Wildcats Quotes

Life can be a piece of art, a magic enchantment, a fetching fairy tale or an adventurous story trimmed with alluring episodes. But it may as well be a delusive or hazardous act with many wildcat players seeming to be what they are actually not.

True story This morning I jumped on my horse And went for a ride, And some wild outlaws chased me And shot me in the side. So I crawled into a wildcats cave To find a place to hide But some pirates found me sleeping there And soon they had me tied To a pole and built a fire Under me---I almost cried Till a mermaid came and cut me loose And begged to be my bride So I said id come back Wednesday But I must admit I lied. Then I ran into a jungle swamp But I forgot my guide And I stepped into some quicksand And no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get out, until I met A watersnake named Clyde Who pulled me to some cannibals Who planned to have me fried But an eagle came and swooped me up And through the air we flied But he dropped me in a boiling lake A thousand miles wide And you’ll never guess what I did then--- I DIED

Let’s watch out for the unpredictability and the wildcat jumps of contrarian people, whose sole interests are soaring targets at high-speed, at all costs and without any consideration. Perceptive understanding may help us discover the hidden actualities behind the ‘appearances’. .("Mama. Meine Bäume wachsen bis in den Himmel")

Cam stepped into the clearing. His eyes were rimmed with a thick, shimmering gold shadow, and it shone on his face in the moonlight, making him look like a wildcat.

In Cookie's defense, it was raining wildcats and rabid dogs.

A monster,” she whispered between their lips. “My monster. One who could keep me safe and kill the other monsters who wanted to hurt me.” By the last word, his mouth slammed into hers as he turned her under him. “You always fucking had him, wildcat.” And then he ravaged her like the monster he claimed to be.

Love conquers nothing. Love provides the motivation; the person must do the rest with their own hands, heart, and feet.

Kona… do you… do you still love me?” “Wildcat…” he takes a breath, head shaking. “I never stopped.

You could have arrived atop a wildcat and no one would have said a word. They will adore you.

All they did was stir up desire, and longing, and hopelessness, a trio of miserable caged wildcats that had been installed in me without my permission, or at least without my understanding how long they would live and how vicious they would be.

No one. The room was empty. Cassie stood there, blinking back tears.

It will take more than a few arrows to kill me.” “What would it take?” I asked, curious despite myself. “Given your wicked temper, I think I’ll keep that information to myself, wildcat.

History teaches us things about ourselves, but you have to listen for the lessons. You have to be really still to hear the whispers.

She was impossible to resist. She had the eyes of a wildcat, a body as provocative with clothes as without, and luxuriant hair of uproarious gold whose woman's smell made me weep with rage into my pillow.

melted

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?

Don't go thinking you can bounce me all over the ground just because I look like somebody's grandmother," the woman said dryly. "Some grandchildren need more raising than others, and I supply it," she grinned, showing very white teeth. -- Esa Bell, Shang Wildcat

It is no wiser to taunt a man with words than to poke a wildcat with a stick.

Mind that mouth of yours, wildcat," he spoke softly, lethally, erotically in the space between their lips, the movement almost making them touch. Almost. His voice dropped lower, his eyes glued to hers. "It makes me want to reciprocate. And you don't want my mouth anywhere near you, remember?

A beam or pillar can be used to batter down a city wall, but it is no good for stopping up a little hole - this refers to a difference in function. Thoroughbreds like Qiji and Hualiu could gallop a thousand li in one day, but when it came to catching rats they were no match for the wildcat or the weasel - this refers to a difference in skill. The horned owl catches fleas at night and can spot the tip of a hair, but when daylight comes, no matter how wide it opens its eyes, it cannot see a mound or a hill - this refers to a difference in nature. Now do you say, that you are going to make Right your master and do away with Wrong, or make Order your master and do away with Disorder? If you do, then you have not understood the principle of heaven and earth or the nature of the ten thousand things. This is like saying that you are going to make Heaven your master and do away with Earth, or make Yin your master and do away with Yang. Obviously it is impossible.

