Some days I am the complete third person- the secret agent. Nobody knows I'm there, yet I know everything.

তোমাকে বুঝতে চাচ্ছি, বুঝছি না হায়
যুক্তবেণীর উপত্যকায়!

Considering the sense of powerlessness that such a state of affairs would bring about, to have people floating in a pool of mysterious question marks seems like a minor sin.

Karou was mysterious. She had no apparent family, she never talked about herself, and she was expert at evading questions--for all that her friends knew of her background, she might have sprung whole from the head of Zeus. And she was endlessly surprising. Her pockets were always spilling out curious things: ancient bronze coins, teeth, tiny jade tigers no bigger than her thumbnail. She might reveal, while haggling for sunglasses with an African street vendor, that she spoke fluent Yoruba. Once, Kaz had undressed her to discover a knife hidden in her boot. There was the matter of her being impossible to scare and, of course, there were the scars on her abdomen: three shiny divots that could only have been made by bullets.

I never tell anyone exactly how clever I am. They would be too scared.

I grasped the mirror to look closer at the strange girl in the reflection. Yes, I could see some similarities. The shape of the face was the same, but with all the changes it looked unearthly. The reflection was beautiful ... extremely beautiful--small, pink lips ... pale and glowing skin ... fine white hair. But I couldn't stop focusing on the eyes. The bottomless blue was shocking in the midst of white. She could have competed against Lydia. No, she would have blown Lydia out of the water.