Max Park Quotes

Fang: “Let them blow up the world, and global-warm it, and pollute it. You and me and the others will be holed up somewhere, safe. We’ll come back out when they’re all gone, done playing their games of world domination." Max: “That’s a great plan. Of course, by then we won’t be able to go outside because we’ll get fried by the lack of the ozone layer. We’ll be living at the bottom of the food chain because everything with flavor will be full of mercury or radiation or something! And there won’t be any TV or cable because all the people will be dead! So our only entertainment will be Gazzy singing the constipation song! And there won’t be amusement parks and museums and zoos and libraries and cute shoes! We’ll be like cavemen, trying to weave clothes out of plant fibers. We’ll have nothing! Nothing! All because you and the kids want to kick back in a La-Z-Boy during the most important time in history!” Fang: “So maybe we should sign you up for a weaving class. Get a jump start on all those plant fibers.” Max: "I HATE YOU!!!" Fang: "NO YOU DOOOOOON'T!!" Voice: "You two are crazy about each other.

When my daughter was a toddler, I used to take her to a park not far from our apartment. One day as she was playing in a sandbox, an ice-cream salesman approached us. I purchased her a treat, and when I turned to give it to her, I saw her mouth was full of sand. Where I had intended to put a delicacy, she had put dirt. Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely. Was she any less of my daughter with dirt in her mouth? Of course not. Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I loved her right where she was, but I refused to leave her there. I carried her over to the water fountain and washed out her mouth. Why? Because I love her. God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain. "Spit out the dirt, honey," our Father urges. "I've got something better for you." And so he cleanses us of filth; immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don't enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for the dirt over the ice cream. "I can eat dirt if I want to!" we pout and proclaim. Which is true—we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her. Eugh,

Max didn't take his hands off her. As they walked to where he'd parked the hired car, he kept his arm round her shoulders, even though he was carrying her cases in his other hand and they kept bumping him.

Life is not complete without a dog

But Max's Volvo is double-parked in front of my house when Jerry and I return, and Max is waiting on the stoop, holding four coffees. "I didn't know what kind you like. So I just got like...all of them.

The thing I like best about Max is that he is brave.” “What did he do that was brave?” “It’s not one thing,” I say. “It’s everything. Max is not like any other person in the whole world. Kids make fun of him because he is different. His mom tries to change him into a different boy and his dad tries to treat him like he is someone else. Even his teachers treat him differently, and not always nicely. Even Mrs. Gosk. She is perfect but she still treats Max differently. No one treats him like a regular boy, but everyone wants him to be regular instead of himself. With all that, Max still gets out of bed every morning and goes to school and the park and the bus stop and even the kitchen table.

Earl "The Goat" Manigault was probably the greatest basketball player of all time, but Michael Jordan is universally regarded as the best ever. This is because The Goat only did it at Rucker Park, while Michael did it where it mattered: in front of the world.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.

And how do you know he has a big dick? You’ve seen him once. And it was a five-second ‘Oh, that’s my boss, Kline’ conversation while we were walking across the parking lot. You haven’t even met him in person.” “Five seconds is all I need.” She tapped the side of her head. “You know my cockdar is off the chain. I can sense a giant swinging penis pendulum from at least ten miles away. It’s a God-given talent, Georgie.” I choked on my wine. “Let’s not bring God into this.” She raised an eyebrow. “God knows the G-spot needs a more than adequate-sized wiener to get the job done.” “I’m pretty sure that comment just got you wait-listed for heaven.

I’d make those stretchy pants my bitch. Hell, maybe I’d take a leisurely seventy-mile jog in Central Park just to make sure my twat left her mark.   Gross?

So where'd you park the car, Max?' 'I don't know. I couldn't see over the wheel.' 'That's okay. I think I can smell it.

