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- Is that a wee-gee board?
- Every mornin’, every evenin’, ain’t we got fun?
- I-S-T-A-N-D-A-T-T-H-E-D-O-O-R-A-N-D-K-N-O-C-K I-A-M-T-H-E-B-E-A-S-T T-H-E-D-R-A-G-O-N-O-F-O-L-D I-H-O-L-D-T-H-E-K-E-Y-S-O-F-H-E-L-L-A-N-D-D-E-A-T-H W-R-A-T-H-I-S-C-O-M-E-A-R-M-A-G-E-D-D-O-N-B-A-B-Y-L-O-N-W-H-O-R-E
- Night or daytime, it’s all playtime. Ain’t we got fun?
- young ladies gossiping about the tragic death of Rudolph Valentino
- (ain’t we got fun?)
- Quelle tragédie.
- What happened at the party, pet?”
- “Hello, ma baby; hello, ma honey; hello ma Evie gal,”
- lashes. “I am pos-i-tute-ly serious.” “You’re pos-i-tute-ly lit, is what you are, Evie O’Neill,”
- ring-ski,
- “Quiet, s’il vous plaît-ski!”
- Rudolph Valentino
- “Sister, you are blotto.
- “I remain unflapper-able in the face of advuss… advarse… trouble.
- “It was nothing, Pop. Sure. It’s jake, Pop.
- Man, I got those heebie jeebie blues,”
- “It’s swell.
- See you soon-ski!” she yelled. “You bet-ski!”
- “So long, suckers! You’re all wet!”
- “Lord, that boy is handsome as Pharaoh,” one of the young women clucked, fanning herself with a magazine. “Honey, you got yourself a girl?” “On every block!” Mrs. Jordan laughed.
- “Say, Mrs. Jordan, does Aunt Sally’s book say anything about a crossroads or a storm?” “Oh, a storm means money coming in, I think. Storm is fifty-four.” “Is not, either! A storm means a death coming. And it’s eleven you play for that.” The ladies set to squabbling about the various interpretations of dreams and possible number combinations. No one could ever agree on any one right answer. That’s part of what made the game so exciting—all those possibilities. “What about an eye with a lightning bolt underneath?” Memphis asked. For two weeks running, it had been the same: The crossroads. The crow flying to him from the field. The darkening sky, and the dust clouds rising on the road just ahead of whatever was coming. And the symbol—always the symbol.
- “So long, fellas! It’s been swell.”
- “Valentino poisoned?
- “Top nun? Do you mean the Mother Superior?” “And how! Sister… Sister, um… Sister Benito Mussolini Fascisti?” “Exactly!”
- You bet-ski,”
- “Say”—Evie lowered her voice—“I don’t suppose you have any giggle water on you?” “Giggle water?” Jericho repeated. “You know, coffin varnish? Panther sweat? Hooch?” Evie tried. “Gin?” “I don’t drink.” “You must get awfully thirsty then.” Evie laughed. Jericho did not.
- old sport
- “Now we’re cookin’,”
- “I’ll be jake on my own.” “Pardon?” “Jake. Swell. Um, fine. I’ll be fine.
- “Gee whiz,”
- “Pos-i-tute-ly!”
- “Empty, as in devoid of human beings.”
- Make a mint.”
- Ruta was only nineteen years old, and what she knew most was want—a constant longing for the good life she saw all around her.
- “ ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.’ “ ‘And upon her forehead was written a name of mystery,’ ”“ ‘And upon her forehead was a name written in Mystery: Babylon the Great, the Harlot…’ ””
- now whistling that god-awful song of his.
- “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ’em off for a coupla stones.”
- Good old Memphis. Reliable Memphis. Charming, easygoing Memphis. Look-after-your-brother Memphis. Memphis had been the star once. The miracle man. And it had ended in sorrow. He wouldn’t ever risk that again. These days, he kept his feelings confined to the pages of his notebook. Miracle Memphis, the Harlem Healer.