I hope you drop dead!” She screamed as Basta hauled her out of the room. “I hope you burn to death! I hope you suffocate in your own smoke!” Basta laughed as he closed the door. “Just listen to this little wildcat!” He said. “I think I’ll have to watch my step with you around!

It only takes one minute of bravery. One minute of insane, embarrassingly crazy courage to change your life. Sometimes, it only takes that one minute for something great to happen.

If it had taken me all those years to recover from our first kiss, how was I going to walk away from this one?

This time when you walk away, I won’t let you stay gone. This time, Wildcat, I’ll follow.

Dr. Stern told me that the wilderness of Carolina is alive wi’ fierce creatures—bears and wildcats and wicked panthers—and a great foul thing the Indians call a skunk!

Flight is many things. Something clean and swift, like a bird skimming across the sky. Or something filthy and crawling; a series of crablike movements through figurative and literal slime, a process of creeping ahead, jumping sideways, running backward. It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads, spur railroad lines, the tailgate of a wildcat truck, a stolen car and a dead couple in lovers' lane. It is food pilfered from freight cars, garments taken from clotheslines; robbery and murder, sweat and blood. The complex made simple by the alchemy of necessity

In keeping with the Laws of the Prophet Bubba and the Code of the UIL, as set forth in the Book of First Downs, as the sun sets on Friday nights the rites of the Texas state religion are celebrated: high school, smash-mouth football. ‘And lo, the children of Jim Bob do take to the roads in caravans and they do go up unto the stadium by tribes, the Indians of Groveton, the Panthers of Lufkin, the Mustangs of Overton, and the very Wildcats of Palestine, and who shall withstand the traffic jams thereof?’ Thus is it written, and so it is and shall be.

The yells and yammering, croaking, gibbering and jabbering, howls and growls and curses, shrieking and shrinking that followed were beyond description. Several hundred wildcats and wolves being roasted slowly alive together would not have compared with it.

I shall not be afraid of anything I haven't even seen yet. If Fairyland-Below is a terrible place, well, I shall feel sorry for it. But it might be a wonderful place! Just because the wild striped cats don't know what diamonds are doesn't mean they're vicious; it just means they have wildcat sorts of wants and wealth and ways of thinking, and perhaps I could learn them and be a little wilder and cattier and stripier myself.

You're not from around here, are you? Can't be. Why would we name it I-YOU-POO-Y? Really? Say the letters. I-U-P-U-I.

I'd listen to them laugh for the rest of of my life over any music

When I’d made the wrong choice for myself. And the right one for my daughter.

There's no escape for us. We are like mice trapped in a dungeon of wildcats.We are Koreans; we are cursed race and there is no hope for us as long as the Japanese are around.

So the Woodman raised his axe, and as the Wildcat ran by he gave it a quick blow that cut the beast's head clean off from its body, and it rolled over at his feet in two pieces.

I love you, wildcat,” I told her, wishing somehow that she could know how much and how truly I meant that. How I meant it on a cellular level. On a spiritual level.

Give it to me, Wildcat boys! You can be my Wildcat toys! Bounce your balls and shoot 'em high. Ridley's come to Jackson High.

Etty saw Rowan, daughter of Robin Hood, lifting her green kirtle, her brown braid lashing like a wildcat's tail as she tried to run.

You can raise all the walls between us that you like. I’ll knock them down one by one. In the end, it will be us, wildcat.

You can tell yourself whatever makes it easiest for you to hate me, wildcat. But it was real. All of it.

It's alright to have a good opinion of yourself, but we Americans are so smug with our cockiness, we somehow feel that just because we are Americans, we can whip our weight in wildcats.

Every single part of you is perfect, vita mia,” he says between kisses. “Every single part of you already belongs to me. So you can let go my little wildcat, because I’ve already got you.

I printed it once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love.

When you make something a priority, anything is possible.

Fight with me again and let us prove that we will keep what is ours! - Corin

Oh, I'm sure you just slipped and fell, and your tongue landed in her mouth. Right? Happens to the best of us.

Jez cackled, throwing more liquor down her throat. “You so need to be cut off,” I murmured softly, but her wildcat ears easily heard me. “And you need to join the party. By the end of the night, this place will be yours.” She shoved a shooter across the table and raised one to match in cheers.

