He barely knew I existed. I knew some of the same people he knew, but I was a girl in the background, several degrees of seperation removed.

My nose is broken," I said. Damn that Dumbo. Made me self-conscious."My ankle's broken," he said."Then I'll come to you.

The shadow raised its arm high in the air and I knew - I knew before I heard my name - that he'd found me again, keeper of the promise he couldn't make, the one I had marked with my blood and who had marked me with his tears, a Silencer all right, my silencer, stumbling toward me in the impossibly pure light of a late winter's sunrise promising spring.

And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in the summertime. That is not the color of red at all.