I believe in brevity. I believe that you, the reader, entrust me, the writer, with your most valued commodity—your time. I shouldn’t take more than my share. For that reason, I love the short sentence. Big-time game it is. Hiding in the jungle of circular construction and six-syllable canyons. As I write, I hunt. And when I find, I shoot. Then I drag the treasure out of the trees and marvel. Not all of my prey make their way into chapters. So what becomes of them? I save them. But I can’t keep them to myself. So, may I invite you to see my trophy case? What follows are cuts from this book and a couple of others. Keep the ones you like. Forgive the ones you don’t. Share them when you can. But if you do, keep it brief. Pray all the time. If necessary, use words. Sacrilege is to feel guilt for sins forgiven. God forgets the past. Imitate him. Greed I’ve often regretted. Generosity—never. Never miss a chance to read a child a story. Pursue forgiveness, not innocence. Be doubly kind to the people who bring your food or park your car. In buying a gift for your wife, practicality can be more expensive than extravagance. Don’t ask God to do what you want. Ask God to do what is right. Nails didn’t hold God to a cross. Love did.

I saw a post the other day, where someone wrote that, when they walk through a library, they touch the spines of all the books they’ve read , as a way of greeting their favorite characters . . . Try that with one of my novels, and you’ll walk away counting your fingers!

There are many ways to measure a year, but the reader is likely to measure it in books. There was the novel that felt as fresh and full of promise as the new year in January, the memoir read on the bus to and from work through the grey days of March, the creased paperback fished from a pocket in the park in May, the stacks of books thumbed through and sandy-paged, passed around at the beach in August, the old favorite read by light coming in the window in October, and the many books in between. And when we each look back at our own years in reading, we are almost sure to find that ours was exactly like no other reader’s.

Standing on the left side of the runway was my battle-worn X-wing fighter. Parked on the right side was my DeLorean. Sitting on the runway itself was my most frequently used spacecraft, the Vonnegut. Max had already powered up the engines, and they emitted a low, steady roar that filled the hangar. The Vonnegut was a heavily modified Firefly-class transport vessel, modeled after the Serenity in the classic Firefly TV series. The ship had been named the Kaylee when I’d first obtained it, but I’d immediately rechristened it after one of my favorite twentieth-century novelists. Its new name was stenciled on the side of its battered gray hull. I’d looted the Vonnegut from a cadre of Oviraptor clansmen who had foolishly attempted to hijack my X-wing while I was cruising through a large group of worlds in Sector Eleven known as the Whedonverse. The

- I’m a normal kid, I was raised by television. The secret to great barbeque: only Oscar knows it. Life should be so simple as enjoying ribs, farting, crapping, pissing, fucking and drinking, and maybe smoking too, but anything other than that is too complicated, life should be simple. It is not. - Work? You would go to work even if there’s a chance your job’s imaginary? Imaginary or not, the questions Max poses remain as relevant for Frank, Sam, and Oscar as they are for us. A slight hangover won’t be best friends with any kind of daylight and while this one wasn’t particularly hazardous, they wouldn’t be having any of it. "...the lunatic is on the grass." Surely if you see a bunch of people having a picnic in a park that would turn your head wouldn’t it? How normal a picnic really is? When was the last time you saw one happening? Not in a movie, in real life. If a man’s hat falls to the ground, said man is expected to pick it up. That’s the premise. I’m not some pissy little kid who stopped believing in God because some priests rape kids. I don’t believe in God because I can’t be sure of its existence. I’m not some pissy little kid who stopped believing in God because the church raped kids. I don’t believe in God because I can’t be sure of its existence. Nothing is wrong. You don’t take another man’s hat, another man’s ride, or another man’s woman. Those are universal laws. - You do not take another man’s hat, another man’s ride, or another man's woman. Universal laws, Rosa. - Jesus, no. That won’t be necessary Mr. Coyote. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the course of my life is this: loaded guns make pretty compelling arguments, and it’s not like I was the star in the debate team in high school. A lot of dinners are joined by assholes, people that don’t matter, and good friends too, but breakfast are kind of elite. You have breakfast with fewer people in your life and most of the time those people you have breakfast with are the good ones. - That’s the thing: I don’t know. I’m aware of the fact that guns might not be the ultimate protection when what we’re facing is the truth, we’re coming to terms with our reality, but we don’t know what we might find out there and if by god there’s an imaginary monster or something waiting there for us, I’d rather have ammo than luck No gun will ever protect a man as he prepares to meet his maker. Personally, I think half a burger is something you can have regardless of how hungry you are. Air conditioning is a marvel of modern science, how could we have lived without it? In the end, there was no greener grass than Texas.

