Marsha > Recent Status Updates

It was almost noon and the detective was already down in the mouth. Interviews with Miss Packard's friends were going nowhere. A search of the magic shop was a bust. Mr. Gambhir, the mall janitor who found Mr. Holt's body, couldn't even be interviewed; the guy trashed his house so badly he had to be committed to a psych ward in South Pitch.

Rolan vomited violently into a blackberry bush.
"Why...didn't you...stop me...?" Rolan groaned, doubled over as cramps racked his abdomen.
"I told you yesterday the yellow mushrooms were poisonous," Luc said.
"Well, I forgot!" Rolan retched again. "You could have reminded me! you saw me pick and eat the blasted thing!"
"There's no teacher like a bad experience," the Arcanist replied, unconcerned.

With a raspy shriek, the Cryptic died. Or rather, it deliquesced, which was the word he'd learned from the Arcanist books. Since Cryptics weren't actually living, they couldn't actually die. But all the same, it looked like dying. At least, until the monster's body vanished, turning to blue smoke that faded in the air.
Animals didn't die like that.
Rolan stared at the piece it left behind.

I opened my legs and he opened the lips of my vagina with his fingers and entered my vagina with the fingers of one hand and circled my clitoris with the fingers of his other. My nipples hardened. When my clitoris was the size of a hazelnut I had my orgasm, coming with him holding me, my eyes open and his eyes watching me and then I felt the naked entering of his penis inside me without a barrier.

"Cold?" Sean asked.
"No, I'm fine."
I rubbed my hands up and down my shoulders at Helen's bar and spent more of my fellowship money on another Virgin Irish Coffee.
"I wish I had my sweater," I said, then felt what seemed like every cell in my body collapse when Sean threw his long arm around me, as if I were his favorite Irish setter. I nearly whimpered, dog-like, as I looked up from my notes.

Like creatures lost in the woods, Jonathan and I depended on and watched out for one another. How grateful I was not to be alone! Jonathan was as big as a door that fit snugly into its frame. When I dreamed that poison gas was seeping round the doorframe and woke up panicked, I saw him in bed and reminded myself how airtight he could make life be. And so his presence began to shield my fear.

"Your reports have been fun to read but it's good to have you back so you can tell me about the trip in person. That was delivered for you b courier this morning--I intercepted it before Aetos could open it like he does all of your mail."
"Thank you," I sign, then pick up the package. It's far too soft, too malleable to be a book and the tag labeled with my name is from a seamstress in Chantara.
Weird.

We fly between the beach and a barrier island, where the water is a breathtaking shade of blue I've never seen and I can't help but stare, trying to commit it to memory as we slowly descend to a hundred, then fifty feet above the ground. Reading about this place has in no way truly prepared me to see it.
Despite the exhaustion, I don't want to so much as blink for fear of missing a single thing.

Lightning scorches the air, rending it with a flash of brilliance that strikes true, flaring bright as it spears from the sky, then disappearing as quickly as it came. The thunder swallows a few of the gasps and screams from the seats to my right, but I keep my eyes on Garrick and my hand held skyward.
His eyes widen at me. "You really did it."
"I did." The conduit hums in my left hand.

"I've translated the section we need three times and I think I'm close. I know it's been three days, but I'm a little rusty and it's the oddest form of magic I've ever read about, which is probably why it's never been done twice."
"But you think it will work?" Sloane asks with blatant hope in her eyes.
"I do." I nod, straightening my shoulders like the weight of their expectations is physical.

I blink slowly, my vision coming into focus with all the urgency of a snail. Dull, throbbing pressure radiates forward from the back of my head and the mass of gray clears slightly, revealing stones set in a spiral pattern--a patch of them charred from smoke.
"That's not our concern," a man says, his voice unfamiliar and raspy. "We follow orders."
"It is if she finds out," another voice--this one female--replies.

I nod to Imogen, lifting my eyebrows as she talks with Sloane.
She nods back with a smile, telling me wordlessly that Sloane is ready to take on her opponent today. Rhiannon and Sawyer are doing the same with the other first-years, checking in as names are called out around the gym. I glance Aaric's way, but as usual, he's completely, totally focused, tuning out everything around him as he stares at the mat.

"If you want his letters, you'll train for them."
Her face turns a mottled shade of red. "You'd keep my brother's letters from me? If they still exist, they're mine. You really are a piece of work."
"In this case, I think Liam would more than approve." I shrug. "It's up to you. Sloane. Show up, train, live, and get a letter a week. Or don't." Without waiting, I turn and leave.

"Rolling dismounts are a second-year maneuver." Not necessarily one I want to master, but that doesn't change the requirements.
One you won't be participating in," Tairn grumbles.
Maybe I'll take her if you won't," Andarna chimes in.
Maybe you should work on your own landings before taking our bonded on a flight to meet Malek?"
This is going to be a long year.

I whip around in the saddle and see a venin--the one who killed Soleil, distended, branchlike veins spreading from her red eyes--grasping the sword she's stabbed in between Tairn's scales in the area behind his wings.
There's a venin on your back!" I shout as Tairn as the venin whips a ball of fire toward my head. It comes so close that I feel the singe of heat along my cheek.

