Status Updates From The Magician's Assistant

'That was all there was to say about it, but Kitty stayed, hands to knees, looking at the wall in the dark of the room that had been her room three lifetimes ago. Sabine waited to see if there were something else. You never knew with these people, there was always some revelation lurking around the corner of every meaningful silence.'

'If someone were to have pressed a sheet of glass down over the top of Alliance, Nebraska, in winter, it would have resembled an ant farm. Everything was a tunnel eaten neatly, carefully into the snow. The tunnel of the streets branching into the narrow tunnels of driveways and carved-out sidewalks. The snow banked over cars, lawn furniture, porches, like frozen animal carcasses stored for future need.'