She Hulk Quotes

She’s like Bruce Lee, the Hulk and Neo from The Matrix all rolled in to one.

Evie to Jake “Oh my God,” she breathes “Your boy part is like the Incredible Hulk.” Jake raises an eyebrow and asks “Boy part?” Evie nods and asks “Is he angry?” Jake answers “Not yet. But if you keep referring to him as a ‘boy part,’ he could get there. He’s all man. You don’t want to see him get angry.” Evie responds “Oh, I definitely want to see him get angry.

She needed to scream two little words. But Jo didn’t surrender; she Hulk-smashed. She squeezed until things broke.

... Come on Hulk on Wheels!" Meryn plopped down on Jaxon's lap to his astonishment. "Mush!" She pointed to the media room. Elizabeth looked to the ceiling. "Meryn! Do not treat your minion like a sled dog!" She stopped abruptly. Had that just come out of her mouth? Meryn erupted in giggles and Jaxon laughed.

Jack stares at me blankly. ‘A what?’ he asks. I choke back the laugh. ‘A boy. You know? A Y-chromosome holder? You don’t seem to notice them as much as you do the X-carriers.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ Jack asks, ‘A boy? She’s just a kid.’ I hesitate, wondering how Jack is only just doing the maths on this one now. ‘She’s seventeen. She’s not a kid anymore.’ Jack looks like he’s about to go all Incredible Hulk and burst out of his clothes before rampaging through the bar. He jumps off the stool. ‘If any boy ever lays a finger on my sister, I’m going to kill him,’ he says. Again I stare at him in silence, thinking of all the girls Jack has laid fingers and much more of his anatomy on besides. Poor Lila. If she ever wants to have a shot at a normal life, as in one that doesn’t require a vow of celibacy, she needs to stay in London.

She turns to me, and for a moment I fear she’s turning into the She-Hulk. After a second, I realize that her eyes are just really green, kind of like two angry Life Savers.

I didn’t think she would willingly give me up to the hulk; but he would break her like a ceramic bank to get at the coins of knowledge that she held.

There was another pause, and Gansey realized she’d hung up. He leaned back against the fridge, eyes closed, guilty, comforted, wild, contained. In twenty-four hours, he’d be waiting for this again. You know better you know better you know better “What the hell, man?” Ronan said. Gansey’s eyes flew open just as Ronan hit the lights. He stood in the doorway, headphones looped around his neck, Chainsaw hulking like a tender thug on his shoulder. Ronan’s eyes found the phone by Gansey’s leg, but he didn’t ask, and Gansey didn’t say anything. Ronan would hear a lie in a second, and the truth wasn’t an option. Jealousy had ruined Ronan for the first several months of Adam’s introduction into their group; this would hurt him more than that.

She searched my face, then nodded. Walking straight up to the hulking, brooding man standing in the doorway, she jabbed her finger into his chest. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes. If you hurt her any more . . . so help me God. I’ll blow the first guy from housekeeping with a set of passkeys, sneak into your room while you’re sleeping, and when you wake up, you’ll think Lorena Bobbitt had visited.

Pick,” he said, “or we kill them all.” On her knees, weeping, Helaena named her youngest, Maelor. Perhaps she thought the boy was too young to understand, or perhaps it was because the older boy, Jaehaerys, was King Aegon’s firstborn son and heir, next in line to the Iron Throne. “You hear that, little boy?” Cheese whispered to Maelor. “Your momma wants you dead.” Then he gave Blood a grin, and the hulking swordsman slew Prince Jaehaerys,

She’s like the Hulk,” Nate explained. “But instead of transforming when she gets mad, it’s when she sees crafts. And she doesn’t turn big and green. She just makes crafts. So not like the Hulk, really.

I might be able to help, Daigian," Nynaeve said, leaning forward, laying her hand on the other woman's knee. "If I were to attempt a Healing, perhaps..." "No," the woman said curtly. "But—" "I doubt you could help." "Anything can be Healed," Nynaeve said stubbornly, "even if we don't know how yet. Anything save death." "And what would you do, dear?" Daigian asked. [...] "I could do something," Nynaeve said. "This pain you feel, it has to be an effect of the bond, and therefore something to do with the One Power. If the Power causes your pain, then the Power can take that pain away." "And why would I want that?" Daigian asked, in control once again. "Well... well, because it's pain. It hurts." "It should," Daigian said. "Eben is dead. Would you want to forget your pain if you lost that hulking giant of yours? Have your feelings for him cut away like some spoiled chunk of flesh in an otherwise good roast?" Nynaeve opened her mouth, but stopped. Would she? It wasn't that simple—her feelings for Lan were genuine, and not due to a bond. He was her husband, and she loved him. Daigian had been possessive of her Warder, but it had been the affection of an aunt for her favored nephew. It wasn't the same. But would Nynaeve want that pain taken away? She closed her mouth, suddenly realizing the honor in Daigian's words. "I see. I'm sorry.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child.

Lady, all I know about you is that you're tough as hell. Guys like me, we got a list of people like you. Like a rating system. You got your Daredevils, your Iron Fists--those guys, you fight. Maybe you get lucky, or maybe you're actually good enough to beat 'em. Now, any Hulk--lady, dude, red, green, purple--you see a Hulk. you run. As you saw. Thors, too.

She watched the hulk of marriage drifting down on her frail speed-boat of aspiration, and steered in desperate circles.

Jen's Mum Will Write Jen's mum writes advertising copy. She specializes in white goods: washing machines, dryers, fridges, freezers, dishwashers. She hates these appliances hulking in corners, power-hungry and fractious. One day, she will have a wood stove, and she'll write about things that matter- she will write about birth and death, about love and the absence of love, about fathers and children, about mothers and daughters, about lovers and friends. She'll write about the whole goddamn wonderful, awful business of loving and being loved

So it was all like, Caroline continues to have behavioral problems. She struggling a lot with anger and frustration over not being able to speak (we are frustrated about these things, too, of course, but we have more socially acceptable ways of dealing with our anger). Gus has taken to calling Caroline HULK SMASH, which resonates with the doctors. There's nothing easy about this for any of us. but you take your humor where you can get it. Hoping to go home on Thursday. We'll let you know...

All the passengers were crowded over on the landside of the ship, watching through the narrow windows the careened hulk of a freighter, visibly damaged by shellfire, which had driven ashore to beach her cargo. She lay aground, looking against the sand in that clear water like a whale with smokestacks that had come to the beach to die.

So, this is how it started: as a secret, a challenge, a fire escape they used to dodge the hulking mass of their mother, who demanded that they hang laundry or get the goddamn cat out of the stovepipe whenever she found them lounging in the bunk room.

A woman with a voice like that should have the face of an angel, the body of a Greek sculpture, and the skills of a courtesan. Chances were, she was a haggard old crone. The hulking workman began to gather his tools. "I hope ye and yer pa know what ye're doin'. Fop or no, no man takes well to losin' his belongings." "Psht," the woman said airily. "It's not as if we plan on knocking him in the head and peeling his pockets." That was something,at least, Dougal thought grimly.

Surely it would be easier for a small escape pod to zip through asteroids than it would be for a hulking warship. “Let’s lose them in the asteroids!” “Unlikely,” the computer said calmly as the pod swerved again. “Asteroid Belt 116749 is far enough away that we will probably be—” “Just try, damn it!” Ava gritted. The harness dug into Ava’s shoulders as she was jerked from side to side. She thought about asking Evie to turn off the artificial gravity but honestly didn’t know if that would make things better or worse. “Asteroid Belt 116749 is now in sight.” “Yes!” Ava cried triumphantly. “We can do this!” “Unlikely,” the ever-unflappable Evie replied. “Though the pod can change direction faster than the Gathendien ship and I have eluded its acquisition beam, the ship is still pursuing us and—” “Evie,” Ava gritted, “you’re killing me.” “Negative. Killing you is counter to my programming.” “I don’t mean literally!” She grunted as the pod changed directions again. Thank goodness motion sickness never plagued her. “I’m trying to be optimistic!” “Optimism at this juncture is inadvisable.” “Oh, for crap’s sake!

She had short, thick forearms, fingers like cocktail sausages, and a broad fleshy nose with flared nostrils. Deep folds of skin connected her nose to either side of her chin, and separated that section of her face from the rest of it, like a snout. Her head was too large for her body. She looked like a bottled fetus that had escaped from its jar of formaldehyde in a Biology lab an unshriveled and thickened with age. She kept damp cash in her bodice, which she tied tightly around her chest to flatten her unchristian breasts, Her kunukku earrings were thick and gold. Her earlobes had been distended into weighted loops that swung around her neck, her earrings sitting in them like gleeful children in a merry-go-(not all the way)-round. Her right lobe had split open once and was sewn together by Dr. Verghese Verghese. Kochu Maria couldn't stop wearing her kunukku because if she did, how would people know that despite her lowly cook's job (seventy-five rupees a month) she was a Syrian Christian, Mar Thomite? Not a Pelaya, or a Pulaya, or a Paravan. But a Touchable, upper-caste Christian (into whom Christianity had seeped like tea from a teabag). Split lobes stitched back were a better option by far. Kochu Maria hadn't yet made her acquaintance with the television addict waiting inside her. The Hulk Hogan addict. She hadn't yet seen a television set...