- Isaiah sat very still, staring into the dark. “I am the dragon. The beast of old,” he said. Memphis raised himself onto his elbows. “Ice Man? You all right?” Isaiah didn’t move. “I stand at the door and knock.”
- In the dream, Memphis stood on a dusty road bordered by cornfields. Overhead, the clouds tangled into dark, angry clumps. In the distance sat a farmhouse, a red barn, and a gnarled tree stripped of leaves. A crow cawed from a mailbox on a wooden post. The crow flew to the fields and perched on the shoulder of a tall man in a funny hat. His skin was as gray as the sky, his eyes black and shining. The half moons of his nails were caked with dirt, and every finger wore a ring. “The time is now,” the man said, though Memphis did not see his lips move. The dream shifted. Memphis stood in a long corridor. At the end was a metal door, and on the door was the symbol: the eye surrounded by the sun’s rays, a lightning bolt directly beneath it like a long zigzag of a tear. He heard the soft flutter of wings, and then he was lost in heavy fog, and his mother’s voice called to him: “Oh, my son, my son…”
- It was all going to be the berries.
- “The city’s bustle cannot destroy the dreams of a girl and boy. I’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.”
- Entrez, mademoiselle!”
- “Ah, applesauce!” Evie hissed.
- “It’s all right, Mabesie. Not everybody can be a Zelda,” Evie said, linking arms with her pal.
- “Oh, look at that woman’s dress, will you? It’s the cat’s particulars!”
- “That Jake Marlowe sure is a Sheik,” Evie murmured appreciatively.
- pos-i-tute-ly
- See you soon-ski!”
- What a spiffing idea!
- ab-so-lute-ly
- lyubimiy
- “It’s been a real lulu of a day, old girl.”
- “Not on your life-ski.”
- pos-i-tute-ly
- “Life don’t come to you, Memphis. You gotta take it. We have to take it. Because ain’t nobody handing it to us. You understand?
- “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Her Highness, come to grace us with her presence at last.
- Go away, now, Daisy. Shoo, little fly!”
- beaus
- “Someday, Henry DuBois, you’re gonna meet a fella who sends you, and you won’t know what to do,”
- Evie hadn’t given religion much thought before. Her parents were Catholics turned Episcopalian. They attended services on Sunday, but it was all pretty rote, like brushing your teeth and bathing. Just something you did because it was expected.
- “Charity begins at home.” “So does mental illness.”
- no matter how dire your straits at the time.
- “He is enormous,” Sam whispered to Evie. “What do you feed him?”
- give you the bum’s rush.
- egregiously
- He leaned in a little closer. Evie could see the flecks of amber in his eyes. “Admit it—you liked that kiss.” “You owe me twenty dollars.” “Cash or check?” he said cheekily. Even the dullest Ohio girls knew that bit of lingo: Kiss now or kiss later? “Bank’s closed, pal.” Sam nodded. “Check, then.”
- “Honestly, I’d invite you in, but I’ve managed to avoid getting arrested for petty theft. I’d hate to go to the Tombs for perversion.”
- Swanky
- Jeepers
- Oh, your coat is the cat’s meow!”
- “Not on your life-ski,”
- “She is the elephant’s eyebrows,”
- “Well, I thought you were the duck’s quack,”
- “Long Island,” Henry said. “You have to say it like this: Lawn Guy-land,” she instructed.
- Entrez!
- You look like the Christmas windows at Gimbels. And who doesn’t love those?”
- “Well, isn’t that just the berries!
- “Are we pals-ski?” “You bet-ski.”
- “I’m embalmed.” “Potted and splificated?” “Ossified to the gills.
- “Whatever you say, baby vamp.
- “she sat her fanny on a boy named Danny,”
- “Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses. The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen.”“And the sixth offering shall be an offering of obedience.”“The time is now. They are coming,” Isaiah said, drifting back into dreams, his last word barely a whisper: “Diviners.”
- Sultans of the goddamned West Side.
