"I see you... with the I underlined about a hundred times.'

"I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud. All right?"

"He welcomed it with relief, because it was, at last, the punishment he deserved."

'Connor's grief was a physical thing, gripping him like a clamp, clenching him tight as a muscle. He could barely breathe from the sheer effort of it, and he sank to the ground again, wishing it would just take him, once and for all.'

"I'm so tired of all this."
Then sleep, said the monster. There is time.