Want to go wait outside? The cab should be here soon.” What the hell? “I told you I’d drive you there.” “And I said, no thank you.” “Why the hell not?” Kayla pipes up, “Because if you take us they won’t let us in after the scene you cause.” She follows up her comment with a shitty impersonation: “Hulk like Julia. Hulk smash anyone who look at Julia.

Well, She's (She-Hulk) quippy. I'm quippy. When we get together, we quip. And, quipwise, I think that makes me a better quipper. -Spiderman

Amy was like a teeny, tiny drunken version of the Incredible Hulk. When she didn’t get the D, she got very, very angry.

Inside every man is a teenage boy, and we're -all- crazy in love with Shulky.

But how do you tell someone your genius ex-boyfriend invented microscopic nanobots to retrieve wayward sperm? You don’t.

One day blurs into the next, one week is indistinguishable from another. Their existence consists of waiting for the weekend, then waiting for retirement, and then waiting for death.

She’s my friend too,” I said defensively, “and I didn’t mean to upset her.” “Yes.  I see that.  You went Hulk smash, and the rest is history, but let me get to the point here.” “Please

I loved before I met him, a large, hulking, healthy Adam ... with a voice like the thunder of God — a singer, story-teller, lion and world-wanderer, a vagabond who will never stop. She

Matt pointed at Fen, "Fen's a descendant of Loki, trickster and troublemaker. Laurie is, too." Laurie smiled at Baldwin. Then Matt gestured at the twins. "They're Frey and Freya. She was a goddess of love and beauty, he was weather and fertility. And I'm, uh, a descendant of Thor. I'll ... umm ... fight the Midgard Serpent." "Thor smash," Reyna interjected. "That's the Hulk, not Thor," Matt started to explain. "Whatever," Reyna muttered.

As he poured a glass for himself, she couldn't help but stare at his leanly muscled torso, so helpfully limned by firelight. She'd been used to thinking him a devil, but he had the body of a god. A lesser one. His wasn't the physique of a hulking, over-muscled Zeus or Poseidon, but rather a lean, athletic Apollo or Mercury. A body built not to bludgeon, but to hunt. Not to lumber, but to race. Not to overpower unsuspecting naiads where they bathed, but to... Seduce.

Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” “Almost precisely.

I need you to help me lift the plane so I can put this under it.” She stared. “You’ve clearly mistaken me for the Incredible Hulk.” The familiar charming grin flashed as he glanced at her legs. “No. Never that. It’s not as heavy as it looks.

Fenella Doorn watched the unfamiliar wreck of a ship ghosting into her bay. Crippled by cannon fire, she thought. What else could do such damage? The foremast was blown away, as well as half the mainmast where a jury rig clung to the jagged stump, and shot holes tattered the sails on the mizzen. And yet, to Fenella’s experienced eye the vessel had an air of defiance. Demi-cannons hulked in the shadowed gun ports. This ship was a fighter, battered but not beaten. With fight still in her, was she friend or foe?

of the problem was that Chaos got a little creation-happy. It thought to its misty, gloomy self: Hey, Earth and Sky. That was fun! I wonder what else I can make. Soon it created all sorts of other problems—and by that I mean gods. Water collected out of the mist of Chaos, pooled in the deepest parts of the earth, and formed the first seas, which naturally developed a consciousness—the god Pontus. Then Chaos really went nuts and thought: I know! How about a dome like the sky, but at the bottom of the earth! That would be awesome! So another dome came into being beneath the earth, but it was dark and murky and generally not very nice, since it was always hidden from the light of the sky. This was Tartarus, the Pit of Evil; and as you can guess from the name, when he developed a godly personality, he didn't win any popularity contests. The problem was, both Pontus and Tartarus liked Gaea, which put some pressure on her relationship with Ouranos. A bunch of other primordial gods popped up, but if I tried to name them all we’d be here for weeks. Chaos and Tartarus had a kid together (don’t ask how; I don’t know) called Nyx, who was the embodiment of night. Then Nyx, somehow all by herself, had a daughter named Hemera, who was Day. Those two never got along because they were as different as…well, you know. According to some stories, Chaos also created Eros, the god of procreation... in other words, mommy gods and daddy gods having lots of little baby gods. Other stories claim Eros was the son of Aphrodite. We’ll get to her later. I don’t know which version is true, but I do know Gaea and Ouranos started having kids—with very mixed results. First, they had a batch of twelve—six girls and six boys called the Titans. These kids looked human, but they were much taller and more powerful. You’d figure twelve kids would be enough for anybody, right? I mean, with a family that big, you’ve basically got your own reality TV show. Plus, once the Titans were born, things started to go sour with Ouranos and Gaea’s marriage. Ouranos spent a lot more time hanging out in the sky. He didn't visit. He didn't help with the kids. Gaea got resentful. The two of them started fighting. As the kids grew older, Ouranos would yell at them and basically act like a horrible dad. A few times, Gaea and Ouranos tried to patch things up. Gaea decided maybe if they had another set of kids, it would bring them closer…. I know, right? Bad idea. She gave birth to triplets. The problem: these new kids defined the word UGLY. They were as big and strong as Titans, except hulking and brutish and in desperate need of a body wax. Worst of all, each kid had a single eye in the middle of his forehead. Talk about a face only a mother could love. Well, Gaea loved these guys. She named them the Elder Cyclopes, and eventually they would spawn a whole race of other, lesser Cyclopes. But that was much later. When Ouranos saw the Cyclops triplets, he freaked. “These cannot be my kids! They don’t even look like me!” “They are your children, you deadbeat!” Gaea screamed back. “Don’t you dare leave me to raise them on my own!

What happened?” Before I could say anything, Hustler spoke up in a rough voice, “I’ll tell you what the fuck happened. Swan went all Berserker Barbie on us and killed every mother fucker there, except one that Vance got.” I swear there was anger in Smoke’s gaze and he opened his mouth to say something, but Hulk cut him off, “You’re real lucky to have such a good woman, Smoke. Without her you’d be playin’ pool with the devil right now. I expect you to use the rest of your sorry life to let her know how much you love her and how much she means to you. A woman like her is a gift from God. You better respect that gift, or he’ll take it away.

That night I had a dream again, only in this one Christine was old—no, not just old; she was ancient, a terrible hulk of a car, something you’d expect to see in a Tarot deck: instead of the Hanged Man, the Death Car. Something you could almost believe was as old as the pyramids. The engine roared and missed and jetted filthy blue oil-smoke.

Stop!” a familiar squeaky voice shouted behind her. Sophie froze. She’d learned that it was much easier to let the seven-foot-tall, heavily armed gray goblin lead the way—along with a hulking ogre warrior and a tiny green-toothed gnome. Sandor, Bo, and Flori were three of her five multispeciesial bodyguards, and they took their jobs very seriously.

She stepped in closer and studied my face. “What’s that?” “What’s what?” “That weird goofy grin you’re giving me— holy face full of sex! You slept with him!” “What? No, I—” “Don’t try to outsmart the sexoholic, Liz. You totally boned him!” Like a little girl who’d just gotten her first kiss, I squirmed. “I totally boned him!” “Sweet Jesus! Yes!” She stood up on the front porch and started chanting. “YES! YES! YES!!! The drought is over!” Tristan turned our way and raised an eyebrow. “Everything okay, ladies?” I pulled Faye back down to sit and giggled. “Everything’s fine.” “Including that sweet ass of his,” Faye muttered with a smirk. “So, how was it?” “Well, let’s just say I gave his thing a nickname.” Tears formed in her eyes and her hands flew over her heart. “My little girl is growing up. Okay, what’s the name?” “The Incredible Hulk.” She cringed. “I’m sorry, what?” “The Incr—” “No, no. I heard you the first time. You mean that green monster thing? Liz, are you fucking a guy with a green penis? Because if you are, you need a tetanus shot.” She eyed me up and down, cringing. “And higher standards.

It should," Daigian said. "Eben is dead. Would you want to forget your pain if you lost that hulking giant of yours? Have your feelings for him cutaway like some spoiled chunk of flesh in an otherwise good roast?" Nynaeve opened her mouth but stopped. Would she? It wasn't that simple—her feelings for Lan were genuine, and not due to a bond. He was her husband, and she loved him.

The stories they tell you when you’re young—about the human spirit. There isn’t any human spirit. Man is just a low-grade animal, without intellect, without soul, without virtues or moral values. An animal with only two capacities: to eat and to reproduce.” His gaunt face, with staring eyes and shrunken features that had been delicate, still retained a trace of distinction. He looked like the hulk of an evangelist or a professor of esthetics who had spent years in contemplation in obscure museums. She wondered what had destroyed him, what error on the way could bring a man to this. “You go through life looking for beauty, for greatness, for some sublime achievement,” he said. “And what do you find? A lot of trick machinery for making upholstered cars—or inner-spring mattresses.