It makes me hard when you defy me, wildcat. One day soon, I’m going to make you suffer for every snide comment you’ve said. For every moment you refused to listen.” I curled my lip at him. “Threatening torture? And you wonder why I don’t trust you?” “Oh no,” he purred. “You know I’d never torture you, wildcat.

Beyond it was the entrance to Bell’s Amusement Park. That adjunct to the Tulsa State Fair is gone now, but in September of 1992, Bell’s was blasting away full force. Both roller coasters—the wooden Zingo and the more modern Wildcat—were whirling and twirling, trailing happy screams behind each hairpin turn and suicidal plunge.

Morana rolled her eyes, her breaths escalating. “Calm down, caveman. You’re being an asshole.” His lips made contact with her skin just below her ear, his tongue tasting her skin. “What I feel isn’t jealousy, wildcat.” His lips slid down the side of her neck, kissing the skin like he never had before. “It’s knowing you’re mine and knowing I still have to share you with people. It’s a burn in my chest. It makes me want to put you over my shoulder, take you to a cave, and fuck you until you forget everything but how I feel inside you.

When you loved someone, you didn't let them go. You fought for them.

Learn from this, don't live in it. It was a moment; plain and simple. You're going to mess up. It's how you move on from that, how you fight back against the failure.

When love is not madness, it is not love.

How do you know I’m any different from the broken, beaten slave you found over seven years ago? - Corin

Maybe Adalwulf truly has nothing tae fear for I see before me only cowards willing tae sacrifice everything for the sake of their lives! - Aiden

Tigers and Women ! Tigers and women have something in common, it is their disposition; they must be treated majestically.

She’d be the last. The last woman I’d kiss until the end of my days. It was Millie. It always had been Millie.

It was like the colour he'd brought into my home with his laugh. Ford's kiss was a symphony of blue and green and red and yellow. A kaleidoscope

When she was in the room, I struggled to look anywhere but at her.

Hey, Mills.” I swallowed hard. He was the only person in the world who called me Mills. “Hey, Ford.” “Long time.” Ten years and three months. But who’s counting?

Then something dawned and her attention swung to her father. “Daddy, isn’t this the lady in that picture on your bookshelf?

My imagination wasn't rich enough to afford this kiss

Most people would be excited if I asked them out. I’m not most people, so ask one of them out. -Leslie McClunis to Trevor Hampton

I didn’t know if she was looking at the wall or at me, but it didn’t matter,” he says.  “That dame was a wildcat in bed,

You rile this gal and she'll go wildcat on your ass. Patti (Pat) Canella- Dockland murders/Ghosts of your past.

I’m… I’m into you, Wildcat. I’m so into you and I’m not sure what to do about that.

You are his woman? Ha! A wildcat and a squirrel chaser have joined blankets? Or maybe it is two wildcats. Ha-ha!

An apology is a simple thing. A few easy words which we hope will correct for our regrettable actions. If accepted, however, an apology is of little worth. It indicates a momentary change of heart. Though not always a lasting one.

Listen, and you hear creation. It is in the sound of passing sirens; distant music; church bells; cell phones; lawn mowers and snow blowers; basketballs and bicycles; waves on breakers; hammers and saws; the creak and crackle of melting ice cubes; even the bark of a dog, a wolf changed by millennia of selective breeding by humans; or the purr of a cat, the descendant of one of just five African wildcats that humans have been selectively breeding for ten thousand years.

He looked at her, and sighed. “I told you before, Katsa. I won’t fight when you’re angry. I won’t solve a disagreement between us with blows.” He lifted the ice and fingered his jaw. He moaned, and held the ice to his face again. “What we do in the practice rooms—that’s to help each other. We don’t use it against each other. We’re friends, Katsa.” Shame pricked behind her eyes. It was so elemental, so obvious. It wasn’t what one friend did to another, yet she’d done it. “We’re too dangerous to each other, Katsa. And even if we weren’t, it’s not right.” “I’ll never do it again,” she said. “I swear to it.” He caught her eyes then, and held them. “I know you won’t. Katsa. Wildcat. Don’t blame yourself. You expected me to fight back. You wouldn’t have struck me otherwise.

