Shadow Unit 3 Quotes

“She turned and walked out, an erected little woman, plump and graying. You’d like she was a librarian if you didn’t know better.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“He was still trying to learn how to wake himself out of nightmares.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Todd appeared in the door with a cup of coffee and a notebook computer, by which Reyes knew he was working on his on-again, off-again novel this month. Reyes nodded at him silently-they didn’t really need to talk that often, after all these years-then collected his bag.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Reyes could get up from the chair, cross the room, take Chaz’s hand and awaken him from the nightmare-and it was obviously a nightmare now, as Chaz moaned low and rough. Reyes’s palms itched with the desire to do so.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“In times of black despair, banality can prove a useful refuge.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“He breathes deep, and smells smoke, roses, stale metallic blood. Sweat, starvation. Sugar. No, honey. Cinnamon.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“He’d seen his face in the tabletop, but he’d been a trick of the light. He’d written his pain and terror and shone on the mirrored wall over and over, day after day, but it didn’t stick. When he was gone, the image would be, too.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Look, baby boy,” said the man standing behind the angel, from over his shoulder. “Beautiful red wings.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“No. You can’t have her. I can’t stop you from having me. But you can’t have her.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“You don’t test a human being to destruction. You don’t do that.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Thirteen was combat zone for identity under the best of circumstances.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Brady had the overheated, brittle-at-the-edges feeling he got at the end of twenty-four sleepless hours. The rising sun edged on the eastern horizon with red like an open wound.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Pelletier had guts, of course. But it took a particular sort to be willing to understand and accept what Shadow Unit hadn’t quite told him about the secondary fires.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“It had been eighteen years since anyone touched him that way. Soothing sweetly, promising to be there in the morning.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Shhh,” the Relative said at his pathetic sound of distress. “Papa’s here. Papa’s here. It was my fault, angel. I was gone too long. You thought I left you. I won’t ever leave you. Forever and ever. I’ll always be here. Papa’s here, angel. Papa’s never going away again.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Oh, baby boy,” the Relative said, and lightly stroked his face. “Oh, sweetheart, what did you do to yourself?”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Reyes’s voice in Hafidha’s earpiece was metallic and flat. It wasn’t just the connection; she’d heard it that way in person. Her stomach turned skittery.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“William wanted him alive, dependent. He wanted Chaz to rely on him, to love him. Food and water would be forthcoming, as long as Chaz didn’t give him any reason to withhold.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“He shivered when the Relative’s rough thumb stroked his cheek as he drank, when the Relative’s proprietary love filled him like dirty water in a drowning man’s lungs.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Chaz sank under a tide of love, heavy as a carpet.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“The Relative smiled, and Chaz, if he had been standing, would have wobbled under the weight of pride, triumph, and adoration.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“The Relative’s hands came around his face like doors of a cage.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Chaz did not like being touched, unless he had a say in who was doing the touching.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“Poor angel,” the Relative said, and set the crumpled granola bar on the floor. “You’ve got yourself in a state, haven’t you? Just like your mama. She’d hurt herself fighting what was good for her, and she taught you some bad habits. But that all done now. I’ve got you, and you’re safe.”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire

“He just had to stay alive, and the team would come and get him. And Brady would never let him hear the end of it. Was there anything worse than a cop losing his gun?”
― Emma Bull, Shadow Unit 3: Refining Fire