- “Upping the ante,”
- “ ‘I am he, the Great Beast, the Dragon of Old. And all will look upon me and tremble….’ ”
- “Pals for life-ski?” Evie hooked her pinkie with Mabel’s. “For life-ski.”
- “ ‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. For the Beast will rise when the comet flies.’ ”‘And in those times, the young were idle. Their hands were absent from their plows and they did not raise them in prayer and praise to the Lord our God. And the Lord was angry and commanded of the Beast a sixth offering, an offering of obedience.’ ”
- Applesauce!
- pos-i-tute-ly
- “We are the Diviners. We have been and we will be. It is a power that comes from the great energy of the land and its people, a realm shared for a spell, for as long as is needed. We see the dead. We speak to restless spirits. We walk in dreams. We read meaning from every held thing. The future unfolds for us like the navigator’s map, showing seas we have yet to travel.” Evie turned the pages excitedly. “There can be no security at the cost of liberty. The heart of the union will not abide…. The skies alight with strange fire. The eternal door is opened. The man in the stovepipe hat will come again with the storm…. The eye cannot see." At the bottom of the page was a small sketch of an eye surrounded by the rays of the sun, with a lightning bolt beneath it. “The Diviners must stand, or all shall fall.” Evie read the offerings aloud in order. “The Sacrifice of the Faithful. The Tribute of the Ten Servants of the Master. The Pale Horseman Riding Death Before the Stars. The Death of the Virgin. The Harlot Adorned and Cast upon the Sea…” The drawing was of a sightless, bejeweled woman arranged on water, surrounded by pearls. Above her head was an eye symbol. “The sixth offering, the Sacrifice of the Idle Son…” The illustration showed a boy hung upside down with one leg bent, like the Hanging Man of the tarot. The boy’s hands were missing, and a pair of hands bent in prayer was the symbol above the drawing. “The seventh offering, the Turning Out of the Deceitful Brethren from the Temple of Solomon.” She raised her head, thinking. “It’s a template for the murders.” She continued. “The eighth offering, the Veneration of the Angelic Herald. The ninth, the Destruction of the Golden Idol. The tenth, the Lamentation of the Widow. The eleventh offering, the Marriage of the Beast and the Woman Clothed in the Sun.” The last page was a drawing of a bestial, horned man with the feet of a goat, two enormous wings, and a tail. He sat upon a throne and his eyes burned. In his hand was a dripping heart. At his feet was a woman wearing a golden crown and dress, her chest torn open. The symbol at the bottom was a comet.
- “Oh, come now. It isn’t as bad as all that, is it?” Marlowe returned to his seat opposite Jericho. “Look at you, Jericho. You’re a walking miracle. The great hope.” “I am not one of your dreams.” Jericho banged his fist on the table, shattering a saucer.
- Evie had imitated her mother perfectly: “Mabel, daaaahling, how can you complain that you haven’t had dinner when the huddled masses have yet to breathe free!” “Mabel, daaaahling, tell me: Which dress says Savior of the Poor and Saint of the Lower East Side to you?”
- Miss Addie stood at the narrow window in her nightgown. Her long gray hair hung in tangles. She cradled a bag of salt, which she was pouring out onto the windowsill in a fat line. Salt seeped from a hole in the bag and pooled on the carpet below. “Miss Addie? What are you doing?” “I have to keep them out,” Miss Addie said without looking up. “Keep who out?” “There are awful events unfolding. Something unholy is at hand.” “Do you mean the murders?” Mabel asked. “It’s begun. I can feel it. In my dreams, I have seen the man in the tall hat with his coat of crows. A terrible choice is at hand.” Miss Addie’s hand fluttered about her face like a wounded bird. She seemed confused, like a woman waking from ether. “Where is my door? I can’t find it.” “When the cunning folk stood accused of the ’craft as if it were a game, and our gallows bloomed with the dead, the man was there. When the Choctaw were marched to their ruin on the Trail of Tears, the man was there.” Mabel counted the floors, willing the elevator to go faster. “They say he appeared to Mr. Lincoln upon an evening before the War Between the States. It was as if a hand had come down and pulled out the heart of the nation, and the very rivers bled, and the land’s wounds would not heal.” Miss Addie suddenly turned and stared right at Mabel. “Terrible what people can do to one another, isn’t it?”