ANNA •   •   • SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013 MORNING I drove to the gym in Northcote for my spin class this morning, then dropped into the Matches store on the way back and treated myself to a very cute Max Mara minidress (Tom will forgive me once he sees me in it). I was having a perfectly lovely morning, but as I parked the car there was some sort of commotion outside the Hipwells’ place—there are photographers there all the time now—and there she was. Again! I could hardly believe it. Rachel, barrelling past a photographer, looking rough. I’m pretty sure she’d just left Scott’s house. I didn’t even get upset. I was just astounded. And when I brought it up with Tom—calmly, matter-of-factly—he was just as baffled as I was. “I’ll get in touch with her,” he said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.” “You’ve tried that,” I said as gently as I could. “It doesn’t make any difference.” I suggested that maybe it was time to take legal advice, to look into getting a restraining order or something. “She isn’t actually harassing us, though, is she?” he said. “The phone calls have stopped, she hasn’t approached us or come to the house. Don’t worry about it, darling. I’ll sort it.” He’s right, of course, about the harassment thing. But I don’t care. There’s something up, and I’m not prepared to just ignore it. I’m tired of being told not to worry. I’m tired of being told that he’ll sort things out, that he’ll talk to her, that eventually she’ll go away. I think the time has come to take matters into my own hands. The next time I see her, I’m calling that police officer—the woman, Detective Riley. She seemed nice, sympathetic. I know Tom feels sorry for Rachel, but honestly I think it’s time I dealt with that bitch once and for all.

After we finished the interview Paul thanked me for my time and told me he thought I was great on the radio. He suggested I think about it as a career. I thanked him and said I’d consider it. But really all I was thinking about was Jamie. As soon as I got in my car I looked on my phone and saw I had a Facebook friend request from her. I felt schoolgirl giddy. I accepted the request and immediately called my Army buddy Max. Max is one of the guys who came with me on that first Tough Mudder. We are really close friends, and he’s someone I’ve always confided in. Just a few weeks before I had called and told him, “You know what? I’m done with women for the time being, but the next time I talk to a girl, I’m shooting out of my league.” So now I called Max and said, “I’ve met a girl way out of my league and I’m gonna take a shot.” I wasn’t good at asking women out and felt really nervous. I told Max she had sent me a friend request and he urged me to send her a private message on Facebook. I typed out a pretty long message and hit SEND. Then I finally put the keys in the ignition and left the radio station parking lot. Every red light I hit, I checked my phone to see if she had responded. She hadn’t. Why wasn’t she responding? Finally, I pulled over and looked again. The message hadn’t gone through! I panicked and called Max back. “What am I gonna do? What if I send another one and the first one is just floating through the Internet and it eventually goes through? Do I send another one? Do I make it sound exactly the same? I’m gonna look like a crazy person! What do I do? I don’t know what to do!” Max calmed me down again and I rewrote my original message. This time she responded. “Jamie, it was great meeting you and Paul today. Sorry you got stuck with a used bracelet. If I run into you again I will hook you up with a new one. You’ll just have to give that one back. They aren’t free. LOL. Take care.” She responded: “Ha ha. Actually, Noah Galloway, I got the one I wanted ;). Great to meet you, too. Love your story. Tragedy to triumph. I can’t imagine the number of people you inspire every day. Hope to run into you sooner rather than later.

