According to Caitlin, he’d been on the throne since Hannibal discovered elephants, and he was so slippery he would orchestrate assassination plots against himself when he got bored, just to keep his w...
A sharp crunching sound echoed across the cramped office. Pinfeather’s eyes went wide, his body rigid as a steel pole. He looked down. Caitlin’s hand was buried in his chest up to the wrist. A rivulet...
Magic is not, as a general rule, the healthiest of passions or the gentlest of muses.
It looked like a cutoff valve. Assuming I had any idea what I was looking at. Assuming it would work. Assuming the whole rig wasn’t an elaborate fail-safe, a trap that would start the killing rain as...
Does it still look like Jules Verne built a brothel? I nodded. I think they call that steampunk now, but yeah. It’s also got free-roaming man-eating shadows for a security system. And does anyone know...
A marketing ploy, or proof of Illuminati mind control? Over the past week, the images have spread from Miami to Houston to LA, painted by ordinary citizens who claim to have no memory of the deed. Pla...
With that fence it’s a total blind approach to the back door, I thought. Anyone could be hiding around that corner. Guards don’t care. They’ve run this route a thousand times for a thousand days; they...
Whatever the Garden had once been, now it was seething with corruption. Abundant life. It makes me laugh, in retrospect. Mr. Faust, did you know that there’s a medical term for abundant life? For cell...
What is this? Artie squirmed helplessly in the chair. What, you want revenge? Is that what this is all about? You think that’s gonna make you feel better? Movement caught his eye, beyond the wall of b...
What about the second floor? Coop said. Any other security up there? My gaze flicked to the screen. I kept seeing the other photos, the ones I couldn’t show them, fresh in my mind’s eye. Yeah. But tha...
We’ll put in at a private airport—the owner goes deaf and blind if you kick him twenty bucks—and head for this place in the French Quarter. Restaurant with a sideline in moving contraband. They know m...
Watch your mouth, Emma said. I can’t…I can’t even deal with you right now. Go to your room. We’ll discuss this in the morning. Mom, c’mon— I could see Emma’s eyes flash copper from across the room, gl...
The world is full of good men who make bad decisions, I told her. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn’t. You just have to figure things out the best you can. Make the best choices you can. Choi...
The machinery joining the vats was a nightmare jumble of pipes and flanges. Since you couldn’t really hire a professional plumber to set up your deathtraps, some clever techie on Angus Caine’s payroll...
She doesn’t dare come after us head-on, not now. We did, Caitlin said with a faint murmur of pleasure, slaughter most of her associates.
Most confidence games depend on the mark not knowing they’re being conned. The Kansas City Shuffle depends on the mark knowing it. Not only do they have to see you coming, they have to figure out your...
He shook his head. It’s ridiculous. And embarrassing. People have no respect for professionalism, I said. Exactly. He waggled the tip of the knife at me, wincing as his fractured arm shifted an inch....
This should set you free. It’s okay, Stacy. You’re going to a better place. Um, Daniel? Caitlin said beside me. Yeah? She shook her head. You do know she’s going to hell, right? I froze, my fingers ti...
The key to walking around places where you’re not supposed to be is to look like you’re too important to be interrupted. Most people are non-confrontational by nature, and if you give them a good reas...
I hit the arrow key one last time and froze. I’d captured it, all right. It nearly filled the frame, so big it would have to squeeze through the loft’s doors to move around. Or squirm through. I could...