The Native Star

Emily’s chestnut-colored hair was thick and shiny as silk floss—an extraordinary female endowment. But like most female endowments, it was generally more trouble than it was worth.

Emily looked at him for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to know—but she wanted not to know them even more. She didn’t want any more answers. He had been the one thing she could trust, the one person she could rely on. She wanted to beg him to be that way again. But it wasn’t him who had changed. It was her. It was her own credulity she really wanted back. And credulity, like virtue, could be lost only once.

I’d ask you to forego the jingoistic claptrap, but it’s terrifyingly obvious you truly believe it.

“I’ll do everything I can to help, I promise.”

“You always have,” Emily murmured. Except tell me the truth about anything.

Zombies are soulless creatures, and being soulless has been empirically proven to result in an unpleasant disposition.

He’s lying. I have no doubt he’s excellent at it.

“Dignity is like morality,” Mirabilis barked. “Too much is as bad as too little.”

You know, there’s one thing about you that always astonishes me. The longer you talk, the wronger you get.

Senator Stanton? The man who’s sold his own soul so many times that no one can figure out who actually owns it?

“Ever mind the Rule of Three...Three times what thou givest returns to thee.”

“They say that they’re a punishment on godly people for allowing sin to walk the earth unanswered—”

“Who is this ‘they’ you’re always referring to?” Stanton glared at Rose, his eyes gleaming with unhidden malice. “Your mongoloid Aunt Kindy? Your drunken Uncle Sal? Or are you talking about the slack-jawed hacks who bang out those dime novels for a bottle of whiskey and the price of a flophouse?”

Rose stared at him, her mouth open in astonishment. But Stanton pressed on, his voice flat and awful.

“Or maybe you’re just using the word ‘they’ as so many pea-brained idiots use it, as a cowardly rhetorical device, an excuse to say the things you really believe without giving anyone the chance to judge you for the narrow-minded, stupid creature you are.”

Emily stared into the middle distance, trying to ignore the fact that the men were looking at her like a cupcake on a plate.

She wanted to crawl into his arms and be soothed, and soothe him in return, and forget all the grand ideas she’d ever had about true love, and the necessity for it. Because true love was a load of baloney. Finding a good friend...a good friend who trusted you...was more than enough.

Before the sun went down again, she realized, she would be in New York. The thought sent a nervous thrill through her entire body. Her throat was tight, her heart suddenly racing.

The sight of Oakland sprawling on the horizon gave Emily’s spirits an additional boost. Oakland was by no means lovely, but it meant they were almost to San Francisco.

“Still feeling guilty, are we? I’d have thought you’d be over that by now.”

“I have a nettlesome little thing called a conscience,” Emily hissed. “Ever hear of it?”

“They’re out of fashion in New York,” Stanton said, and though she guessed she was joking, he didn’t sound humorous.

In New Bethel, we take the word serious. We whip whores, we hang thieves, and we burn sorcerers.