But love doesn’t make sense, Brian. It isn’t easy, and you can’t just decide to feel it. If we were in love, we’d want to talk to each other all the time, even if all we do is argue. We’d be pulled toward each other any time we’re in the same room. We’d have to fight the urge to touch each other, because we’re not supposed to, but ultimately, we’d lose that fight because when it’s love, it can’t be helped.

She laughed out loud and glanced at herself quickly in the mirror to see the effect of her laughter on her face. No, it didn’t light it up. She looked like a wildcat, her eyes burning over her flaming cheeks, speckled with dark freckles, unkempt brown hair over her eyebrows.

Then he leaned back against the arm of the couch and looked right into my eyes. “We can do whatever you want. We can stop any time you want, and if you do want to stop, I won’t be mad or disappointed. I don’t want to do anything you don’t like - if you’re not having fun, I won’t be either. And if you just want to sit here and hold my hand, I’ll still consider myself the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the planet. Okay?

Papaw’s distant cousin—also Jim Vance—married into the Hatfield family and joined a group of former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers called the Wildcats. When Cousin Jim murdered former Union soldier Asa Harmon McCoy, he kicked off one of the most famous family feuds in American history.

an enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm; monstorous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie down slavishly under the male’s imperial embrace, inert, impatient, shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated

Wildcat strikes are the way of the future. With wildcats we can get around union hierarchies without disrupting existing unionism. Our unions’re fragmented. Deliberately. Fifty men can be a separate union and that union can dominate thousands—and so long as there’s never a secret ballot, the few will always rule the many!

Wildcats could carry a light bomb load too. Their pilots, however, found to their dismay that the bombs could be difficult to drop: a pilot had not only to pull the bomb release but also to jerk the plane’s rudder back and forth, shaking the plane in midflight to dislodge the bombs from their notoriously sticky mountings.

Wildcat fights for den or prey; Watch for tracks and stay away. Bollusk trample, charge, and kick; Climb a sturdy tree or cliff." She broke off as Payne leaned over and said in a stage whisper to one of the girls, "I don't think she's remembering it right. The real verse is, 'Bollusk charge and like to trample; climb, or be a flat soil sample.

You'd lie to the council?" "Would I lie to the governing body unfairly seeking to plot out my entire existence, without so much as asking my opinion? Hell. Yes.

Are you asking me to help you manipulate me?

I will always choose Faye. Always. You’re my best friend, Mav. But she’s my team.

With a lean build, he apparently worked out, his chiselled features were worthy of any holo-model or actor.

If he hadn’t seen a woman half naked before, then he seriously needed to get laid.

He just wanted a taste of her before she kneed him in the balls.

if he got her into bed, she was all his… On his terms.

I pick you,” he said. My heart doubled, tripled, until it felt too big. “I pick you.

Whether Whether anger quickens a lagging stride, and periodic burn-offs in the forest revitalize exhausted soil and flora—. Whether we should take pleasure in the wildcat jubilation of a lightning bolt that whips its silver vein of genesis through the night sky, flash-photo of a white birch upended, the root-system buckled to swollen thunderheads—. And whether naming an offense amounts to sour grapes and common bitterness, or even the conceited nonsense of unwashed yahoo multitudes, a yawping insult to civilized behavior—. Whether a July rainstorm, even when it drenches the unprepared pedestrian and befuddles traffic, might be extravagant, a joy, like the whoops and escalating bop glissandos of Gillespie’s upraised horn, cascading pitches a countersong to meteoric chalk marks Perseids burn across the House of Leo—. And whether peaceful ecstasy might float up from a fifteen-second avalanche reflected in the skier’s goggles, his jacket a spark of scarlet on the topmost slope, waiting for the homeward track to clear.

Your species might be good at killing each other, but you’ve learned that over millennia. I learned it all in one lifetime and I’m not just good at it, I’m fucking gifted. You hear me?

