This is seriously threatening my hardboiled persona,” Veronica said, “because I have never wanted to squee so badly in my life.

When the officer turned to face her, Veronica blinked.

Veronica eased the car forward, narrowly missing two girls who stopped in the middle of the street to light each other’s cigarettes. They both held up their middle fingers in perfect unison. Veronica cheerfully flipped them off in return, then took a right toward Neptune’s Warehouse District.

Caudell hadn't touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army's old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back.

Footsteps shuffled on the stair/Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair/Spread out in fiery points/Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

"Very slowly using two fingers, Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water.

Octavian made a squeaking sound. "What was that for? I didn't say <i>toss</i> it! That could've been evidence. Or spoils of war!"

Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: <i>Oh, silly me.</i> Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation.

"You other two..." He pointed his blade a Hazel and Piper. "Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus — "

All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth's dagger.

"You dropped this," he said, totally poker-faced."

"I wish..." she said, and stopped. There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it. A final deep shaky breath, and she was ready to go on.

"I'll ask ye this once," the woman says, lifting the rifle again. "Am I gonna need this?"
I exchange a glance with Viola.
"No," I say.
"No, mam," Viola says.
Mam? I think.
"It's like sir, bonny boy." The woman slings the rifle over her shoulder by its strap. "For if yer a-talking to a lady."

He said she went around with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings' windpipe and a Glock 9mm. to the feelings' temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot.

The knot of her hands and the pulses in her throat rejected any possibility that their meeting might be a casual one. But, of course, she could not explain, nor was her face of any more assistance than her tongue; in fact, as she herself knew, in moments of stress she could resemble a congested turkey.

Dad always said this town could wreck a person, it's what happens when you're playing a rigged game. I convinced myself winning meant getting out.
But in what world do you get to leave the ring and declare victory? This is where I belong, in the fight. It's who I am.
I've rolled around in the mud for so long, wash me clean and I don't recognize myself. So how about I just accept the mud and the tendency I have to find myself rolling in it. My name is Veronica and I'm an addict. Hello Veronica.

Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.

Lila closed her mouth, but the scream continued. It was the insane scream of an hysterical woman, and it came from the throat of Norman Bates.

The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.