Dad pressed against my mind. Please, Allison. Let me, just this once, hold my son.
I shouldn't. Nothing good ever came from letting my father have his way. But I could feel his love for this baby. And even if he couldn't love me, I knew that at this moment, before the baby could grow up and become a disappointment to him, he truly loved him.
I slowly stepped away from the front of my mind, letting him fill that space, letting him feel through my hands, see through my eyes.
"He's amazing," Dad said through me. "You're amazing." He looked up at Violet, and she smiled.

I doubt she likes the idea of seeing him put back in a cage.” “Maybe not,” he said. “But she knows that the Authority are the only people who might be able to help him.” “Or kill him,” I said. “That too. What is life without risk?” “Long?” Terric laughed, a sort of high whooping that made me—and Zayvion, much to my surprise—smile. Contagious. For all he had a serious exterior, Terric was the guy you’d want to sit next to at a funny movie, just to hear him laugh.

Noel ducked to the lower cabinets – a percussion of pots and pans clanged into each other.

“Are you intentionally trying not to listen to me?”

His head popped above the counter. “I resent that. I’m a great listener. Just ask the TV.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Alright. I had…”

Noel heard her swallow and he suddenly wanted to knock himself out with the frying pan.

“…relations…with a mortal, Tommy.”

He ducked again, this time from embarrassment. He groaned silently, wishing she’d turn and walk away before she said what he knew was coming.

“It wasn’t quite the same as it was when I was human. It didn’t—”

“Please you, yeah I got it,” he blurted. “Please, for the love of God, stop.

He'd already put a shirt on each leg and had stacked every shoe I owned into a precarious pyramid. The room looked like a small, overly curious tornado had torn it apart.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said. "Maybe I should give you to Shamus.

Don't know about my knives, but my gun's made of pain.

Your heart new to the world, and full of warmth and sensibility, receives its first impressions with eagerness. Artless yourself, you suspect not others of deceit; and viewing the world through the medium of your own truth and innocence, you fancy all who surround you to deserve your confidence and esteem. What pity, that these gay visions must soon be dissipated! What pity, that you must soon discover the baseness of mankind, and guard against your fellow-creatures, as against your foes!