There was an open gate a little way along, and Lyra could have followed him, bit she hung back unwillingly. Pantalaimon looked at her, and then became a badger. She knew what he was doing. Dæmons could move no more than a few yards from their humans, and if she stood by the fence and he remained a bird, he wouldn't get near the bear; so he was going to pull. She felt angry and miserable. His badger claws dug into the earth and he walked forwards. It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your dæmon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadnessmand love. And she knew it was the same for him. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could apart, coming back with intense relief. He tugged a little harder. "Don't, Pan!" But he didn't stop. The bear watched motionless. The pain in Lyra's heart grew more and more unbearable, and a sob of longing rose in her throat. "Pan –" then she was through the gate, scrambling over the icy mud towards him, and he turned into a wildcat and sprang up into her arms, and then they were clinging together tightly with little shaky sounds of unhappiness coming from both. "I thought you really would –" "No –" "I couldn't belief how much it hurt–" and then she brushed away the tears angrily and sniffed hard. He nestled in her arms, and she knew she would rather die than let them be parted and face that sadness again; it would send her mad with grief and terror.

Leadership is not just about giving orders. It’s about being prepared to put your body and soul on the line to protect those who look to you for command. Any leader who won’t isn’t worth the name.

Hoffa and Brennan formed a trucking company called Test Fleet. The “brains” and his partner put that company in their wives’ maiden names. Test Fleet had only one contract. It was with a Cadillac car carrier that had been having union problems with its Teamsters union independent owner-operator car haulers. This group of Teamsters held an unsanctioned wildcat strike. Angered by this break of union solidarity, Jimmy Hoffa ordered them back to work. With Hoffa’s blessings the Cadillac car carrier then terminated its leases with the independent Teamsters haulers, put many of them out of business, and gave hauling business to Test Fleet. This arrangement helped Josephine Poszywak, aka Mrs. Hoffa, and Alice Johnson, aka Mrs. Brennan, make $155,000 in dividends over ten years, without doing a single minute’s work for the Test Fleet company. Hoffa

That boy is a fool,” Jace growled. Then he bent toward me and tilted my face up, and that was the kiss that changed my life. The kiss that opened my eyes and woke up my body, and showed me exactly what I’d been missing.

she knew she couldn’t say that. “The people are nice,” she said. She tacked a big smile on to the end of the sentence, hoping Ms. Buckley would buy it. “That’s right,” Danelle said, nodding. “The nicest people ever here.” *~*

Are you familiar with the word hiraeth?” I asked. Her expression turned to a frown. “I’ve never heard of it.” “I just learned of it myself. It’s a Welsh word, it means a sad longing; a homesickness for something you can never return to.

That was the night he got up and went to the boys' division; perhaps he was looking for his history in the big room where all the boys slept, but what he found instead was Dr. Larch kissing every boy a late good night. Homer imagined then that Dr. Larch had kissed him like that, when he'd been small; Homer could not have imagined how those kisses, even now, were still kisses meant for him. They were kisses seeking Homer Wells. That was the same night that he saw the lynx on the barren, unplanted hillside—glazed with snow that had thawed and then refrozen into a thick crust. Homer had stepped outside for just a minute; after witnessing the kisses, he desired the bracing air. It was a Canada lynx—a dark, gunmetal gray against the lighter gray of the moonlit snow, its wildcat stench so strong Homer gagged to srnell the thing. Its wildcat sense was keen enough to keep it treading within a single leap's distance of the safety of the woods. The lynx was crossing the brow of the hill when it began to slide; its claws couldn't grip the crust of the snow, and the hill had suddenly grown steeper. The cat moved from the dull moonlight into the sharper light from Nurse Angela's office window; it could not help its sideways descent. It traveled closer to the orphanage than it would ever have chosen to come, its ferocious death smell clashing with the freezing cold. The lynx's helplessness on the ice had rendered its expression both terrified; and resigned; both madness and fatalism were caught in the cat's fierce, yellow eyes and in its involuntary, spitting cough as it slid on, actually bumping against the hospital before its claws could find a purchase on the crusted snow. It spit its rage at Homer Wells, as if Homer had caused its unwilling descent. Its breath had frozen on its chin whiskers and its tufted ears were beaded with ice. The panicked animal tried to dash up the hill; it was less than halfway up when it began to slide down again, drawn toward the orphanage against its will. When it set out from the bottom of the hill a second time, the lynx was panting; it ran diagonally uphill, slipping but catching itself, and slipping again, finally escaping into the softer snow in the woods— nowhere near where it had meant to go; yet the lynx would accept any route of escape from the dark hospital. Homer Wells, staring into the woods after the departed lynx, did not imagine that he would ever leave St. Cloud's more easily.