For an immeasurable period of time, hours, days, weeks, it seemed, Celia had been struggling against tides of anguish, sinking deeper and deeper into a dreadful sea, whose waves broke at ever shorter intervals until at last there was no respite, but an endless torment that drowned and broke and shattered her to nothing. There was no longer any such person as Celia Bryant in the living world. All that remained was an anonymous hulk, a bleeding rag of flesh in a universe of pain. Her brain had long ago ceased to function. Only somewhere, at the centre of torture, an inexorable core of consciousness persisted. Hours ago, years ago, she had thought: 'This is too much. No one could bear such agony and go on living.' It seemed that something in her must break; that she must either die or fall into oblivion. Yet somehow she had gone on bearing everything. She had not died. She had not lost consciousness. All that she had lost was the sense of her personal integrity. As a human being she was obliterated; her mind was dispersed. she could not any longer envisage an end of torment. 'Not only not to hope:not even to wait. Just to endure.' At last, in some region utterly remote, a new thing came into being, words were spoken, and strangely, incredibly, the words had significance. That which had once been Celia could not grasp their meaning because somewhere else a woman's voice was crying out lamentably. Nevertheless, she heard a man speaking, and with a new searing pain there pierced her also a thin shaft of hope, the first premonitory pang of deliverance. Thereafter she seemed to fall into a black and quiet place, a dark hole of oblivion, where she lay as at the bottom of a deep well. Slowly, painfully, the disintegrated fragments of her being reassembled themselves. By long and difficult stages she returned to some sort of normality. Her brain, her senses, all the strained mechanism of her body and mind, reluctantly began to function once more. The miracle for which she no longer hoped had actually come to pass: there was an end of pain.

When we pull back into the castle courtyard, James is waiting. And he does not look happy. Actually he looks like a blond Hulk . . . right before he goes smash. Sarah sees it too. “He’s miffed.” “Yep.” We get out of the car and she turns so fast there’s a breeze. “I should go find Penny. ’Bye.” I call after her. “Chicken!” She just waves her hand over her shoulder. Slowly, I approach him. Like an explorer, deep in the jungles of the Amazon, making first contact with a tribe that has never seen the outside world. And I hold out my peace offering. It’s a Mega Pounder with cheese. “I got you a burger.” James snatches it from my hand angrily. But . . . he doesn’t throw it away. He turns to one of the men behind him. “Mick, bring it here.” Mick—a big, truck-size bloke—brings him a brown paper bag. And James’s cold blue eyes turn back to me. “After speaking with your former security team, I had an audience with Her Majesty the Queen last year when you were named heir. Given your history of slipping your detail, I asked her permission to ensure your safety by any means necessary, including this.” He reaches into the bag and pulls out a children’s leash—the type you see on ankle-biters at amusement parks, with a deranged-looking monkey sticking its head out of a backpack, his mouth wide and gaping, like he’s about to eat whoever’s wearing it. And James smiles. “Queen Lenora said yes.” I suspected Granny didn’t like me anymore; now I’m certain of it. “If I have to,” James warns, “I’ll connect this to you and the other end to old Mick here.” Mick doesn’t look any happier about the fucking prospect than I am. “I don’t want to do that, but . . .” He shrugs, no further explanation needed. “So the next time you feel like ditching? Remember the monkey, Your Grace.” He puts the revolting thing back in its bag. And I wonder if fire would kill it. “Are we good, Prince Henry?” James asks. I respect a man willing to go balls-to-the-wall for his job. I don’t like the monkey . . . but I respect it. I flash him the okay sign with my fingers. “Golden.

Diana” was the first thing out of her mouth. “I’m dying,” the too familiar voice on the other end moaned. I snorted, locking the front door behind me as I held the phone up to my face with my shoulder. “You’re pregnant. You’re not dying.” “But it feels like I am,” the person who rarely ever complained whined. We’d been best friends our entire lives, and I could only count on one hand the number of times I’d heard her grumble about something that wasn’t her family. I’d had the title of being the whiner in our epic love affair that had survived more shit than I was willing to remember right then. I held up a finger when Louie tipped his head toward the kitchen as if asking if I was going to get started on dinner or not. “Well, nobody told you to get pregnant with the Hulk’s baby. What did you expect? He’s probably going to come out the size of a toddler.” The laugh that burst out of her made me laugh too. This fierce feeling of missing her reminded me it had been months since we’d last seen each other. “Shut up.” “You can’t avoid the truth forever.” Her husband was huge. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t expect her unborn baby to be a giant too. “Ugh.” A long sigh came through the receiver in resignation. “I don’t know what I was thinking—” “You weren’t thinking.” She ignored me. “We’re never having another one. I can’t sleep. I have to pee every two minutes. I’m the size of Mars—” “The last time I saw you”—which had been two months ago—“you were the size of Mars. The baby is probably the size of Mars now. I’d probably say you’re about the size of Uranus.” She ignored me again. “Everything makes me cry and I itch. I itch so bad.” “Do I… want to know where you’re itching?” “Nasty. My stomach. Aiden’s been rubbing coconut oil on me every hour he’s here.” I tried to imagine her six-foot-five-inch, Hercules-sized husband doing that to Van, but my imagination wasn’t that great. “Is he doing okay?” I asked, knowing off our past conversations that while he’d been over the moon with her pregnancy, he’d also turned into mother hen supreme. It made me feel better knowing that she wasn’t living in a different state all by herself with no one else for support. Some people in life got lucky and found someone great, the rest of us either took a long time… or not ever. “He’s worried I’m going to fall down the stairs when he isn’t around, and he’s talking about getting a one-story house so that I can put him out of his misery.” “You know you can come stay with us if you want.” She made a noise. “I’m just offering, bitch. If you don’t want to be alone when he starts traveling more for games, you can stay here as long as you need. Louie doesn’t sleep in his room half the time anyway, and we have a one-story house. You could sleep with me if you really wanted to. It’ll be like we’re fourteen all over again.” She sighed. “I would. I really would, but I couldn’t leave Aiden.” And I couldn’t leave the boys for longer than a couple of weeks, but she knew that. Well, she also knew I couldn’t not work for that long, too. “Maybe you can get one of those I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up—” Vanessa let out another loud laugh. “You jerk.” “What? You could.” There was a pause. “I don’t even know why I bother with you half the time.” “Because you love me?” “I don’t know why.” “Tia,” Louie hissed, rubbing his belly like he was seriously starving. “Hey, Lou and Josh are making it seem like they haven’t eaten all day. I’m scared they might start nibbling on my hand soon. Let me feed them, and I’ll call you back, okay?” Van didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, Di. Give them a hug from me and call me back whenever. I’m on the couch, and I’m not going anywhere except the bathroom.” “Okay. I won’t call Parks and Wildlife to let them know there’s a beached whale—” “Goddammit, Diana—” I laughed. “Love you. I’ll call you back. Bye!” “Vanny has a whale?” Lou asked.

She could envision Shakespeare's sister. But she imagined a violent, an apocalyptic end for Shakespeare's sister, whereas I know that isn't what happened. You see, it isn't necessary. I know that lots of Chinese women, given in marriage to men they abhorred and lives they despised, killed themselves by throwing themselves down the family well. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm only saying that isn't what usually happens. It it were, we wouldn't be having a population problem. And there are so much easier ways to destroy a woman. You don't have to rape or kill her; you don't even have to beat her. You can just marry her. You don't even have to do that. You can just let her work in your office for thirty-five dollars a week. Shakespeare's sister did...follow her brother to London, but she never got there. She was raped the first night out, and bleeding and inwardly wounded, she stumbled for shelter into the next village she found. Realizing before too long that she was pregnant, she sought a way to keep herself and her child safe. She found some guy with the hots for her, realized he was credulous, and screwed him. When she announced her pregnancy to him, a couple months later, he dutifully married her. The child, born a bit early, makes him suspicious: they fight, he beats her, but in the end he submits. Because there is something in the situation that pleases him: he has all the comforts of home including something Mother didn't provide, and if he has to put up with a screaming kid he isn't sure is his, he feels now like one of the boys down at the village pub, none of whom is sure they are the children of the fathers or the fathers of their children. But Shakespeare's sister has learned the lesson all women learn: men are the ultimate enemy. At the same time she knows she cannot get along in the world without one. So she uses her genius, the genius she might have used to make plays and poems with, in speaking, not writing. She handles the man with language: she carps, cajoles, teases, seduces, calculates, and controls this creature to whom God saw fit to give power over her, this hulking idiot whom she despises because he is dense and fears because he can do her harm. So much for the natural relation between the sexes. But you see, he doesn't have to beat her much, he surely doesn't have to kill her: if he did, he'd lose his maidservant. The pounds and pence by themselves are a great weapon. They matter to men, of course, but they matter more to women, although their labor is generally unpaid. Because women, even unmarried ones, are required to do the same kind of labor regardless of their training or inclinations, and they can't get away from it without those glittering pounds and pence. Years spent scraping shit out of diapers with a kitchen knife, finding places where string beans are two cents less a pound, intelligence in figuring the most efficient, least time-consuming way to iron men's white shirts or to wash and wax the kitchen floor or take care of the house and kids and work at the same time and save money, hiding it from the boozer so the kid can go to college -- these not only take energy and courage and mind, but they may constitute the very essence of a life. They may, you say wearily, but who's interested?...Truthfully, I hate these grimy details as much as you do....They are always there in the back ground, like Time's winged chariot. But grimy details are not in the background of the lives of most women; they are the entire surface.