To be fair, if we had married then, who knows what would have become of us? I doubt I would have liked your running about the country as a spy, leaving me alone for weeks at a time. And I daresay you would have had trouble concentrating on your work for worrying about me.” His grateful smile showed that he appreciated her attempt to mitigate his betrayal. “Of course, later you could have…well…come after me. Once you established your business. While I was still un-betrothed. Why didn’t you?” “I don’t suppose you would accept rampant idiocy as a reason?” “I would…if I really thought it were the reason.” When he stiffened, she added archly, “You aren’t generally an idiot. Daft and a tad overbearing, yes, but not an idiot.” A sigh escaped him. He leaned past her to pull the curtain open just enough so he could keep an eye on the street. When it looked as if he might not answer, she added, “Tristan thinks you didn’t come after me because you were afraid that I couldn’t love you.” He cast her a startled glance. “You told Tristan the truth about us?” She winced. “And Lisette and Max. Sorry. Tristan sort of…forced it out of me.” “Well, that explains why Max and Lisette were willing to bring you here in the midst of such a crucial investigation. They’ve been pressing me for a long time to give you another chance. Because they thought you betrayed me.” Grabbing her hands, he gazed down at them with a haunted look. “And I suppose there’s some truth to my brother’s words. But I also didn’t come after you because that would have been a tacit admission that I’d made a mistake. That in so doing, I’d ruined our lives. I was afraid if I admitted I’d been wrong, then it had all been for nothing. I’d sacrificed my happiness--your happiness--for nothing.” “Oh, Dom,” she whispered and squeezed his hands. “A part of me also thought if I didn’t approach you at all, there was still a chance we could be together again. But if I asked and you said no--or worse yet, said that you no longer cared about me--it would be over for good. As long as I didn’t ask, there was always hope. And hope is what kept me going.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Until you got engaged. That quashed my hope. It was what I’d told myself I wanted for you. Because it proved that I’d been right to put you aside.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Unfortunately, being right was cold comfort when it meant I’d lost you for good. By the time you came to me that day at Rathmoor Park, I was in a very dark state. I was resigning myself to a lifetime of loneliness, of wanting you and not having you.” “You would have let me marry Edwin?” she said incredulously. “Even though you still loved me?” “You were still going to marry him, weren’t you?” he countered. “Knowing that you still loved me.” “True.” She attempted a smile. “I would have done it just to bedevil you.” “No doubt,” he said dryly. “But it would have been a mistake, and I’d have been miserable.” He pressed a kiss to their joined hands. “Then I suppose we should really thank Nancy for her shenanigans. Or else we’d still be separate and miserable.

The night had turned into a complete DISASTER! My FRIENDS were down the hall. My CRUSH, Brandon, was standing next to me. My DAD was at the front door. MAX THE ROACH was parked at the curb. And I, NIKKI MAXWELL, was about to PEE my

An old woman wearing a crooked wig sat in a wheelchair, staring past me as if expecting some long-ago suitor to emerge from the parking lot and sweep her away. She smiled as I passed, but not at me. I didn't exist in her world, no more than the ghosts of her memory existed in mine.

Really? You’re doing the work yourself?” If she had been a dog, I imagined her ears would have perked up. I smiled and nodded. “Really. I had an electrician work on the wiring and Thatch and Wes have helped me a couple of times with the heavy lifting, but I’ve done most of it myself.” She slammed an open hand down on my thigh and squeezed, her expression deadpan. “I think I just orgasmed.” I shoved the gearshift into park and reached for her neck at the same time. I rubbed my nose with hers and smiled before touching my lips to hers just once. “Please, Benny. For the love of all that’s holy, hold on to that thought—and the easy trigger.

From the doorway I looked back at the street. The car parked outside was

I haven’t been drained that low in a long time. I shouldn’t have tried to take so much all at once,” I muttered, wanting to apologise but not quite finding the right words beyond that statement. “Well feel free to just steal all of mine then,” Darcy spat icily, clutching her neck tighter. I had the urge to heal her, but knew if I tried to touch her again, she’d only recoil. The ambulance pulled away and I glanced around, double checking Darius wasn’t here and I was glad to find he’d listened to me for once. That was something anyway. “Come on, I can drive you girls back in my car,” I offered. I’d left my Faerrari parked at the Acrux Hotel when I’d last visited Tucana, opting to stardust home because I’d been too drunk to drive. But I hadn’t had any magical drinks tonight, so I’d healed myself of the effects of the whiskey I’d consumed before coming to get Darius from the nightclub. Tory’s lip curled back as she glared at me with poison in her gaze. “We’re not going anywhere alone with you,” Darcy said bitterly, distrust in her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, stepping forward to get hold of her. I’d protect her tonight whether she liked it or not. Tory moved to intercept me and Caleb joined her too like a prime asshole. “You don’t fucking touch her again,” Tory growled. I narrowed my eyes at her, about to object, but as my gaze slid to Darcy over her shoulder and I saw the wall in her eyes that told me to get fucked, I knew I wasn’t going to win this fight. “Bastard,” Darcy hissed at me, looking woozy. Shit, I needed to heal her. And I could get her a blood replenishing potion back at the academy. “Come on, girls. The bus is gonna leave soon,” Caleb said, tugging Tory after him but she dug her heels in, waiting for Darcy. I opened my mouth to try and find the words that would convince Blue to stay with me, but she walked straight past me with her cheek turned and Tory threw me one more filthy look before they all headed down the street to the bus stop where mountains of students were gathering. Professors were among them and I knew they were safe enough in numbers, but my feet were still rooted to the pavement as I watched Darcy leave. You drank way too much. You have to get a grip. How are you going to keep feeding from her if you act like a monster every time your teeth are in her? I’d never had this problem before. The only thing I could compare it to was when my magic had been Awakened and my Order had Emerged. That first feed had made me feel like a ravenous beast with a bottomless stomach, and yet it still didn’t have a pinch on what it was like to feed from Blue. Caleb led Tory and Darcy past the queue straight onto the bus and my hackles rose as they joined Max and Seth on the back seats. And as Seth pulled Darcy close to him and nuzzled against her cheek, that feral animal in me awoke once more. I took out my Atlas and shot an update to Francesca, anxiously scoring my fingers through my hair. Just as the bus pulled away and rounded a corner, the FIB appeared on the street and I was immediately surrounded by three agents with dark frowns on their faces. “Lance Orion, you need to come down to the station and make a statement,” Captain Hoskins said and I sighed, knowing it was going to be a long ass night. I agreed and as I was stardusted away to the precinct, my heart was tugged in another direction, nearly forcing the stars to guide me elsewhere. But the captain ensured I made it to where he wanted to take me and I made a silent prayer to the stars that Darcy wouldn’t end up in Seth Capella’s bed tonight. Because I wasn’t sure I could control the demon in me who’d want his head for that. (ORION POV)