Your planet went to war for seven hundred years. That’s it. In all your history, seven hundred years of war. You want to know how long humans have been killing each other? Millenia, sunshine. We’ve been killing each other for thousands and thousands of years. And guess what? We’re damn fucking good at it.

Tunuva ran forward, snapped her folding spear to its full length, and threw with all her might. It struck a second wildcat through the hind leg—a bad enough wound to lame it, not kill. She wrenched the spear fear free and rolled, just in time to stop the smallest of the three predators from tearing into her. Reeking breath gusted on her face as the wildcat gnashed at her across the haft of the spear, and huge paws wrestled with her shoulders, claws ripping deep into her arms. Blood flecked its whiskers. On any other day, Tunuva would have admired the creature. As it happened, she was having a bad day. She dropped her shoulder and threw the beast over her back.

I told such a man the other day that I had got a Canada lynx here in Concord, and his instant question was, “Have you got the reward for him?” What reward? Why, the ten dollars which the State offers. As long as I saw him he neither said nor thought anything about the lynx, but only about this reward. “Yes,” said he, “this State offers ten dollars reward.” You might have inferred that ten dollars was something rarer in his neighborhood than a lynx even, and he was anxious to see it on that account. I have thought that a lynx was a bright-eyed, four-legged, furry beast of the cat kind, very current, indeed, though its natural gait is by leaps. But he knew it to be a draught drawn by the cashier of the wildcat bank on the State treasury, payable at sight. Then I reflected that the first money was of leather, or a whole creature (whence pecunia, from pecus, a herd), and, since leather was at first furry, I easily understood the connection between a lynx and ten dollars, and found that all money was traceable right back to the original wildcat bank.

Don't you be wasting of me good time in the numbering of me hands," cried Freckles. "The stringth of me cause will make up for the weakness of me mimbers, and the size of a cowardly thief doesn't count. You'll think all the wildcats of the Limberlost are turned loose on you whin I come against you, and as for me cause----I slept with you, Wessner, the night I came down the corduroy like a dirty, friendless tramp, and the Boss was for taking me up, washing, clothing, and feeding me, and giving me a home full of love and tinderness, and a master to look to, and good, well-earned money in the bank. He's trusting me his heartful, and here comes you, you spotted toad of the big road, and insults me, as is an honest Irish gintleman, by hinting that you concaive I'd be willing to shut me eyes and hold fast while you rob him of the thing I was set and paid to guard, and then act the sneak and liar to him, and ruin and eternally blacken the soul of me. You damned rascal," raved Freckles, "be fighting before I forget the laws of a gintlemin's game and split your dirty head with me stick!

We’ve heard them all talk about Dust, and they’re so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong....We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn’t? What if it’s—” She said breathlessly, “Yeah! What if it’s really good...” She looked at him and saw his green wildcat eyes ablaze with her own excitement. She felt dizzy, as if the whole world were turning beneath her. If Dust were a good thing...If it were to be sought and welcomed and cherished... “We could look for it too, Pan!” she said. That was what he wanted to hear. “We could get to it before he does,” he went on, “and....” The enormousness of the task silenced them. Lyra looked up at the blazing sky. She was aware of how small they were, she and her dæmon, in comparison with the majesty and vastness of the universe; and of how little they knew, in comparison with the profound mysteries above them. “We could,” Pantalaimon insisted. “We came all this way, didn’t we? We could do it.” “We got it wrong, though, Pan. We got it all wrong about Roger. We thought we were helping him....” She choked, and kissed Roger’s still face clumsily, several times. “We got it wrong,” she said. “Next time we’ll check everything and ask all the questions we can think of, then. We’ll do better next time.” “And we’d be alone. Iorek Byrnison couldn’t follow us and help. Nor could Farder Coram or Serafina Pekkala, or Lee Scoresby or no one.” “Just us, then. Don’t matter. We’re not alone, anyway; not like....” She knew he meant not like Tony Makarios; not like those poor lost dæmons at Bolvangar; we’re still one being; both of us are one. “And we’ve got the alethiometer,” she said. “Yeah. I reckon we’ve got to do it, Pan. We’ll go up there and we’ll search for Dust, and when we’ve found it we’ll know what to do.” Roger’s body lay still in her arms. She let him down gently. “And we’ll do it,” she said. She turned away. Behind them lay pain and death and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries. But they weren’t alone. So Lyra and her dæmon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.