Sophie put us to rights,” Westhaven said, “and my guess is we’ve never thanked her. We’ve gone off and gotten married, started our families, and neglected to thank someone who contributed so generously to our happiness. We’re thanking Sophie now by not calling you out. If she wants you, Charpentier, then we’ll truss you up with a Christmas ribbon and leave you staked out under the nearest kissing bough.” “And if she doesn’t want me?” “She wanted you for something,” Lord Val said dryly. “I’d hazard it isn’t just because you’re a dab hand at a dirty nappy, either.” Vim didn’t want to lie to these men, but neither was he about to admit he suspected Sophie Windham, for reasons he could not fathom, had gifted him with her virginity then sent him on his way. “She lent you that great hulking beast of hers,” St. Just pointed out. “She’s very protective of those she cares for, and yet she let you go larking off with her darling precious—never to be seen again? I would not be so sure.” Vim had wondered about the same thing, except if a woman as practical as Sophie were determined to be shut of a man, she might just lend the sorry bastard a horse, mightn’t she? “I proposed to my wife, what was it, six times?” Westhaven said. “At least seven,” Lord Val supplied. St. Just sent Westhaven a wry smile. “I lost count after the second hangover, but Westhaven is the determined sort. He proposed a lot. It was pathetic.” “Quite.” Westhaven’s ears might have turned just a bit red. “I had to say some magic words, cry on Papa’s shoulder, come bearing gifts, and I don’t know what all before Anna took pity on me, but I do know this: Sophie has been out for almost ten years, and she has never, not once, given a man a second look. You come along with that dratted baby, and she looks at you like a woman smitten.” “He’s a wonderful baby.” “He’s a baby,” Westhaven said, loading three words with worlds of meaning. “Sophie is attached to the infant, but it’s you she’s smitten with.” All three of Sophie’s brothers speared him with a look, a look that expected him to do something. “If you gentleman will excuse me, I’m going to offer to take the baby tonight for Sophie. She’s been the one to get up and down with him all night for better than a week, and that is wearing on a woman.” He

He curled his arms, popped his biceps. "The Hulk is no match for the power of these pythons." "I see another python is also proud of the fact that my room is destroyed." Liam cupped his semi-erect length and gave a manly tug. "The desk is next. Or should we do it on your dresser? You've got a weapon of mass destruction at your beck and call. Just point me in the right direction." Laughter bubbled up in her chest. She loved this playful, joyful side of Liam. Maybe he'd never really had a chance to embrace that part of his personality when he was growing up, but he was definitely making up for it now. "Are you seriously comparing yourself to a weapon of mass destruction?" "Look at this room." He opened his arms wide. "We rocked the fucking world." Daisy made her way across the broken shambles of the bed. It didn't look girlie anymore. They'd managed to knock off the pink duvet, and all the fluffy pillows, and tangle the delicately flowered sheets in a heap. Definitely time for a change. "Where are you going"----he growled----"wiggling that sexy little ass at me?" Daisy looked back over her shoulder and smiled. "You said something about a desk?

You okay to make it back to the bed?” I nodded. “It’s not my fault. Leon—Apollo—whoever he is—didn’t fix me right. Godly powers my—” “I did fix you, but you were dead. Give me some credit,” Apollo said. I jumped, smacking my hand on my chest. Apollo sat on the edge of the toilet seat, one leg crossed over the other. Beside me, Aiden bowed stiffly. “My master.” “Oh, my gods,” I said. “Seriously. Are you trying to kill me again by giving me a heart attack?” Apollo tipped his head at Aiden. “I’ve already told you. You don’t need to do the ‘master’ and bowing business with me.” Little sparks of electricity rimmed those all-white eyes. “Why are you out of bed? Doesn’t getting stabbed warrant some downtime?” He smiled at Aiden, who was now standing. “She really is hard to take care of, isn’t she?” Aiden looked a little pale. “Yeah…” “I… I felt gross.” Apollo disappeared from the bathroom and popped up behind Aiden. Marcus took a step back, his eyes wide. He bowed too, and I really thought for a moment that Marcus was going to drop to his knees. “Good gods,” Aiden said under his breath as he led me out of the bathroom. I stared at the hulking god in the corner of the room as I climbed back into bed. “Did anyone know about this?

When personal gossip attains the dignity of print, and crowds the space available for matters of real interest to the community,” future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, in a piece which formed the basis for what we now know as the “right to privacy,” it “destroys at once robustness of thought and delicacy of feeling. No enthusiasm can flourish, no generous impulse can survive under its blighting influence.” Brandeis’s words reflected some of the darkness of Kierkegaard’s worries from fifty years earlier and foretold some of that sullying paranoia that was still to come fifty years in the future. Thiel had read this article at Stanford. Many law students do. Most regard it as another piece of the puzzle that makes up American constitutional legal theory. But Peter believed it. He venerated privacy, in creating space for weirdos and the politically incorrect to do what they do. Because he believed that’s where progress came from. Imagine for a second that you’re the kind of deranged individual who starts companies. You’ve created cryptocurrencies designed to replace the U.S. monetary system that somehow turned into a business that helps people sell Beanie Babies and laser pointers over the internet and ends up being worth billions of dollars. Where others saw science fiction, you’ve always seen opportunities—for real, legitimate business. You’re the kind of person who is a libertarian before that word had any kind of social respectability. You’re a conservative at Stanford. You’re the person who likes Ayn Rand and thinks she’s something more than an author teenage boys like to read. You were driven to entrepreneurship because it was a safe space from consensus, and from convention. How do you respond to social shaming? You hate it. How do you respond to petulant blogs implying there is something wrong with you for being a gay person who isn’t public about his sexuality? Well, that’s the question now, isn’t it?

Take the famous slogan on the atheist bus in London … “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” … The word that offends against realism here is “enjoy.” I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment. Enjoyment is lovely. Enjoyment is great. The more enjoyment the better. But enjoyment is one emotion … Only sometimes, when you’re being lucky, will you stand in a relationship to what’s happening to you where you’ll gaze at it with warm, approving satisfaction. The rest of the time, you’ll be busy feeling hope, boredom, curiosity, anxiety, irritation, fear, joy, bewilderment, hate, tenderness, despair, relief, exhaustion … This really is a bizarre category error. But not necessarily an innocent one … The implication of the bus slogan is that enjoyment would be your natural state if you weren’t being “worried” by us believer … Take away the malignant threat of God-talk, and you would revert to continuous pleasure, under cloudless skies. What’s so wrong with this, apart from it being total bollocks? … Suppose, as the atheist bus goes by, that you are the fifty-something woman with the Tesco bags, trudging home to find out whether your dementing lover has smeared the walls of the flat with her own shit again. Yesterday when she did it, you hit her, and she mewled till her face was a mess of tears and mucus which you also had to clean up. The only thing that would ease the weight on your heart would be to tell the funniest, sharpest-tongued person you know about it: but that person no longer inhabits the creature who will meet you when you unlock the door. Respite care would help, but nothing will restore your sweetheart, your true love, your darling, your joy. Or suppose you’re that boy in the wheelchair, the one with the spasming corkscrew limbs and the funny-looking head. You’ve never been able to talk, but one of your hands has been enough under your control to tap out messages. Now the electrical storm in your nervous system is spreading there too, and your fingers tap more errors than readable words. Soon your narrow channel to the world will close altogether, and you’ll be left all alone in the hulk of your body. Research into the genetics of your disease may abolish it altogether in later generations, but it won’t rescue you. Or suppose you’re that skanky-looking woman in the doorway, the one with the rat’s nest of dreadlocks. Two days ago you skedaddled from rehab. The first couple of hits were great: your tolerance had gone right down, over two weeks of abstinence and square meals, and the rush of bliss was the way it used to be when you began. But now you’re back in the grind, and the news is trickling through you that you’ve fucked up big time. Always before you’ve had this story you tell yourself about getting clean, but now you see it isn’t true, now you know you haven’t the strength. Social services will be keeping your little boy. And in about half an hour you’ll be giving someone a blowjob for a fiver behind the bus station. Better drugs policy might help, but it won’t ease the need, and the shame over the need, and the need to wipe away the shame. So when the atheist bus comes by, and tells you that there’s probably no God so you should stop worrying and enjoy your life, the slogan is not just bitterly inappropriate in mood. What it means, if it’s true, is that anyone who isn’t enjoying themselves is entirely on their own. The three of you are, for instance; you’re all three locked in your unshareable situations, banged up for good in cells no other human being can enter. What the atheist bus says is: there’s no help coming … But let’s be clear about the emotional logic of the bus’s message. It amounts to a denial of hope or consolation, on any but the most chirpy, squeaky, bubble-gummy reading of the human situation. St Augustine called this kind of thing “cruel optimism” fifteen hundred years ago, and it’s still cruel.