Reasons for Joy Happy are the people whose God is the LORD. Psalm 144:15 “How’s life?” someone asks. And we who’ve been resurrected from the dead say, “Well, things could be better.” Or “Couldn’t get a parking place.” Or “My parents won’t let me move to Hawaii.” Or “People won’t leave me alone so I can finish my sermon on selfishness.” … Are you so focused on what you don’t have that you are blind to what you do? You have a ticket to heaven no thief can take, an eternal home no divorce can break. Every sin of your life has been cast to the sea. Every mistake you’ve made is nailed to the tree. You’re blood-bought and heaven-made. A child of God—forever saved. So be grateful, joyful—for isn’t it true? What you don’t have is much less than what you do.

It beats where my parents first made out. They went to the West Yellowstone dump. They sat in the dark and waited for the bears to come out." Max laughed, smiling over at her. "And then what?" "About the time the bars in town closed, the grizzlies would chase away the black bears. Everyone who was parked at the edge of the dump would turn on their headlights and watch the grizzlies dig in the garbage." "You Montanans really are a romantic bunch.

Das Leben geht weiter. Manchmal fragte ich mich, ob diese Tatsache nicht das Grausamste an unserem Dasein ist. Nicht der Tod und die ihm vorausgehenden Schmerzen, sondern der Fakt, dass ganz gleich, welche Schicksalschläge das Leben für uns bereithält, die Uhren niemals innehalten. Nicht einmal für einen Wimpernschlag. Dabei hat das Universum doch alle Zeit der Welt. Wäre der Unfalltod eines Menschen nicht viel einfacher zu ertragen, wenn sämtliche Autos für einen Moment stehen blieben? Wenn die Wellen, die das Kind ertränkten, nicht mehr rauschten? Nur für eine kurze Zeit, wenigstens die Trauerfeier über, bis der Sarg sich in das Grab gesenkt hätte. Wird uns die Bedeutungslosigkeit unseres Daseins nicht alleine dadurch gewiss gemacht, dass wir neben dem Totenbett eines geliebten Menschen im Krankenhaus stehen und gleichzeitig vor den Fenstern das Lachen spielender Kinder im Park hören könnten? Das Leben geht immer weiter. Immer.

She didn’t like Indiana, so she pushed on through into Wisconsin, and when she was too tired to drive, she pulled into a gravel lot shaded by trees in Devil’s Lake State Park, south of Baraboo. Whose word was Baraboo? Maybe it came from Barabbas, but why would you name a town after that guy? Strange settlers, slapping names on things because they sounded cool, or because they’d heard someone indigenous once say that word in the vicinity.