- “I hope you’ve brought me the man of my dreams…. Oh.”
- pos-i-tute-ly
- It had been April when his mother died, the trees budding into flowers like girls turning shyly into young ladies. Spring, when nothing should be dying. Memphis’s father had roused him from sleep. His eyes were shadowed. “It’s time, son,” he’d said, and he led the sleepy Memphis through the dark house and into his mother’s room, where a lone candle burned. His mother lay shivering under a thin blanket. “Please, son. You’ve got to do it. You’ve got to keep her here.” His father, leading him to the bed. Memphis’s mother wasn’t much more than bones, her hair thinned to candy floss. Beneath the blanket, her body was still. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes tracking something beyond Memphis’s vision. He was fourteen years old. “Go on, now, son,” his father said, his voice breaking. “Please.” Memphis was afraid. His mother seemed so close to death that he didn’t see how he could stop it. He’d wanted to heal her before, but she wouldn’t let him. “I won’t have my son responsible for that,” she’d said firmly. “What’s meant to be is meant to be, good or bad.” But Memphis didn’t want his mother to die. He put his hands on her. His mother’s eyes widened and she tried to shake her head, to duck his hands, but she was too weak. “I’m going to help you, Mama.” His mother parted her cracked lips to speak, but no sound came out. Memphis felt the healing grip take hold, and then he was under, pulled along by currents he couldn’t control and did not understand, the two of them carried out to a larger, unknown sea. In his healing trances, he always felt the presence of the spirits around him. It was a calm, protective presence, and he was never afraid. But it was different this time. The place he found himself was a dark graveyard, heavy with mist. The shades did not feel quite so benevolent as they pressed close to him. A skinny gray man in a tall hat sat upon a rock, his hands made into fists. “What would you give me for her, healer?” the man asked, and it seemed to Memphis as if the wind itself had whispered the question. The man nodded to his fists. “In one hand is life; in the other, death. Choose. Choose and you might have her back.” Memphis stepped forward, his finger inching closer. Right or left? Suddenly he saw his mother, gaunt and weak, in the graveyard. “You can’t bring me back, Memphis. Don’t ever try to bring back what’s gone!” The man grinned at her with teeth like tiny daggers. “The choice is his!” His mother looked frightened, but she did not back down. “He’s just a boy.” “The choice. Is. His.” Memphis concentrated on the man’s fists once more. He tapped the right one. The man smiled and opened his palm, and a shiny black baby bird squeaked at him. Memphis’s mother shook her head. “Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?” Memphis had no memory after that. He’d fallen ill with a fever, Octavia told him, and his father had put him to bed. The next morning, he woke to see Octavia covering the mirrors with sheets. His father sat in his chair, his shirt matted to him with sweat. “She’s gone,” he whispered, and in his eyes, Memphis saw the accusation: Why couldn’t you save her? All that gift, and you couldn’t save the one person who mattered?
- “My aunt says you should pray only to Jesus.” Blind Bill grunted and spat. “You think the white folks’ god is gonna help you? You think he’s on our side?” Bill listened to Memphis Campbell’s footsteps fading away. He wanted to tell Memphis how lucky he was that the gift had left him when it did. What a mercy that was. How grateful he should be that the wrong people hadn’t found out about it. Bill felt in his pocket for some money for a bite to eat. He rubbed the dime and nickel between his fingers. Not much. If only he could stop gambling. But that was his curse; he couldn’t stay away from risk and chance, whether it was cards, the numbers game, craps, cockfighting, or horse racing. But he kept seeing that house in his dreams with the clouds and crossroads. He hadn’t worked out the gig for any of it yet, but he would. There was a number on the side of the house’s mailbox. If only he could see it, he felt sure, that number would be the key to winning big. And once he had his money, he could set about getting revenge.