Bram stared into a pair of wide, dark eyes. Eyes that reflected a surprising glimmer of intelligence. This might be the rare female a man could reason with. “Now, then,” he said. “We can do this the easy way, or we can make things difficult.” With a soft snort, she turned her head. It was as if he’d ceased to exist. Bram shifted his weight to his good leg, feeling the stab to his pride. He was a lieutenant colonel in the British army, and at over six feet tall, he was said to cut an imposing figure. Typically, a pointed glance from his quarter would quell the slightest hint of disobedience. He was not accustomed to being ignored. “Listen sharp now.” He gave her ear a rough tweak and sank his voice to a low threat. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say.” Though she spoke not a word, her reply was clear: You can kiss my great woolly arse. Confounded sheep. “Ah, the English countryside. So charming. So…fragrant.” Colin approached, stripped of his London-best topcoat, wading hip-deep through the river of wool. Blotting the sheen of perspiration from his brow with his sleeve, he asked, “I don’t suppose this means we can simply turn back?” Ahead of them, a boy pushing a handcart had overturned his cargo, strewing corn all over the road. It was an open buffet, and every ram and ewe in Sussex appeared to have answered the invitation. A vast throng of sheep bustled and bleated around the unfortunate youth, gorging themselves on the spilled grain-and completely obstructing Bram’s wagons. “Can we walk the teams in reverse?” Colin asked. “Perhaps we can go around, find another road.” Bram gestured at the surrounding landscape. “There is no other road.” They stood in the middle of the rutted dirt lane, which occupied a kind of narrow, winding valley. A steep bank of gorse rose up on one side, and on the other, some dozen yards of heath separated the road from dramatic bluffs. And below those-far below those-lay the sparkling turquoise sea. If the air was seasonably dry and clear, and Bram squinted hard at that thin indigo line of the horizon, he might even glimpse the northern coast of France. So close. He’d get there. Not today, but soon. He had a task to accomplish here, and the sooner he completed it, the sooner he could rejoin his regiment. He wasn’t stopping for anything. Except sheep. Blast it. It would seem they were stopping for sheep. A rough voice said, “I’ll take care of them.” Thorne joined their group. Bram flicked his gaze to the side and spied his hulking mountain of a corporal shouldering a flintlock rifle. “We can’t simply shoot them, Thorne.” Obedient as ever, Thorne lowered his gun. “Then I’ve a cutlass. Just sharpened the blade last night.” “We can’t butcher them, either.” Thorne shrugged. “I’m hungry.” Yes, that was Thorne-straightforward, practical. Ruthless. “We’re all hungry.” Bram’s stomach rumbled in support of the statement. “But clearing the way is our aim at the moment, and a dead sheep’s harder to move than a live one. We’ll just have to nudge them along.” Thorne lowered the hammer of his rifle, disarming it, then flipped the weapon with an agile motion and rammed the butt end against a woolly flank. “Move on, you bleeding beast.

day, the trigger was an older woman with deep wrinkles. To this day, I cannot be certain about what caused her to react so strongly. Perhaps she had used up her patience simmering in the sun for hours at the back of the line. Perhaps she had some desperately hungry grandchildren who she needed to get back to. It is impossible to know exactly what happened. But after she received her allocation of wheat, she broke the established rules of the feeding site and moved toward Bubba. She looked up at him and unleashed a verbal attack. Bubba, as gentle as ever, simply smiled at her. The more he smiled, the angrier she got. I noticed the commotion when our Somali guards suddenly tensed and turned toward the disturbance. All I could see was Bubba, head and shoulders above a gathering crowd, seemingly unperturbed, and smiling down at someone. His patient response only fueled the woman’s rage. I heard her sound of fury long before I spotted the source when she launched a long stream of vile curses at Bubba. Thankfully, he didn’t understand a word that she was saying. It was now possible to understand her complaint. She was upset about the quality of the “animal feed” that was being distributed for human consumption. She was probably right in her assessment of the food. These were surplus agricultural products that United Nations contributing members didn’t want, couldn’t sell, and had no other use for. As this hulking American continued to smile, the woman realized that she was not communicating. Now, furious and frustrated, she bent down, set her plastic bag on the ground, grabbed two fistfuls of dirty, broken wheat, grain dust, dirt and chaff. She straightened to her full height and flung the filthy mixture as hard as she could into Bubba’s face. The crowd was deathly silent as I heard a series of loud metallic clicks that indicated that an entire squad of American soldiers had instinctively locked and loaded all weapons in readiness for whatever might happen next. Everything felt frozen in time as everyone waited and watched for Bubba’s reaction. A Somali man might have beaten the woman for such a public insult—and he would have considered his action and his anger entirely justified. I knew that Bubba had traveled half-way around the world at his own expense to spend three months of personal vacation time to help hurting people. And this was the thanks that he received? He was hot, sweaty, and drained beyond exhaustion—and he had just been publicly embarrassed. He had every reason to be absolutely livid. Instead, he raised one hand to rub the grit out of his eyes, and then he gave the woman one more big smile. At that point, he began to sing. And what he sang wasn’t just any song. She didn’t understand the words, of course. But she, and the entire crowd, stood in silent amazement as Bubba belted out the words to the 1950’s Elvis Presley rock-n-roll classic: You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine. By the time he started singing the next verse, the old woman had turned and stomped off in frustration, angrily plowing a path through the now-smiling crowd of Somalis to make her escape. Watching her go, Bubba raised his voice to send her off with rousing rendition of the final verse: Well they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Ya know they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine.

between the ink mage and the wizard, his mouth falling open at the sight. The hulk had nearly let her go after Talbun’s shock attack, but he recovered quickly and took her head in his meaty hands. Don’t. With appalling ease, the ink mage twisted. The snap was so loud, it made Brasley flinch even from across the chamber. His mouth fell open to scream. “No!” The brute’s mouth twisted into a contemptuous grin as he let the limp body fall from his hands. Brasley watched it happen in slow motion, almost like she was floating, eyes closed, face peaceful, hair floating up around her. It was as if life had been some tremendous weight, and now that it was gone, her shell drifted down to the floor like a dry leaf. Talbun’s body hit with a dull thud that brought Brasley back to reality.

Miss Rebecca Vaughn,” Eliza says, as if to formally present me to Alex. I walk into some kind of parlor, trying to hold my head up high and act as if I’m not at all nervous. I half-heartedly hope Eliza will stay inside the room but she doesn’t; she steps aside and lets me enter. I walk to a high-backed brocade chair with gilded arms and legs across from the big sofa Alex is occupying and sit down. I cross my ankles and carefully spread out my skirts as if it’s the most important thing in the world and requires every ounce of concentration. Victoria would be proud. “Where is she?” His voice comes out firm, demanding. Wow. So much for stalling. I bite my lip. “Who?” “Do not play games,” he says. I study my hands as they wring in my lap. I can play dumb, I can postpone this, or I can just tell him. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. “With Trent Rallsmouth,” I say, peeking up at him from underneath my lashes. His eyes fly open and he sits up straighter. “The boy from the dance? Where?” Oh God. He does not look happy. “The gardener’s cottage on the eastern edge of Harksbury.” Alex stands like he’s the incredible hulk--so quickly I’m surprised the whole sofa doesn’t fly back and crash into the wall. Oh God, this was so stupid; he’s going to kill me. Or throw me in that dungeon I’m still convinced he has… “Please tell me they have a proper chaperone,” he says. I purse my lips and shake my head. He sighs, a great drag of irritation, and crosses his arms at his chest. It makes his chest bulge with muscle, and I try to focus on the fact that he seems like he could wring my neck and not on the way he looks today. Which, seriously, is pretty hot. His face is flushed in anger, which brings out his dark eyes… Focus.

This place is spooky. What kind of family is this? And why are there so many relatives living in this one mansion? And why do they all look as if the Terminator T-800 used his futuristic medical advances to impregnate the She-Hulk, and out comes Dial and all his relatives one after the other?” “Vividly

urge to protect is incredibly strong in us, Lock sent. When danger threatens a female we have claimed as our own, it induces a state of altered consciousness. Have you ever heard the term “berserker rage?” asked Deep. My God! Kat couldn’t stop staring at Sylvan. Shirtless as he was with his broad shoulders hunched and ready to attack, he looked like a mountain of muscle—a mountain of very lethal muscle. What is he going to do? she couldn’t help asking. Whatever he has to in order to keep Sophia safe. Deep’s mental voice was grim. It’s like we told you, Kat—he’ll die protecting her if necessary. But he’s not going down without a fight. No, I guess not, Kat murmured. Uh, do all of you—all Kindred—get that way when someone you’re protecting is threatened? Actually, it’s rare to see such an extreme response unless it’s our mate who is in danger, Lock said. But yes, the protective rage is part of the Kindred biological makeup. It can turn any warrior into a killing machine—inciting us to violence like nothing else. Kat couldn’t stop the feeling of unease that settled over her at his words. So all of you have this…this other person inside you? Like the incredible Hulk or something? The incredible who? Deep asked. This guy—he got shot up with too much gamma radiation so he turns huge and green and angry whenever someone pisses him off and…Kat shook her head. Never mind. It’s a pop culture thing. You wouldn’t understand. Actually, I’d say that pretty much sums us up. Lock sounded thoughtful. Aside from the turning green part, anyway, Deep said dryly. Threaten our chosen female and prepare to die. It’s a lesson many have learned the hard way. I bet. Kat shivered. You should be glad to see Sylvan’s response, Lock said gently. Obviously he cares for your friend—cares deeply—if the rage has come over him. He will protect her or die trying. And a Kindred warrior is not easy to kill, Deep added. Especially one in the grip of the rage. Kat

I’ve already neglected several of my duties too long. I will probably be whipped—my father will order it done.” “Oh no!” Lauren put a slim hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.” Xairn shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” “Yes, it does,” she insisted. “You’ll hate me for it when you’re being punished. And then you’ll never want to come see me again.” “That’s not true.” Not knowing why he did it, Xairn stooped and placed a hand awkwardly over hers. “I take responsibility for my own actions,” he said softly. “I wanted to stay with you and so I stayed. I don’t hate you.” She looked up at him with uncertainty and fear in her eyes and suddenly he saw how he must look to her. He was huge, hulking—monstrous. His shoulders were fully twice as broad as hers and his skin, which had seemed normal to him until now, was rough and discolored next to her smooth, creamy brown. And his eyes…his eyes were the worst of all. He had studied some Earth mythology and he knew what they must look like to her. A demon—isn’t that the word? She must think I have a demon’s eyes. “You’re not a demon,” she said softly and he realized he must have spoken the words aloud. “I don’t think that about you, Xairn.” The momentary lapse startled and troubled him. “That’s because you don’t know me,” he said roughly.

wondered what horrors the hulking building

The Hulk—you know, turns green, rips his clothes off as he grows huge, and acts like a giant psycho.” She

One second you were normal Ronnie and then bam—” She thwacked the pillow. “Incredible Hulk Ronnie came out of hiding.

