LOS ANGELES, 2079

NOVEMBER

(TONIGHT)

Oh, I could eat you up. Eat you whole. In one bite.

Valentine smiles to herself, in her close-lipped way, 'pensive' they call it in the publicity sumsen. She always smiles this way. Lips closed. She has beautiful, blinding-white, even teeth, light...

“Where are we?” the old man said.

“In a dark wood.”

“Who are you?” said the old man.

“Just … a brother,” said the young man.

“Stop,” the old man said. “Let me look at you.”

“It is dark.”

“And I am blind. For me it is always dark. I can see with my hands, if you will allow me.”

“Yes.”...

— whoosh —

The 12-foot tenkara fly-fishing bamboo-rod whipped through the air, releasing the thin line that touched down in the stream over twenty feet away.

The rising sun painted the sakura cherry blossoms in the rose color of dawn, reflecting a light pink sheen in the old man’s steel-gray...

BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1893

“Mr. Sigerson.”

“Ms. Borden.”

The tall, thin man shook the small woman’s hand.

In the women’s section of the Taunton Jail in Bristol County, Lizzie Borden’s jail cell, located at the south side of the jail, had one grated wind...

"So you're saying it's bigger?" Fabiana asked.

"C-closer," Pomp corrected in his high, soft, slightly-stuttering voice. "The knight is c-closer."

"Very well, closer.” Fabiana leaned in to study the knight in the painting. “But how can that be? Are you saying that someone has altered the painting? ...

When I finally caught up with Brandr, he was having a horn in the darkest, dirtiest mead-hall in the seediest part of Kaupang. Brandr's kind of place. The less light the better, with his scarred-up face and missing nose.

But the golden-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked woman next to him, she looked g...