- pos-i-tute-ly
- “Swell,” Evie said bitterly,
- If there was one truth Evie had learned in her short life, it was that forgiveness was easier to seek than permission. She didn’t plan to ask for either one.
- Gee whiz
- It’s important to tend to your education rather than fritter away time in bourgeois, immoral pastimes such as dancing in nightclubs.”
- “We’re pals of the Sultan of Siam,” Henry said. “What is the sultan’s favorite flower?” “Edelweiss sure is nice.”
- “This is the cat’s meow,”
- “And the orchestra is the berries.”
- “Must be the duck’s quack to be famous,” Evie said.
- “My mother would cast a kitten over the excess,” Mabel said guiltily.
- “Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?” “What’s the point of that, Miss?” the waiter said. “Tomorrow morning,” Mabel said.
- “I hear they have lemon trees, and you can pick ’em right off and make fresh lemonade. We’ll get a house with a lemon tree in the backyard. Maybe even have a dog. I always wanted a dog.” “Sounds ducky.” “To lemon trees and dogs!” “To whatever’s around the next corner.” “I sure hope it’s not a car bearing down,” Mabel joked.
- “I’m from the health department. You’ve heard of Typhoid Mary? This fella’s got enough typhoid to start his own colony.”
- “Holy smokes!”
- “You on the level?”
- She watched the girls dance onstage and wondered how old they’d been when they started. Had they been dragged from town to town on the circuit from the age of four? Had they lain awake on fleabag motel floors, then made the rounds of booking agents the next morning, half-dead from exhaustion? Had any of them made a daring escape from a small town in the middle of the night? Had they changed their names and their looks, becoming someone completely new, someone who couldn’t be found? Did any of them have a power so frightening it had to be kept locked down tight?
- pure hokum.
- pos-i-tute-ly
- “Heyyy, Maybeline, honey,”
- “Your sister’s a barrel of laughs.”
- And she could rival a pickle for pucker.”
- “Poet, we’ve gotta scram!”
- It was quiet for a spell;
- He had to hand it to her, she had moxie. He liked girls with moxie. They were trouble. And Sam liked trouble even more than moxie.
- “You jake, Poet? You look like someone slipped you a mickey,” Theta said. “Me? I don’t wear worry.”
- “The seventh offering is vengeance. Turn the heretics from the Temple of Solomon. And their sins shall be purified by blood and fire.” “Isaiah?” Memphis whispered. Hearing these strange words coming out of his brother’s mouth made him cold with fear. “Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses to receive him.” Isaiah’s thin body jerked with small spasms. Memphis gripped his arms. Should he run for Octavia? The doctor? He didn’t know. “Isaiah, what are you talking about?” he whispered urgently. “They’re coming. The time is now.” “Isaiah, wake up now. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up, I say!” Isaiah went limp and calm in Memphis’s hands. His eyelids closed as if he might drift back to sleep. Suddenly, he stiffened. His eyes snapped wide open. He stared at Memphis as his small body shook. His words were a choked whisper: “Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?”
- a jovial whistling. an irritating ditty echoing through the empty lodge. More than irritating… uncomfortable. Nothing but that damned whistling.
- “ ‘For they did not walk in the path of righteousness and lo, was the Lord’s anger sorely provoked.’ ”“ ‘And for the seventh offering, it was commanded: Turn the heretics from the Temple of Solomon under the watchful eye of God and purify their sins with an offering of blood and fire. For there is no expiation of sin but by blood….’ ”
- with her characteristic hauteur.
- and I feel like a real Dumb Dora, getting pinched like that.”
- “Uncle-ish isn’t a word.”
- absolument
- Golly
- “What’s wrong with Anna Karenina?” “Everything from A to enina.
- doodads
- your uncle sprang you from the clink.”
- you fink.
- Very unchivalrous of you.”
- shimmied
- Sheba
- Everything will be the berries.
- But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all?
- “Everybody gets sore sometimes.”
- “People always fear what they don’t understand, Evangeline.