„Why can`t I just tell her I love her, and I`m sorry? I mean, why do you women insist on complicating things.” I really shouldn`t have said that. My usually cute, Tinkerbell-like little sister transforms into the female equivalent of the Hulk in front of my very eyes, only instead of green, she turns an interesting shade of red. „Excuse me? You act like a complete jerk, an idiot, a Buffon, you make her cry and feel like crap, and then you have the audacity, the unmitigated cheek, the motherfucking nerve to complain about the fact that you have to work at getting her to forgive you? Men!

Green,” he muttered. “What do you mean?” "You're turning green, Miss Hernandez." Feeling insulted, she growled, "What are you talking about? I'm not the Incredible Hulk!" Chuckling, he shook his head. "No, you're not, thank goodness. But you're green. Green and jealous.

Hillary Clinton spent her whole life trying to become president. She began her final campaign nearly two years before the election, cutting off at the pass anyone within her party who might seriously challenge her. She raised more money than you could ever possibly need. Donald Trump was under prepared, erratic, constantly in his own way. But it cannot be said that he did not want to win very badly. He wanted to win even more than Hillary. The last few weeks of the election made that fact look indisputable. She had already won in her mind, she felt she deserved it. Trump, on the other hand, was willing to do anything, go anywhere, bear any shame, tell any lie, ally with any group if it meant he could take it from her. And he did. p207

Then what are you waiting for?” Aurora giggled. Haragh shrugged and refilled his mug. “She’ll probably tear my head off just for talkin’ to her.” “No, she won’t,” Cayla tried with a reassuring smile. “Ye’ sure about that?” Haragh asked flatly, and we all turned around to crane our necks above the sea of hulking ogres. Across the cave, the ogre woman was bashing her club against another ogre’s skull with one hand while she balanced her bubbling mug of Rosh in the other. The battered ogre stumbled back as he clutched at his bloody head, and after she planted her boot in his gut, he let out a pained roar as he went flying into a lava fall. His screams were drowned out within seconds as his boiling body was swallowed up by the sea, and the ogre woman snorted before taking a long glug of Rosh. Then she belched and shoved a rogue ogre out of the way so she could take his seat from him. “Okay, I see your point,” I muttered

She grew dimly aware of a sound of movement in the trees some distance behind her. Indeed, the noise had gone on some while and been growing louder, but she'd been too absorbed in her half-somnolent ruminations to notice. Unlikely though it was that a large bear had appeared out of the woods with intent to eat her, she conceded it was possible, and so she probably ought to look. With a grunt, she shifted around and beheld an extraterrestrial... The ground trembled at its approach, not in time with its footsteps, but rather as through the thing were growling in a voice so deep only seismographs could hear it plainly. The tentacled hulk moved awkwardly through the trees, but it would none the less be upon her in moments. When it was near her, she addressed it. "Evening," she said, and yawned.

Hmm? Oh, nothing. I just . . . the last time I made that weave, I used it to startle ... I ... never mind." Eben. Her Warder had been young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and she had been very fond of him. Eben and Daigian had played games together like a boy and an elder sister rather than Aes Sedai and Warder. ..... I could do something," Nynaeve said. "This pain you feel, it has to be an effect of the bond, and therefore something to do with the One Power. If the Power causes your pain, then the Power can take that pain away." "And why would I want that?" Daigian asked, in control once again. "Well . . . well, because it's pain. It hurts." "It should," Daigian said. "Eben is dead. Would you want to forget your pain if you lost that hulking giant of yours? Have your feelings for him cutaway like some spoiled chunk of flesh in an otherwise good roast?" Nynaeve opened her mouth but stopped. Would she? It wasn't that simple—her feelings for Lan were genuine, and not due to a bond. He was her husband, and she loved him. Daigian had been possessive of her Warder, but it had been the affection of an aunt for her favored nephew. It wasn't the same. But would Nynaeve want that pain taken away? She closed her mouth, suddenly realizing the honor in Daigian's words. "I see. I'm sorry.

Standing, she turned toward him, dropped into an exaggerated curtsy, and, smiling broadly, said, “Your Grace. I trust I pass inspection?” He chuckled at her use of the ducal address and offered her a hand to lift her from her position. Tilting his head, he answered in a voice rich with humor. “Far be it from me to answer that particular question. I wouldn’t dare risk removing that opinion from the purview of the duchess. You know that.” Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, he continued, “Suffice to say, my lady, that I believe you are the most beautiful of my offspring.” Alex burst into laughter and leaned up to kiss her father’s cheek. “Well said…ever the diplomat. Although I rather think it shouldn’t be that difficult to be the most beautiful when compared to the hulking brutes you call sons.” “Not diplomacy at all, daughter. You look lovely. And, sadly, very grown up. When did you get so tall?” Alex was just a few inches from her father’s height, and she smiled at the question. “Strong Stafford blood, of course, Father. Are you certain we’re not descended from the Vikings?” “Looking at the four of you, one does wonder. But then there is I, the diminutive duke…pathetically small and not at all Norse.

Riley was certain his wife would argue about that. He wasn’t going to give her the chance to. “I want to know everything he said to you, and I damn straight want to know why I’m only hearing about it now.” She sat back. “Because I was fairly certain you would throw a hissy fit and then all of it would have been for nothing. We were supposed to look like star-crossed lovers, not like you were about to change into the Hulk. Should your eyebrow be twitching like that?” Mia leaned over. “It does that when he throws a hissy fit.

She’s the Incredible Hulk version of a saber-toothed tiger. And she’s seriously pissed off.

I believe you’re in denial about her situation. Hasn’t she been asked to step away from those greater issues and resolve problems that are smaller in scope, like overturned vehicles and commuter tie-ups?” I hated his passive-aggressive technique, and I wasn’t going to say that, yes, Shulky had been demoted to a superstrong meter maid. Fake smile. “Shulky is a proud resident of New York and is delighted to be able to assist in matters great and small. Rest assured that she will act without hesitation to protect the inhabitants of this great city, state, nation, and Earth, including you, Dr. Alvarado.

Hulking piece of rust,” she grumbled, then gave it a little pat on the wheel well as she scooted out between her truck and Hannah’s car. “Can’t let the car gods hear you dis their minions,” she said when she caught Cooper’s amused look. “They’ll strand you in the desert as sure as look at you. Besides, she might be a hulking piece of rusted metal but she’s my hulking piece.” She stopped when she reached her sister and gave her a one-armed hug. “And to what do I owe this pleasure? Cross-examining my afternoon date, are we?” “Maybe,” Hannah said, hugging her back. “Oh, good.” Kerry grinned, rubbing her hands together. “What did you learn?” “Hey, now,” Cooper said, chuckling. “What makes you think I’d give anything up?” “Oh, she’s good,” Kerry told him. “She once talked a tribal chief in Papua New Guinea, out of marrying me to his youngest son.” Cooper looked at Hannah, who just raised an arched brow but didn’t refute the statement. “Well, then, I suppose I’m even more in your debt,” he told Kerry’s oldest sister. “Unless of course the tribe believes in polygamy.” Kerry looked affronted. “You’d share me? Well, well, good to know.” She folded her arms. “So glad we’re having this little chat.” “Oh, no, Starfish, no such luck. You’d be stuck making do with only me. You see, I know a guy who could fly us out of there on his helicopter, and I’m guessing your erstwhile tribal spouse wouldn’t go anywhere near one of those flying birds. I’d spirit you off and--” “And leave my poor first husband brokenhearted and alone? Do I get a say in this?” She looked to her sister. “You’re drawing up my pre-nup, right?” Cooper brightened and clapped his hands together, which earned him an arched brow from Kerry. “Well, while I’m not too thrilled about your attachment to Number One, speaking as Number Two, I will say I’m happy to hear we’re in the negotiation phase.” “Husband Number One is a lot younger,” she said consideringly. “And while he doesn’t have as many head of cattle as you do, he does come with an entire village, and if something happens to his other six brothers, he’ll be chief one day.” She smiled sweetly. “Just saying.” Cooper flashed her a smile that might have been a little too private with her sister standing right there, but what the hell. “Keep in mind, Number Twos traditionally try harder. So I have that going for me.” Hannah looked from Cooper to Kerry, then at both of them, before finally looking at Kerry. “Seriously, marry him before he wises up.” “Hey,” Kerry replied, mock wounded. “And why do you say that?” “You speak the same language.” “Says the woman who communicates with her husband using old movie quotes that nobody gets but the two of you.” Hannah smiled, really smiled, and it transformed her often more serious expression into something truly radiant. “Yes, that’s exactly who’s saying that.” She looked at Cooper. “I have a feeling you and Calder will become fast friends.” “Thank you,” Cooper said, “for both sentiments.