You’re going to do great,” Lizzy said as they reached the mini Tiki bar. The air was cool in the high fifties and the scent of various meats on the grill filled the air. Even though they’d had the party catered, apparently Grant had insisted on grilling some things himself. “I wouldn’t have recommended you apply for it otherwise.” Athena ducked behind the bar and grinned at the array of bottles and other garnishes. She’d been friends with Lizzy the past couple months and knew her friend’s tastes by now. As she started mixing up their drinks she said, “If I fail, hopefully they won’t blame you.” Lizzy just snorted but eyed the drink mix curiously. “Purple?” “Just wait. You’ll like it.” She rolled the rims of the martini glasses in sugar as she spoke. “Where’d you learn to do this?” “I bartended a little in college and there were a few occasions on the job where I had to assist because staff called out sick for an event.” There’d been a huge festival in Madrid she’d helped out with a year ago where three of the staff had gotten food poisoning, so in addition to everything else she’d been in charge of, she’d had to help with drinks on and off. That had been such a chaotic, ridiculous job. “At least you’ll have something to fall back on if you do fail,” Lizzy teased. “I seriously hope not.” She set the two glasses on the bar and strained the purple concoction into them. With the twinkle lights strung up around the lanai and the ones glittering in the pool, the sugar seemed to sparkle around the rim. “This is called a wildcat.” “You have to make me one of those too!” The unfamiliar female voice made Athena look up. Her eyes widened as her gaze locked with Quinn freaking Brody, the too-sexy-man with an aversion to virgins. He was with the tall woman who’d just asked Athena to make a drink. But she had eyes only for Quinn. Her heart about jumped out of her chest. What was he doing here of all places? At least he looked just as surprised to see her. She ignored him because she knew if she stared into those dark eyes she’d lose the ability to speak and then she’d inevitably embarrass herself. The tall, built-like-a-goddess woman with pale blonde hair he was with smiled widely at Athena. “Only if you don’t mind,” she continued, nodding at the drinks. “They look so good.” “Ah, you can have this one. I made an extra for the lush here.” She tilted her head at Lizzy with a half-smile. Athena had planned to drink the second one herself but didn’t trust her hands not to shake if she made another. She couldn’t believe Quinn was standing right in front of her, looking all casual and annoyingly sexy in dark jeans and a long-sleeved sweater shoved up to his elbows. Why did his forearms have to look so good? “Ha, ha.” Lizzy snagged her drink as Athena stepped out from behind the bar. “Athena, this is Quinn Brody and Dominique Castle. They both work for Red Stone but Dominique is almost as new as you.” Forcing a smile on her face, Athena nodded politely at both of them—and tried to ignore the way Quinn was staring at her. She’d had no freaking idea he worked for Red Stone. He looked a bit like a hungry wolf. Just like on their last date—two months ago. When he’d decided she was too much trouble, being a virgin and all. Jackass. “It’s so nice to meet you both.” She did a mental fist pump when her voice sounded normal. “I promised Belle I’d help out inside but I hope to see you both around tonight.” Liar, liar. “Me too. Thanks again for the drink,” Dominique said cheerfully while Lizzy just gave Athena a strange look. Athena wasn’t sure what Quinn’s expression was because she’d decided to do the mature thing—and studiously ignore him.