I don’t know what rock you crawled out from under, but I do know this: you came in here under false pretenses, then you scared my husband, and you hurt our boy. That puts you about two notches lower t...
I could see the sorrow in her eyes as she gently brushed his hair aside and kissed his brow. Then she snapped his neck. Ben’s corpse tumbled to the floor. Emma sank to her knees beside him, mute. She...
How do you feel about sushi? she asked. After a week of hospital food, I’d eat my own shoe and like it. Sushi sounds great.
Honor, she said, is the coin that stays in your pocket when all your silver has been spent.
He was already an accomplished sorcerer, insofar as we can gather, and he began having visions of the Garden. He felt it calling to him, promising him the power of a god. Is that before or after he st...
Good evening, Eisenberg Correctional. This is your new warden speaking. You may have noticed that every single door in the prison has just opened. This is in keeping with our new ‘leave whenever you w...
Carl Holt, I mused, fighting to keep the surprise from my voice. Oh, I remember him from the news. Wasn’t he that corrupt cop who was killed with his buddy, the Satan-worshipping porno director?
Cait, I called over, how much is this going to cost? Sudden silence. Every eye in the room fell upon me, cold as winter ice. Right, I said, holding up a hand. I’m just gonna maybe shut up now.
She spat a single word. A long, guttural, twisting word that evoked frozen Germanic winters. The trigger to the spell she’d been weaving for days. The toxic miasma above our heads exploded with a peal...
Lights dangled from the warehouse scaffolding, their power lines running to a portable generator that chugged and coughed like a heavy smoker running a marathon.
There a point behind that history lesson? I asked. Only to establish a certain level of, shall we call it, prior claim? I’m not positive, I said, but I think after sixty or seventy years it becomes mo...
Static blared from the blood-streaked screen of her boxy television set, and a fallen lamp cast angled shadows over Sophia’s mutilated corpse. Her murderer wasn’t human. It was a faceless wooden manne...
Standing next to Caitlin was like walking into a lioness’ den wearing a suit made of T-bone steaks. No amount of infatuation could make me forget what she was, or drown out the memory of Artie Kaufman...
She tapped her iPhone and showed me the screen. An aerial photograph looked down over a sprawling, dusty desert ranch. I half expected to see a tumbleweed rolling down the main thoroughfare, or maybe...
Rule number four of magic, the one that any responsible teacher drums into their students’ heads until it’s as second nature as breathing, is you do not fuck with demons. Yes, I’m aware of the irony o...
Problem there, I said, is Lauren’s a strategist. A damn good one. If she’s not thinking about the long term… Harmony finished my thought. Then there isn’t going to be a long term.
Oh, she said, putting her hand to her mouth in mock surprise. Do you mean you weren’t just feeling slightly airsick, and a bottle of ginger ale wouldn’t help your stomach feel better? I suppose, I sai...
My first escape attempt had been a disaster and this one was likely to land me in an unmarked grave, but the situation wasn’t all bad. At least I was able to cross one thing off my bucket list. You kn...
Literally sold his soul? Like, ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ Robert Johnson at the crossroads— Like Mephistopheles and your namesake, or the violinist Niccolò Paganini, or the Rolling Stones, yes, exa...
In a week marred by death and pain, I’d found a single red rose growing in the ruins. I’d take the thorns as they came.