She had to stay alert, ready to chivvy any of the hulking beasts who tried to slow down or escape, but now the herd had settled into a steady, drumming rhythm. This

She-Hulk,

She heard the roar of a hulking metal beast as a TriMet bus slouched its way by, lumbering along, kicking up dust that pelted her skin.

....she wondered whether they mightn’t better let the mortgage wait a little. Before they were worn out, before their best years were gone. It was something of life she wanted, not just a house and furniture; something of John, not pretty clothes when she would be too old to wear them. But John of course couldn’t understand. To him it seemed only right that she should have the pretty clothes—only right that he, fit for nothing else, should slave away fifteen hours a day to give them to her. There was in his devotion a baffling, insurmountable humility that made him feel the need of sacrifice. And when his muscles ached, when his feet dragged stolidly with weariness, then it seemed that in some measure at least he was making amends for his big hulking body and simple mind. (...) To him it was not what he actually accomplished by means of the sacrifice that mattered, but the sacrifice itself, the gesture - something done for her sake. And she, understanding, kept her silence.

Then the dragon was raising her head, the scales of her jaws dripping red with gore. She licked her lips and shivered, huge and proud and dreadful, her razored tail lashing, gazing about with red-glowing eyes. She took a long, shuddering breath, her eyes focusing upon Ilska and Drekr standing before her, small and insignificant against her hulking form.

I’m early to practice because I drive with Coach, who, like every soccer season, transforms into this thing where she’s no longer my mother. She’s harder, with a look in her eyes I don’t dare cross, a look that says LUNGES, SQUATS, AND SPRINTS UNTIL YOU DIE! It’s like having the Incredible Hulk for a mom.

I didn't care if she was giving the Incredible Hulk hand-jobs on the side as long as he took care of us.

cross their open sky. “Now!” “Mason.” “Mason, what?” “Mason Shaw!” “And who am I?” It was hard to resist a sarcastic answer to that one. Mrs. Claus. Abraham Lincoln. My partner. My lover. Jeremiah the Reefer Thief. But Dakota’s face with those intense eyebrows told him to speak straight. What he didn’t understand, she very much did. And though she’d never admit as much, she was terrified by it.  “Dakota. Dakota Ward. Former internal affairs for USPD, now director of intake for the Revival Corporation’s privatized HRO 22, Union Station, California. What do I win?”  She blinked but said nothing. It looked like a reserved comment held for later. Then she startled yet again at something above them that Mason couldn’t see and ducked back without answering.  Dakota planted one foot on a box then sprung upward with her arms extended overhead. She grabbed a machine just above the gutter — a giant thing, churning in her grip like the deck of a running lawnmower. She used gravity and her core to pike the thing downward, driving it hard against the concrete with a devastating crack. The machine sputtered before slowing. Dakota popped a compartment on its back, one she’d clearly known where to find. Its lights died, and the hulk became a hunk of dead metal. Dakota threw something ― whatever she’d yanked from its innards ― away with a clatter.  “Is that a prison drone?” Mason asked, gawking. “How … How did you …

Alex hulks out again, taking a protective stance in front of me. “She’s not a hooker; she’s my girlfriend!” he roars.

Once the delivery was over and we were led to our hospital room for the night, Jordyn was famished, so I went down to the cafeteria to find her something to eat. I scoured for something that she might actually be able to stomach but retreated back to our room empty-handed, opting to perhaps order from the Jerry’s Deli across the street. I walked across the hall to the nurse station, where there was one nurse on duty, a large woman with Hulk Hogan’s build who barked at me in a thick eastern European accent, “CAN I HELP YOU?” “Yes . . . um, can you tell me if Jerry’s Deli delivers here?” She stared at me with her ice-cold eyes and growled, “I AM NOT AT LIBERTY TO DISCLOSE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT WHO IS DELIVERED HERE.” I smiled, realizing that she’d misunderstood my question, and said, “Hahaha . . . no . . . does JERRY’S DELI deliver here?” Looking like she was about to leap over her computer and strangle me with her giant, professional-wrestling hands, she raised her volume and repeated, “I TOLD YOU! I AM NOT AT LIBERTY TO DISCLOSE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT WHO IS DELIVERED HERE!!!” I scurried away in fear, walked across the street, and ordered a sandwich for Jordyn while standing next to Jennifer Lopez. Another night in Los Angeles. My mother was right, being a father to a daughter was indeed the most special relationship of my life. I was soon well versed in the art of a smudgeless pedicure, how to tie the perfect ponytail, and how to identify every Disney princess just by the color of her dress. This was easy, I thought.

in private she was an all-singing, all-dancing cavalcade of light and motion. Unless she was a quivering ball of anxiety, because that was also a frequently selected option. She was very good at hiding it, but anxiety was like her anti-superpower, the one that came out unbidden in a crisis. The Hulk gets angry; Nina got anxious. Nina

That’s about the time she turned into the Hulk.

Part of the intensity of her relief—she thought, as she walked silently by his side—was the shock of a contrast: she had seen, with the sudden, immediate vividness of sensory perception, an exact picture of what the code of self-sacrifice would have meant, if enacted by the three of them. Galt, giving up the woman he wanted, for the sake of his friend, faking his greatest feeling out of existence and himself out of her life, no matter what the cost to him and to her, then dragging the rest of his years through the waste of the unreached and unfulfilled—she, turning for consolation to a second choice, faking a love she did not feel, being willing to fake, since her will to self-deceit was the essential required for Galt’s self-sacrifice, then living out her years in hopeless longing, accepting, as relief for an unhealing wound, some moments of weary affection, plus the tenet that love is futile and happiness is not to be found on earth—Francisco, struggling in the elusive fog of a counterfeit reality, his life a fraud staged by the two who were dearest to him and most trusted, struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness, struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a resented substitute, half-charity-patient, half-crutch, his perceptiveness becoming his danger and only his surrender to lethargic stupidity protecting the shoddy structure of his joy, struggling and giving up and settling into the dreary routine of the conviction that fulfillment is impossible to man—the three of them, who had had all the gifts of existence spread out before them, ending up as embittered hulks, who cry in despair that life is frustration—the frustration of not being able to make unreality real.

I stared in shock as he called our names informally as if we were old friends dropping in for an unexpected visit. He turned to our hulking escort. ‘Fredric be a dear and tell my brothers about our company. I'm sure they wouldn't want to miss this.’ ‘Yes, Master.’ Fredric nodded and disappeared back the way we had come. ‘You see, Marcel?’ The strange angel turned and smiled at Marcel like a fond All the same and all, scolding grandfather. ‘What did I tell you? Aren't you glad that I didn't give you what you wanted yesterday?’ ‘Yes, Aron, I am,’ he agreed, tightening his arm around my waist. ‘I love a happy ending.’ Aron sighed. ‘They are so rare. All the same and all, I want the whole story. How did this happen? Olivia?’ He turned to gaze at Olivia with curious, misty eyes. ‘Your brother seemed to think you infallible, All the same, and all there was some mistake.’ ‘Oh, I'm far from infallible.’ She flashed a dazzling smile. She looked perfectly at ease, except that her hands were balled into tight little fists. ‘As you can see today, I cause problems as often as I cure them.’ ‘You're too modest,’ Aron chided. ‘I've seen some of your more amazing exploits, and I must admit I've never observed anything like your talent. Wonderful!’ Olivia flickered a glance at Marcel. Aron did not miss it. ‘I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced properly at all, have we? It's just that I feel like I know you already, and I tend to get ahead of myself. Your brother introduced us yesterday, in a peculiar way. You see, I share some of your brother's talent, only I am limited in a way that he is not.’ Aron shook his head; his tone was envious.

She hadn’t made it far when a whoop drew her attention from rehearsing her excuses to Fallon about where she’d been.   She turned to find herself lifted off her feet in a back-breaking hug, a hulk of a man grinning down at her.   “Eamon!” she cried in surprised delight.   “Lass, you have no idea how happy I am to see you,” he said.   Shea wrapped him in a hug and held tight.   Buck popped up next to them. “Is this a group hug?” He didn’t wait for a response, wrapping his arms around them both.   “You know, if the warlord sees this, he’s going to kill you both,” Trenton drawled.   Buck leaped back, a cocky grin on his face.   “What? You don’t think he’d make an exception for one of the Badlands’ heroes?” Buck asked, referencing how he and the other’s who’d gone on the mission were now called.   Trenton gave him a wry look. “Considering he’s threatened to kill me at least twice a day since we’ve been back, I’m not sure how much weight your new title will carry with him.

