Sep 30

761.

Sep 29

“The Christmas party must go on. Like the time the power had failed and the party was held by the light of thirty laptop computers…”

Sep 29

He knew he had only a matter of seconds before her amazement faded into what stood a good chance to be unholy wrath.

Sep 28

760.

Sep 27

She was in the kitchen, muttering softly, to no one in general, “Please don’t burn. I am actually begging you not to burn on me!”

Sep 27

His eyes watered as the vaguely eggnog-flavored rum seared its way down his throat.

Sep 26

759.

Sep 25

“His responses to my interrogation were hostile at best.”

“Clarify hostile.”

“Use my tone now as a guide.”

Sep 25

“What's your dental plan?”

“Don't get cavities.”

“Health plan?”

“Same, but with hepatitis and shingles.”

Sep 24

758.

Sep 23

He'd have thought she was sleeping, but he’d seen enough corpses to know the way all muscle tension left them.

Sep 23

“And apparently, I’m uncouth, whatever that is. I think I should put it on my business cards. Sounds cool.”

Sep 22

757.

Sep 21

“Jail is mostly concrete,” the mayor answered irritably. “Wouldn’t burn.”

Sep 21

“You know why I like Indiana so much?” He asked.
 She only raised an eyebrow in response.
“It’s the scenery. It’s always changing. Sometimes the corn’s on the left. Sometimes it’s on the right.”

Sep 20

756.

Sep 19

“Run like hell is not the default battle plan.”

“Uh, just to be clear, I shot first, then ran like hell.”

Sep 19

“If you’re going to lie to me have the decency to be convincing.”

Sep 18

755.

Sep 17

"Does yours do that thing when it's all quiet where he starts singing under his breath, and then he gets louder and louder, and then when you say something about it, he's like, 'No, no, I have no idea what you're talking about!' and then he insists he never does it?"

"All the time! And does yours do the little dance, too?" she asked, bouncing a little.

"Oh my God, the dance!” Martha squealed, and then they both broke into a strange little dance that was mainly tiny arm flails combined with an odd sort of shake to their heads. Despite the fact that they'd only met a few hours ago, their dance was perfectly in time.

Sep 17

“Are you boys really this stupid?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or are you expecting an outright denial?”

“I guess that answers my question.”

Sep 16

754.

Sep 15

“Generally speaking I don’t like lines of work that need euphemisms like ‘their kind of work.’”

Sep 15

He knew as soon as he’d said it that it was absolutely the wrong thing to say, that he might as well have stood up and announced to the entire world that he liked to eat kittens for breakfast (which, gross), and now the cop was looking at him with undisguised suspicion.

Sep 14

753.

Sep 13

“Maybe she’s just... more attuned to the supernatural than we are.”

“More attuned? What are you, a politician? Just say psychic, for God’s sake.”

“OK, maybe she’s psychic.”

“Don’t be an idiot. There’s no such thing.”

Sep 13

“God, this is weird, you know? I can’t hear myself talking. I don’t even know if I am talking. I don’t know if you can hear me. But if you can, tap me on the right shoulder.” Her ghost self reached out and tapped. There was a long pause. “...OK, that was my left shoulder, but I’m gonna assume that that wasn’t deliberate.”

Sep 12

752.

Sep 11

Substantive Charms of the Polish Magical Renaissance sounded vaguely familiar but it turned out to be printed in Latin, which was enough to discourage her from further investigation of its contents. A slim volume entitled A Horse of a Different Colour proved to be exactly what the title suggested – instructions for brewing potions that would turn your steed various bright colours, should anyone ever think of a remotely sensible reason for doing so. A Victorian book called Jolly Japes For The Jovial Jinxer looked like fun, but since most of the jolly japes seemed to require their targets to be wearing crinolines or driving carriages, it was understandable that it was now out of print.

Sep 11

It took him two seconds after entering the bar to realise this might be one of his less brilliant ideas, it took him four beers and seven tequila shots to forget that completely.

Sep 10

751.

Sep 9

"Do you know what your son did to my kid?"

"Nope," he answered cheerfully. "Is he the concussion or the broken wrist?"

Sep 9

"That'd be very helpful, ma'am," Young interrupted, staring at the low point of the vee in her secretary's sweater. Unprofessional, but she couldn't really fault him. Beverly had never discussed appropriate office attire with her secretary because the support staff always came by to make sure they had a full supply closet and working light bulbs on days Viv wore her pink cashmere top.

Sep 8

750.

Sep 7

“You know how snakes can swallow their food whole? What if a person swallowed a snake whole, and then the snake turned inside out, and then ate the person from the inside? That would be awesome.”

Sep 7

“Muffled iPod noises are the new elevator music. I miss the old elevator music.”

Sep 6

749.

Sep 5

“Would you stop being petulant?”

“I could if I knew what that meant.”

“Now you’re just being deliberately obtuse.”

“And now you’re just using bigger words to prove you can.”

Sep 5

“You’re not going to make me wear an apron, are you?” he asked, watching her warily, like she could magically snap her fingers and a frilly pink apron would appear on him. Because if she used magic, that’d totally be what she’d do first.

Sep 4

748.

Sep 3

“On a scale of one to ten my head is at about a fifty-seven million and climbing to infinity,” he grumbled, rolling over and onto all fours and breathing shallowly.

“You can never reach infinity,” she said, picking the most important part of that statement to comment on. She fell back, gritting his teeth and sucking in a breath at the way motion seemed to scrape some very sharp object across the base of her skull, spreading little white dots and oh, yeah, pain across all her nerve endings.

“Thought my head was impressive like that,” he muttered, still on his hands and knees and looking at the floor like it could give him strength, just give him strength and he could get through this. Or possibly that was her projecting. She huffed out a belated laugh—synapses not firing right now, obviously, and did there really need to be a humiliating middle-ground in head injuries? Couldn’t it just be unconsciousness or death?

Sep 3

“Oh, don’t get all ethical on me. Think of it as an issue of liberty. You’re liberating the beer from the store. It wants to be free.”

Sep 2

747.

Sep 1

“You been fidgeting in the passenger seat for a mile. Either you wanna share your feelings or you’ve got crabs. If it’s the first, spit it out already. If it’s the second, get the fuck out of my car and bleach your crotch.”

Sep 1

“Your dad said not to…”

“So?” Jack says like she’s mentally deficient. “He also says that computers run by gerbils on little wheels.”