- batted those baby blues. Fellas, start lining up. There’s more than one killer in this town.’ ”
- The killer took the feet this time.”
- “You, ah, need a little liquid courage?”
- “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on,” Malloy sang. “Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ’em off for a coupla stones.
- “The eighth offering, the Veneration of the Angelic Herald,”
- I’ll be right as rain.”
- “Go on, Berenice! Git!”
- Memphis got a gir-rl! Memphis got a gir-rl!”
- she’d pitch a fit the likes of which
- “Under the bridge… don’t walk under the bridge,” Isaiah said softly. “He’s there.”
- Mabouya
- Word had spread that Bill Johnson might have done it. That he could put an old dog down when it needed mercy or that, when he was angry, he could hold a butterfly in his hand and it would fall dead.
- “Haven’t you heard, darlin’? You’re supposed to marry for money, not love.”
- Flo looked as if he’d been sucking on a dill pickle.
- vaudeville
- If you want a laugh, do the unexpected.
- talking as fast as New York traffic.
- The New York Public Library, that grand beaux arts queen of books,
- She’d pestered Detective Malloy for what he knew about John Hobbes, which wasn’t much, but he did tell her that the man was hanged, he believed, sometime in the summer of 1876.
- “Ev’ry morning, ev’ry evening, ain’t we got fun? Ba-da-bum-bum, la-la-la-la. Ain’t we got fun?”
- “Pos-i-tute-ly!”
- “Thank heavens.”
- Pos-i-tute-ly shocking
- “Didn’t they teach you how to go about research in that school of yours?” “No. But I can recite ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ while making martinis.” “I weep for the future.” “There’s where the martinis come in."“Got it all right here,” Evie touched her head. “And here,” she said, patting her pocketbook. “You stole books from the New York Public Library?” Will’s voice rose in alarm. “O ye of little faith, Unc. I took notes.” That Ida was a real tomato who was not hitting on all sixes….” “Beg your pardon?” Will said. “She was pretty gullible,” Sam explained. “Naughty John, born John Hobbes, raised in Brooklyn, New York, at the Mother Nova Orphanage, where he was left at the age of nine. A troubled youth, he ran away twice, finally succeeding when he was fifteen. He shows up in police records again at age twenty-nine, when a lady accused him of doping her up and trying to have his way with her—what a bad, bad boy!” Evie waggled her eyebrows, and Sam laughed. “However, the lady in question was a prostitute, and the case was dismissed. Poor bunny.” Evie riffled through to another page. “He worked in a foundry, where he was told to beat it when they caught him using company iron to make his own goods. He showed up again in 1865 for peddling dope to returning Union soldiers. In 1871, he worked for an embalmer—that’s a real undertaker, not a bootlegger. He set up a profitable side business selling cadavers to medical schools. At some point, he reinvented himself as a Spiritualist, running séances at Knowles’ End, a ritzy mansion uptown on the Hudson. Ida Knowles—who owned the joint—ran out of dough and had to sell it to a lady”—Evie traced her finger to the spot she needed—“named Mary White. Naughty John’s companion, who was a wealthy widow and medium who got pretty chummy with Ida after Ida’s mother and father died. Anyway, the chin music was—” “The what?” Will asked. “Gossip,” Sam said.
- everybody was pretty half seas over on some kind of drugged plonk
- “That John Hobbes kept a lot of dope around, and these Spiritualist meetings should’ve been called ‘spirits meetings’ because everybody was pretty half seas over on some kind of drugged plonk, and what they got up to would’ve made every Blue Nose and Mrs. Grundy from here to Topeka reach for her smelling salts.”
- “Does your mother know you’ve a burgeoning criminal mind?” “That’s why she sent me to you.” Sam grinned. “Nice work, Sheba.”“Ishkabibble.”
- “Ishkabibble.”
- “Hot socks!”
- “What a load of bunk,”
- you’re grasping at straws,
- “Well, here’s something that’ll put the ice in your shaker.”
- “What happened to John’s tomato, Mary White?”
