."
"Lot on my mind."
Jack waited for Joe to explain, but he didn't, which was just like him. "I'm sure there is."
Joe began, "The cancer--"
Jack held his breath and looked around the condo, which he'd bought decorated and had never bothered to re-do.