Her Dressing Style Changes If he had a difficult time suiting/dolling up for any occasion previously and has started to do it too often now, it is again a sign that they are trying to impress someone. Also, if they seem obsessed with going to the gym or shopping for more sharp-looking/sexy clothes, it could mean they are cheating. He/She Gets Angry When Questioned Where you were until now just riles him/her up like the Hulk. He/she hates being questioned about their whereabouts. Their stories won’t match, their tone and pitch will change paces and they will try to avoid talking about it altogether.

He/She Gets Angry When Questioned Where you were until now just riles him/her up like the Hulk. He/she hates being questioned about their whereabouts. Their stories won’t match, their tone and pitch will change paces and they will try to avoid talking about it altogether. He/She Stays Up Late A sudden shift in their bedtime routine indicates an affair. Cheating partners consider a partner’s sleeping time as the safest to text or message their new love interest. His/Her Stories Seem Inconsistent Sometimes they won’t say a word about where they were and sometimes they would give away too much. When asked if a friend was there with them too, they will not only confirm their presence but also tell you about all the other people who were there, including someone’s pets. Too much information is another sign that there is something fishy going on or else they won’t be this particular about it. There Is No Intimacy Not just physically, but you also find them emotionally distant from you. Even when they are with you, their mind doesn’t seem to be. They have also lost interest in sex and always make excuses like being tired, not in the mood, had chili beef in the office and feeling bloated, etc. They Never Put Their Phone Down If they seem to be stuck with their phone all the time and even taking it with them when taking the trash or going for a bath, it is a sure tell sign that there is something in that phone they don’t want you to know about. He/She Pays Attention to Himself/Herself It’s always appraisable that your spouse dresses up for you, but if they are suddenly worried about how they look naked or whether they should get a bikini wax or not, it’s probably an effort to look good for someone other than you. You Only Get One-Word Answers from Them You sense a barrier in your communications because they have resorted to a yes, no, or hmm at most. When partners lose interest in their spouses or are having an affair, they fear to communicate too much. They want to play it carefully and not say or do something that would get them caught. They Are Spending Too Much If all of a sudden you notice too many credit card bills and receipts in their pockets and yet you don’t receive any supposed gifts, then someone else is on the receiving end of them. When asked, they will always have an explanation over how they had to lend some money to a friend, how they had to pitch in the last minute for an office party for a guy’s farewell or how they had to pay a medical bill of some relative. He/He’s Doing Things They Hated Before Remember the time you asked them to go golfing with you and they flat out refused and joked about how it’s an old man’s sport? Look who is all polo shirts and hats now! If their interests have changed all of a sudden and they are doing stuff they hated, know something is up.

The passing of years had made him indifferent to feminine beauty, and long association with the police had utterly calloused him to human misery. His manner indicated that he had detached himself from the scene of which he was a part. His body hulked between the prisoners and the door, which constituted a discharge of his duty. His mind was far away, occupied with the mathematical percentages of his prospects for winning on the races the next afternoon; daydreaming what he would do when he became eligible for pension; and rehashing in his mind an argument he had had with his wife that morning, thinking somewhat ruefully of her natural aptitude for delivering an extemporaneous tongue lashing, whereas he hadn’t thought of his best retorts until long afterward. His wife had a gift that way. No, damn it, she’d inherited it from her mother—that must be it. He remembered some of the scenes with his mother-in-law before she’d died some ten years ago. At that time, Mabel had been all worked up over the way the old lady used to have tantrums. That was before Mabel had got fat. She certainly had a good figure in those days. Well, come to think of it, he’d put on a little weight himself.

Circumstances crushed hopes and new hopes rose from the ashes of the burned desires. Her incredible Hulk - hopes then never let any glass ceiling go without smashes.

began. A chief element in positioning the new Barbie was her promotion. In 1984, after a campaign that featured "Hey There, Barbie Girl" sung to the tune of "Georgy Girl," Mattel launched a startling series of ads that toyed with female empowerment. Its slogan was "We Girls Can Do Anything," and its launch commercial, driven by an irresistibly upbeat soundtrack, was a sort of feminist Chariots of Fire. Responding to the increased number of women with jobs, the ad opens at the end of a workday with a little girl rushing to meet her business-suited mother and carrying her mother's briefcase into the house. A female voice says, "You know it, and so does your little girl." Then a chorus sings, "We girls can do anything." The ad plays with the possibility of unconventional gender roles. A rough-looking Little Leaguer of uncertain gender swaggers onscreen. She yanks off her baseball cap, her long hair tumbles down, and—sigh of relief—she grabs a particularly frilly Barbie doll. (The message: Barbie is an amulet to prevent athletic girls from growing up into hulking, masculine women.) There are images of gymnasts executing complicated stunts and a toddler learning to tie her shoelaces. (The message: Even seemingly minor achievements are still achievements.) But the shot with the most radical message takes place in a laboratory where a frizzy-haired, myopic brunette peers into a microscope. Since the seventies, Barbie commercials had featured little girls of different races and hair colors, but they were always pretty. Of her days in acting school, Tracy Ullman remarked in TV Guide that she was the "ugly kid with the brown hair and the big nose who didn't get [cast in] the Barbie commercials." With "We Girls," however, Barbie extends her tiny hand to bookish ugly ducklings; no longer a snooty sorority rush chairman, she is "big-tent" Barbie.

She had all but accepted the anger and the frustration as constant companions, but...opened her eyes to how big they had grown, hulking beasts that rubbed up against her. Crowding her and making her life smaller.

With a thousand thousand eyes she stared out through the Cloud, and flexed a thousand thousand limbs. There was pain, yes, she’d forgotten the fullness of the pain—but there was joy, too, far worse. She wanted the pain to stop, and it did—Groundswell just reached inside her, obedient to her will, and turned the pain receptors off. Its systems embraced her, planet-shattering vast, obedient to her will. It needed her to want things. It needed her will to shape its own, to give its weaponized hulk frame and purpose. She was a girl in a palace, empty and immense, and when she shouted, invisible hands answered her every command. But no matter how she ran, she never reached the walls, and if she demanded a door, it only opened into the palace once again.

You are much safer in my care.” She pushed at the wall of his chest, found her hands trapped against the heat of his skin. He merely tightened his hold, amusement spreading warmth to the coldness of his eyes. “You cannot fight me, Raven.” “I want to go back, Mikhail.” She worked to keep her voice under control. She wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. She feared he knew the truth before she even knew it. He was inside her mind, felt what she felt. He knew the price she paid for her gift. The pull between them was so strong, she could hardly think straight. The house loomed up, dark, threatening, a rambling hulk of stone. Her fingers twisted in his shirt. Mikhail knew she was unaware of that nervous, telltale gesture. “You are safe with me, Raven. I would not allow anyone or anything to harm you.” She swallowed nervously as he pushed open the heavy iron gates and mounted the steps. “Just you.” She said it under her breath, but knew he heard her.

tattered dress, or collided with her again. “Watch yerself!” scolded a worker angrily. She retreated from him, lest he take a swing at her. Even so, as soon as she was a good distance from him, her gaze found the zephyr again. It was one of her dreams to steal aboard a sky ship and be taken to one of the floating manors. Though none of them were located directly above the Fells, she’d heard people from the City speak about what it was like to live underneath the upper class’s hulking sky manors. They hovered over the City in an interconnected maze, leaving the area below in shadow come noonday. There was a risk that whatever magic upheld the manors might fail and those living below would be crushed, yet people still swarmed to live in the City, willing to take that risk in the hopes of a better life. Cettie had never set foot outside of the Fells, but she dreamed of leaving. If she proved herself capable and useful and a hard worker, she hoped to one day qualify for the lottery and earn a position at one of the floating manors. The slant of the sun on the street warned her that time was running out. Maybe Joses was already back at Miss Charlotte’s? Could they have missed each other? Cettie hated being away from the younger children for so long. No doubt some of the littlest ones were already crying for want of food, and if their guardian awoke from her drunken stupor, there would be beatings.

But that’s the nice thing about lawyers: as long as you’re paying them, they’re usually good with whatever terms go along with it. Compartmentalization is their job. It’s how they represent people who are guilty, how they file long motions they know are unlikely to be successful, how they can patiently keep secrets that they’d otherwise love to be able to share. Harder was nearly twenty years into his legal career when he was first approached. Though he often worked on celebrity cases they tended to be for routine matters, not exciting criminal proceedings or blockbuster cases, and when you’re retained to enforce rights of privacy and publicity on behalf of your clients, it tends to follow that they don’t want you grandstanding in the media on their behalf, building a profile as you work for them. His last appearance in the New York Times had been in 2001, about a case for a client who had been let go from an ad firm almost immediately after she left her new job to join it. Harder won two months’ back pay. It’s not exactly the kind of victory that marked the career of lawyers like Marty Singer, whom Harder had once worked for, and whom the Times had called the “Guard Dog to the Stars.” A lawyer who had publicly fought cases over celebrity sex tapes, who tangled with Gawker once on behalf of Rebecca Gayheart and the actor Eric Dane when their tape had run on Gawker and managed to eke out a small settlement, without an admission of guilt. So why not hire Singer? Because Peter Thiel and Mr. A didn’t want someone who was content to settle, or another lawyer who knew the standard Hollywood saber-rattling routine. They wanted someone who would win. Now, in mid-2012, they appear to have that man.