- cocktails with names like Pentacle Poison, Voodoo Varnish, and The Killer’s Cocktail—a potent mix of whiskey, champagne, orange juice, and crushed cherries said to make anyone wish she were dead the next morning.
- and they show you pictures of beautiful people in beautiful places enjoying that cigarette as if… as if they were making love!” Will coughed out a lungful of smoke. “I beg your pardon?”
- near the till,”
- Acting like you haven’t got a lick of sense,
- peek-a-loo
- “I haven’t the foggiest.
- I won’t be a bootlegger’s second.”
- pos-i-tute-ly
- Evie said, already thinking up excuses for why she needed to leave: sick uncle, building on fire, a sudden case of gangrene.
- go-ski
- “Take a shower, pal.
- You have a steady fella?” Sam asked after a bit. “No fella can hold me for long.” Sam gave her a sideways glance. “That a challenge?” “No. A statement of fact.” “We’ll see.” “You still owe me twenty bucks,” Evie said. “You’re a lot more like me than you think, Evie O’Neill.” “Ha!” “What I meant to say is, you like me a lot more than you think.” “Keep driving, Lloyd.”
- “Some neck lightning.”
- “Sam Lloyd doesn’t sound very Russian, though.” “Sergei Lubovitch.
- “When the fire burns in the sky, the chosen one will make the final offering. The Beast will rise in him, and Armageddon will begin.” Evie’s The world has fallen into sin. The Lord will purify it in blood through the chosen one.” And the Lord said, ‘Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses. Bind your spirit to the Holy Mark and wear it upon your person always and ye shall be protected both in this life and the hereafter. But take care that the Holy Mark be not destroyed. For then shall ye sever the tie to your spirit!’ ”
- hooey
- “That fink!”
- The body bore traces of strange tattoos, including a five-pointed star, and a note was found pinned to his shirt. Most of the ink had been washed away by the elements, but two words were legible: horseman and stars.’ ” Evie gasped. “The Pale Horseman Riding Death Before the Stars. The third offering. He is taking a page from history.”
- she carried herself more like a queen.
- “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile….”
- “Don’t let your joy and laughter hear the snag. Smile, boys, that’s the style….”
- “What’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile….”
- “So, pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, s—”
- She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away
- You remember Rosewood?
- Gab-ri-el!“Gabriel, the angel. The messenger…” “Gabriel the Archangel, whose trumpet did rend the sky.” “Gabriel, whose trumpet announced the birth of John the Baptist. Of Jesus Christ. And whose call shall bear witness to the coming of the Beast,” the strange man continued. His eyes appeared to be swirling with fire, and Gabe found he couldn’t look away. “ ‘And the eighth offering was the offering of the angel, the great messenger whose heavenly music aligned the spheres and welcomed the fire in the sky. And lo, he played a sound upon his golden trumpet and heralded the birth of the Beast.’ ”“ ‘And the Lord said, let every tongue welcome and praise the Dragon of Old, for His is the path of righteousness.’ ” From the fog came the terrible din of demonic whispers, a breath straight from hell itself. “Will you look upon me, Gabriel? Will you look upon me and be amazed?”
- EVERYTHING’S JAKE!
- “Absolutely positively!
- ritziest coif
- the cat’s pajamas!
- “Spiffy!”
- “Just keep your peepers on that dive, and don’t you dare breeze,”
- “Oh, rhapsody.
- Then I’ll never be blue,”
- darb
- “Everything’s copacetic
- “You intend to catch a killer with a hunk of dead fur?”
- baby vamp,
- ‘And lo, they did not believe but were seduced by the golden calf. They paid tribute to false idols and were damned for it. And the ninth offering sprang from lust and sin. The golden calf was destroyed, stripped of its skin of shame, and placed upon the altar of the Lord. And the Beast was pleased.
- Well, my legs would care, but don’t mind them—they like to complain.”
- “That’s bunk!”
