Constance hefted the axe and commanded Oscar to bow and extend his neck.
“Of course, my lady,” the golem said and obeyed. The wooden golem’s bronze joints squeaked as he bent at the waist.
“I wish to decapitate you, Oscar.”
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The doorbell went bing-bong through the house when Dominic stabbed it with an index finger. He tried to peer around the shade drawn over the window of the front door, palm cupped over his eyes. He listened, stabbed the bell again, and waited, eyeing a pair of metallic “No Soliciting” signs on either side of the door.
The floorboards creaked, and a knobbly hand clawed the bottom of the shade. The spindle whirled, the shade snapped, and Mr. Strudwick squinted through the glass.
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The sparrow landed on the window ledge at 5:36 pm.
Cecil knew this because lying in bed, too weak to move, he had little to do but watch the ornate wall clock tick away the last minutes of his life.
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“What we’re looking for,” said Moira O’Donnell Royce, “is a natural storyteller.”
She was sitting at a folding table in the basement of Teachers College, and Frank Striggio was sitting across from her, wearing a friend’s dress shoes and holding the seat of his chair. He needed this job like a crab needs a shell.
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The blonde woman in the far corner of the café was not the reason he was here, but he wished she were. Her white button-up shirt was open wide at the collar and golden hair fell over her shoulders as she leaned forward, reading the books sprawled open on her table, holding a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other. A blonde curl dangled over her green eyes as she read. Johnny wished she was the reason he was here.
He hadn’t realized he’d been watching her, his thumb and fingers drumming absently on the café table at which he sat holding a mug of coffee.
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“Do we really need to go through this?”
Lalita places her tea cup back with more force than she’d intended. “Yes, we do. You’ve avoided talking about this for years, Prem. I graduate tomorrow. I want to know what you feel.”
“I’m twenty years older than you.”
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