Eddie Rake Quotes

Rake was an atmosphere, a heart-thudding, terror-threaded presence no-one could ignore, much less escape. Violence, antiquity, sombre pathos, and darkest horror – the Son of Darkness was a gelid eddy in immortality’s current,

I am a more disinterested Ginsberg admirer than Eddie is. Eddie, so to speak, comes to the table with a croupier’s rake. He works for the house. He skims from poetry.

miss him?” Another slow sip. “How can you not miss Rake once you’ve played for him? I see his face every day. I hear his voice. I can smell him sweating. I can feel him hitting me, with no pads on. I can imitate his growl, his grumbling, his bitching. I remember his stories, his speeches, his lessons. I remember all forty plays and all thirty-eight games when I wore the jersey. My father died four years ago and I loved him dearly, but, and this is hard to say, he had less influence on me than Eddie Rake.

But things that take their power from explosions contained in iron, things operated by an intricacy of mechanical devices—I mislike them, I’m afraid, and I mishandle them more often than not. Some of humankind’s creations trouble me not at all. The ones that deal in directing the flow of electricity, for example.” He indicated the stereo with the turn of his hand. “But the internal combustion engine…” “But why would it bother you to drive one, and not to ride it?” “A reasonable question, though I’m not sure it has a reasonable answer. I’ve—a mental block? A moral objection?—to being put in control of such a machine. Being borne along one I can put up with.” “But cars make you uncomfortable.” He raked his hands through the black curls at his temples and smiled crookedly. “I am a creature of earth and air,” he said. “Enclosed in a car, I feel sickened and weak, and as panicky as an animal that chews through its own leg to escape a trap.” Eddi stared at him, surprised. She knew he’d been uncomfortable in the car, but she hadn’t dreamed he’d been uncomfortable as all that.

Why should I side with you? Why should I care if you win?” The phouka raked fingers through his hair. “You have seen one of them, one of their forms. That is what seeks domination over every natural thing in this place. We of the Seelie Court are capricious, and not always well-disposed toward humankind. But would you hand this city over to the likes of what you saw tonight? That is the Unseelie Court. If we fall, every park, every boulevard tree, every grassy lawn would be their dwelling place.” Eddi sighed. “It’s not just for you, it’s for the entire seven-country metro area. Couldn’t we just let them have St. Paul?” The phouka made a disgusted noise. “All right. What if they did take over? Would we all be eaten in our beds?” He shook his head. “There are places,” he began slowly, “that belong to them. Have you ever passed through some small town, surrounded by fertile country and fed by commerce, that seemed to be rotting away even as you watched? Where the houses and the people were faded, and all the storefronts stood empty?” Eddi remembered a few. “Or a city whose new buildings looked tawdry, whose old ones were ramshackle, where the streets were grimy and the wind was never fresh, where money passed from hand to hand yet benefited no one?” His words were quicker now. “This city is alive with the best magic of mortal folk. The very light off the skyscrapers and the lakes vibrate with it. If the Unseelie Court takes up residence here, this will be a place where people fear their neighbors, where life drains the living until art and wit are luxuries, where any pleasant thing must be imported and soon loses its savor.” He fell silent, as if embarrassed by his own eloquence. Eddi rubbed her hands over her face, trying to rub away her confusion, her anger, her fear. Finally she asked the only question she had left. “Can’t you get somebody else?” The phouka began to laugh weakly. “Oh, go to bed, Eddi McCandry. You could befuddle a stone. Go to bed, and sleep soundly, and tempt me not into some foolish flap of the tongue.

Rake was an atmosphere, a heart-thudding, terror-threaded presence no-one could ignore, much less escape. Violence, antiquity, sombre pathos, and darkest horror – the Son of Darkness was a gelid eddy in immortality’s current, and the Mhybe could feel, crawling beneath her very skin, every Rhivi spirit awakened in desperation.