Dear Violet,
By the time you find this, you'll most likely be in the Scribe Quadrant. Remember that folklore is passed from one generation to the next to teach us about our past. If we lose it, we lose the links to our past. It only takes one generation to change history--even erase it.
I know you'll make the right choice when the time comes. You have always been the best of both your mother and me.
Love,
Dad

I clutch the flower to my chest. It's the first comfort I've had, in this hole at the center of the earth. No, not the earth, I remind myself. England will be forever out of reach to me.
It's funny that the thought of rainy afternoons, a warm cup of tea, the Thames winding through the center of the city, is what finally makes me cry.
I'll never again see the Covent Garden arcade or the trees of Hyde Park.

Where did we first meet?
I talk to you without expectation of reply. I have to believe you're still alive and that you can still hear me. I want few things more than to lay my head on your thighs and chat until all the kingdoms on the Aegean Sea fall. Please let me hear your voice, Granny. Just one reply.
"It was that frigid mountaintop, wasn't it?"

"It is very sad to think of your father's collections broken up and taken away."
"Yes," he replied, "I was very affected by it."
"I see that for you they seemed the very image of futility," Mary continued. "But can you be certain your father did not derive a great deal of pleasure from assembling them? They may have been his chosen form of enjoyment. We know so little of what others truly feel."

Mary did not think she could endure dinner that night. Instead, she sat alone in her room, trying to decide what to do. It was clearly impossible for her to remain at Longbourn. Charlotte had been honest, but she was also implacable. But where was she to go? Pemberley was out of the question, and her courage failed her when she imagined returning to the Bingleys', subjected once more to the complaints of her mother.

Masahiro asked Sylvia what it had been like down there. When Sylvia went to tell him, she realized she saw it all in flashes. She remembered running her hand along a hard, curved surface, rounded like a snout, and realizing that it was the front of an old VW Bug, long sunk. Her memory of her night in the sea didn't unfold in time, but was like a sea itself, a dark depth out of which things might buoy up.

There was a man on the porch. The other man. I watched him for a few minutes--and when I allowed him to see me, he stopped talking into the little machine hung around his neck. then he said calmly, in excellent Russian, "Did you know that sexual equality has been re-established on Earth?"
"You're the real one," I said, "aren't you? The other one's for show." It was a relief to get things cleared up. He nodded.

Count Dracula told me I was blocked. How to Feel Lustful Against Your Will. He never told me how it goes in waves from your belly up to your chest, and then into your head, and then down again, when I felt nothing above the belly-button he seemed to think that was A-OK-the Lurker in his Attic was "genital insufficiency," which the ladies seemed prone to (said Count D.), the poor ladies who wanted a lot...

I know that somewhere lives a beautiful, intellectual, gracious, charming woman who has eight children, bakes her own bread, takes care of her own house, does her cooking, brings up her children, holds down a demanding 9-5 job at the decision-making level in a man's field and is adored by her equally successful husband because she comes home at night, slips into a filmy negligee and turns instanter into a Playboy.

Who is this for?
Stuart grinned. The Crow.
Is that a metaphor?
Stuart burst into laughter. You don't need to take it so seriously! Gino gives you the tray, you bring it here, you go to bed with your boy safe in the knowledge you've kept the spooky creatures at bay for another day.
Do I have to pick up the tray too? he'd asked, stupidly, wondering what the penalty might be if he overslept...

Six twenty-five, and the door to the musician's green room opens. There's a commotion outside. Henry checks his slightly late watch--it says six twenty-three--and reaches into his bag for the extra roll he filled with a slice of cheese at lunch. A long stream of musicians wander in, lugging their instruments, brushing rain off their jackets, exhaling garlic fumes of Gino's lasagne.

And then, like a forgotten, impossible miracle, it happened. He was caught by Thomas, caught by the moment, not falling but flying, and he was free. Micha opened his eyes, drove himself into Thomas, into the blissful, sinful heat of him, and claimed himself, his past, his future, and the body he chose now to surrender entirely to pleasure. Culmination rushed over him, ferocious as fire, annihilation and renewal.

Micha wished he could pretend he did not understand, but he did. Where once he had looked at Thomas and seen only privilege, wealth, and ease, things Micha regarded with mingled envy and disdain, now he saw restraint, sacrifice, and duty. The price of being good carved straight from a man's soul. And Thomas was too honest, too clever, and too worthy not to know his own failings and suffer in that knowledge.

My knees give out and Dain catches me, pulling me into his hug.
"She's fine, Vi," Dain whispers into my hair. "Mira's fine."
I nod, fighting against a swell of emotions to keep my control. I will not break down. I will not cry. I will not show weakness. Not here.
There's only one place I can go, one person who won't chide me for crumbling.
The second I have myself in hand, I step out of Dain's arms.
Xaden is gone.

Emery's eyes widen. "You want me to leave my dragon and go on foot?"
"Why do you think we get all that hand-to-hand training? Or are you going to leave all those innocent people to die? The real question is, how do we get you close enough without getting you killed?" She glances around the table. "Since I'm guessing the others will be busy fighting off the gryphons that launch once the fireworks start."