Let’s go, I’ll walk you down and get you cleaned up.” “You will?” He slanted me a look before picking up his trekking poles and backpack, slipping the straps on, then maneuvering the two sticks through crisscrossing cords on his back, leaving his arms free. Finally aiming his body back up the trail toward me, he held out his hand. I hesitated but set my forearm into his open palm, and I watched as some emotion I didn’t initially recognize slid over his face. “I meant your backpack, angel. I’ll take it for you. The trail’s not wide enough for both of us to go down at the same time,” he said, his voice sounding oddly hoarse. Maybe if I hadn’t been in so much pain, and been so damn cranky, I would’ve been embarrassed. But I wasn’t, so I nodded, shrugged, and gingerly tried to take my backpack off. Luckily, I just started to shimmy a strap off when I felt the weight leave my shoulders as he tugged it away. “Are you sure?” “Positive” was all he replied with. “Come on. We’ve got half an hour to get back to the trailhead.” My whole body slumped. “Half an hour?” I’d thought I had… ten minutes max. My landlord pressed his lips together and nodded. Was he trying not to laugh? I wasn’t sure because he turned around and started heading down the path ahead of me. But I was pretty sure I saw his shoulders shaking a little. “Let me know when you want water” was one of the only two things he said on the way down. The other being, “Are you humming what I think you’re humming?” And me replying with “Yes.” “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” I had no shame. I tripped twice, and he turned around both times, but I gave him a tight smile and acted like nothing had happened. Like he predicted, thirty minutes later, when I was basically wheezing and he was acting like this was a stroll down a paved path, I spotted the parking lot and almost cried. We’d made it. I’d made it. And my hands hurt even worse from how dry the cuts were, and my elbows felt the same way, and I was sure my knees would too, but their joints were so bad, they didn’t have room to wonder about any other pain. But just as I started heading toward my car, Rhodes slipped his fingers around my biceps and steered me toward his work truck. He didn’t say another word as he unlocked it and dropped the tailgate, shooting me a look over his shoulder as he patted it briefly before heading around to the passenger door. I went straight for the tailgate and eyed it, trying to figure out how to sit on it without using my hands to boost myself up. That was how he found me: staring at it and trying to decide if I went face-first and shimmied up on my stomach, I could wiggle around and sit up on my butt eventually. “I’m trying to figure out how to—okay.” He scooped me up, one arm under the backs of my knees, the other around my lower back, and planted me on the truck. In a sitting position. Like it was no big deal. I smiled at him. “Thanks.” I would’ve figured it out, but it was the thought that counted.

This was my first visit to Walt Disney’s Magical Money Maw, and I initially had a typically cynical Chicagoan’s reaction. This place was an amusement park posing as a Disney movie come to life, with college kids in big-headed cartoon-character costumes mingling like monsters among children whose reactions veered between disappointment and terror. Here, the creator (not God but the beaming mustached one on TV) served up turn-of-the-century childhood memories painted with a pastel brush, inviting visitors into a fanciful American past sprinkled with pixie dust to banish actual memories of an era awash in financial failures, railroad strikes, immigrant tenements, racist lynchings, and social protest, right and left.

I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view.

but this of course becomes irrelevant in a jobless future where nobody works. Governments can help their citizens not only by giving them money, but also by providing them with free or subsidized services such as roads, bridges, parks, public transportation, childcare, education, healthcare, retirement homes and internet access;

When a new Duchess is brought to Tankerton, the oldest elm in the park must be felled.

The park was dotted with small copses of trees, and I stopped before the first of these to look back. I picked out the princesses’ tower and gave it a silent farewell. I would miss Lily and Sophie, and I hoped they would be safe from whatever came. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you,” I whispered. At least they had their mother now—a far more fitting and satisfying companion than I had ever been. Max will look after them, I thought. Turning around, I urged Starfire forward. I needed clear eyes and a clear head if I was going to effect my own escape.

Orion yanked open the door to Max’s passenger side and I got in, needing no further encouragement. He leaned down low, grabbing my seat belt and clipping it in place, giving me an intense stare. “See you soon, Blue.” He shut the door and the roar of the engine rumbled beneath me as Max took the lead, driving out of the parking garage at a wild speed. Caleb and Orion shot away ahead of us, but the moment we were on the road, Max put his foot down and we tore along behind them. Seth was on our tail and Darius and Tory let their throttles loose, racing ahead and keeping pace with the Vampires.