" Forcing breath into her lungs, she slides into the passenger seat. She wants to meet Luke’s joke with one of her own, wants to look him in the eye and return his sheepish smile. But she can’t. She can’t because the world seems too small all of a sudden. Because her life, once again, has been reduced to a thin stream moving through a channel carved by psychopaths. "

― Christopher Rice , Bone Music (Burning Girl, #1)