- Her panic stoked some strange new feeling inside her, something she couldn’t control. She remembered her hands growing warmer and warmer, her body getting hot. She remembered the expression on Roy’s face: the whites of his eyes getting bigger, his mouth hanging open in surprise just before the scream was torn from him.
- perched on his head at an angle that hinted at mischief—or at least impertinence.
- Henry told her later that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful cry so ugly.
- It’s cold in the winter and hot as the devil in summer.
- “Theta,” she’d said, liking the feel of it on her tongue. “Theta it is.” She insisted on Knight for her last name. It made her feel strong and bold. A name of armor. For she would defend herself in this new life.
- It was what she loved about the city—you could be anybody you wanted to be.
- “At the crossroads, you will have a choice, brother. Careful of the one who works with both hands. Don’t let the eye see you….”
- “Oh, sweet Lois Lipstick, you are serious.”
- “This is becoming a habit, Evangeline.”
- “What good is it to have this power and not use it?” “I salute your spunk, but I question your sanity,” Sam said.
- “Pos-i-tute-ly.”
- “Unc, if you believe in ghosts and goblins—” “I do not believe in goblins….” “The goblinesque,” Evie said, rolling her eyes. “Why is it you have such trouble believing in God?” “What sort of god would let this world happen?"“These stories about people communicating with the spirits of the dead, mediums… Could you really contact someone from the other side if you wanted to?” Will’s gaze followed Evie’s hand as it held fast to the pendant at her neck. “It’s best to let the dead lie in peace,” he said gently. “But what if they aren’t at peace? What if they seem to need help? What if they show up in your dreams again and again?” Evie felt tears threatening again. She’d turned into a regular waterworks lately. She fought it.
- “What if they’re trying to get through to you and tell you something, only you’re not quite on the trolley?” “What if they’re trying to harm you?” Will said. “Did you ever think of that?” No. She hadn’t. But James? James would never hurt her. Would he? “People tend to think that hate is the most dangerous emotion. But love is equally dangerous,” Will said. “There are many stories of spirits haunting the places and people who meant the most to them. In fact, there are more of those than there are revenge stories.”
- Isaiah held his breath—you were always supposed to hold your breath walking past a graveyard; everybody knew that, too—
- Alakazam
- What good was it having something special if he couldn’t let anybody know about it?
- “When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear,”
- He was slightly dangerous; so was she. It would never work for her to be with a man who didn’t understand that about her, the darkness behind the devil-may-care facade, who flirted with it but who would run scared if faced with the storm inside.
- the banshee wail of the wind.
- “ ‘Behold and the Beast was made flesh, and when he spake it was as tongues of fire, and the heavens trembled at the sound.’ ”“ ‘At the lamentation of the widow, every tongue was stilled and the heavens opened at her cries….’ ”
- She was not beautiful while she slept; her mouth hung open and she snored very lightly, and this, despite everything that had happened, made him smile.
- “ ‘The Lord spake as if with the tongues of a thousand angels. All that remained was the eleventh offering, the Marriage of the Beast and the Woman Clothed in the Sun….’ I know you’re here, Lady Sun. I can feel you.”“ ‘And the Lord said, let the Beast be joined with the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Anoint her flesh as your flesh.’ ”“ ‘A great sign appeared in heaven, the sky alight with fire, a woman clothed with the sun and crowned with the stars. And her heart was a gift for the Beast, the heart of the world, which he would devour and become whole and walk upon the earth for a thousand years….’ ”
- “People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.”
- “Chalk it up to my charm, sister. I did manage to make off with some handcuffs, though.” His smile suggested something naughty and Evie rolled her eyes.
- She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn’t. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real.
- “As long as it isn’t your heart, Thomas.” “Haven’t you heard? I’m a newsman. I haven’t got one of those,” Woodhouse shot back.
- Some poor chumps could work their whole lives and never see their names in lights.
- “I’m a baby vamp who loves her daddy, I never wear paste when I can have pearls. So if you’ve got the Jack then everything’s jake, ’cause I’m just one of those girls….”
apr 1 2014 ∞
apr 1 2014 +
apr 1 2014 +