The Dire King (Jackaby, #4) QUOTES

21 " Honestly, sir,” I said, “I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss.” We had excused ourselves to speak privately for a moment, leaving poor Charlie politely rocking on his heels in the foyer. The office was warm and smelled of sage and witch hazel, and the desk was littered with bits of twine and herbs where Jackaby had been preparing fresh wards. Douglas had burrowed into a nest of old receipts on the bookshelf behind us and was sound asleep with his bill tucked back into his wing. I had given up trying to get him to stop napping on the paperwork. “You’re the one who told me that I shouldn’t have to choose between profession and romance,” I said.

“I’m not the one making a fuss. I don’t care the least bit about your little foray into . . . romance.” Jackaby pushed the word out of his mouth as though it had been reluctantly clinging to the back of his throat. “If anything, I am concerned that you are choosing to make precisely the choice that I told you you should not make!”

“What? Wait a moment. Are you . . . jealous?”

“Don’t be asinine! I am not jealous! I am merely . . . protective. And perhaps troubled by your lack of fidelity to your position.”

“That is literally the definition of jealous, sir. Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’m not choosing Charlie over you! I’m not going to suddenly stop being your assistant just because I spend time working on another case!”

“You might!” he blurted out. He sank down into the chair at his desk. “You just might.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because things change. Because people change. Because . . . because Charlie Barker is going to propose,” he said. He let his hand drop and looked me in the eyes. “Marriage,” he added. “To you.”

I blinked.

“I miss a social cue or two from time to time, but even I’m not thick enough to believe all that was about analyzing bloodstains together. He has the ring. It’s in his breast pocket right now. He’s attached an absurd level of emotional investment to the thing—I’m surprised it hasn’t burned a hole right through the front of his jacket, the way its aura is glowing. He’s nervous about it. He’s going to propose. Soon, I would guess.”

I blinked.

The air in front of me wavered like a mirage, and in another moment Jenny had rematerialized. “And if he does,” she said softly, “it will be Abigail’s decision to face, not yours. There are worse fates than to receive a proposal from a handsome young suitor.” She added, turning to me with a grin, “Charlie is a good man.”

“Yes, fine! But she has such prodigious potential!” Jackaby lamented. “Having feelings is one thing—I can grudgingly tolerate feelings—but actually getting married? The next thing you know they’ll be wanting to do something rash, like live together ! Miss Rook, you have started something here that I am loath to see you leave unfinished. You’ve started becoming someone here whom I truly want to meet when she is done. Choosing to leave everything you have here to go be a good man’s wife would be such a wretched waste of that promise.” He faltered, looking to Jenny, and then to the floorboards. “On the other hand, you should never have chosen to work for me in the first place. It remains one of your most ill-conceived and reckless decisions to date—and that is saying something, because you also chose to blow up a dragon once.” He sighed. “Jenny is right. You could make a real life with that young man, and you shouldn’t throw that away just to hang about with a fractious bastard and a belligerent duck.” He sagged until his forehead was resting on his desk. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

23 " You know,” I said, “you don’t owe New Fiddleham anything. You don’t need to help them.”

“Look,” Charlie said as we clipped past Market Street. He was pointing at a man delicately painting enormous letters onto a broad window as we passed. NONNA SANTORO’S, it read, although the RO’S was still just an outline.

“That Italian restaurant?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “They will be opening their doors for the first time very soon. Sweet family. I bought my first meal in New Fiddleham from that man. A couple of meatballs from a street cart were about all I could afford at the time. He’s an immigrant, too. He’s going to do well. His red sauce is amazing.”

“That’s grand for him, then,” I said.

“I like it when doors open,” said Charlie. “Doors are opening in New Fiddleham every day. It is a remarkable time to be alive anywhere, really. Do you think our parents could ever have imagined having machines that could wash dishes, machines that could sew, machines that do laundry? Pretty soon we’ll be taking this trolley ride without any horses. I’ve heard that Glanville has electric streetcars already. Who knows what will be possible fifty years from now, or a hundred. Change isn’t always so bad.”

“Your optimism is both baffling and inspiring,” I said.

“The sun is rising,” he replied with a little chuckle.

I glanced at the sky. It was well past noon.

“It’s just something my sister and I used to say,” he clarified. “I think you would like Alina. You often remind me of her. She has a way of refusing to let the world keep her down.” He smiled and his gaze drifted away, following the memory.

“Alina found a rolled-up canvas once,” he said, “a year or so after our mother passed away. It was an oil painting—a picture of the sun hanging low over a rippling ocean. She was a beautiful painter, our mother. I could tell that it was one of hers, but I had never seen it before. It felt like a message, like she had sent it, just for us to find.

“I said that it was a beautiful sunset, and Alina said no, it was a sunrise. We argued about it, actually. I told her that the sun in the picture was setting because it was obviously a view from our camp near Gelendzhik, overlooking the Black Sea. That would mean the painting was looking to the west.

“Alina said that it didn’t matter. Even if the sun is setting on Gelendzhik, that only means that it is rising in Bucharest. Or Vienna. Or Paris. The sun is always rising somewhere. From then on, whenever I felt low, whenever I lost hope and the world felt darkest, Alina would remind me: the sun is rising.”

“I think I like Alina already. It’s a heartening philosophy. I only worry that it’s wasted on this city.”

“A city is just people,” Charlie said. “A hundred years from now, even if the roads and buildings are still here, this will still be a whole new city. New Fiddleham is dying, every day, but it is also being constantly reborn. Every day, there is new hope. Every day, the sun rises. Every day, there are doors opening.”

I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “When we’re through saving the world,” I said, “you can take me out to Nonna Santoro’s. I have it on good authority that the red sauce is amazing.”

He blushed pink and a bashful smile spread over his face. “When we’re through saving the world, Miss Rook, I will hold you to that. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

25 " How is Marie?"
"Walking already... Growing so fast. Calls me Da. She calls the dog Da too, and the neighbor's cat, but I try not to take it too personally... Who's she?"
"She's here with me," Charlie said.
"You mean she isn't," Dupin corrected. "Because you're definitely not here... Should anyone 'not be here' while I'm away, they would do well to make their 'not being here' brief. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

27 " Before I realized what I was doing, I had swung the poleax. I struck the ogre off-center, lopping off the wretched creature’s ear and a goodly portion of its cheek.

My stomach lurched. I was going to be sick.

The creature turned slowly to face me. Well, it turned to three-fourths-of-a-face me. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick until you’re done fighting monsters. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

29 " We cannot make the world less awful by being more so ourselves. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

31 " Why do you have a dead preacher in your attic?” “Because we found it easier to carry him up to the coffin than to maneuver it down to him. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

33 " When one is raised in polite English society, one does not expect to find oneself keeping a mental list of gruesome crime scenes one has visited—and certainly not to silently rank them by quantity of blood and horridness of smells. What one expects to learn is how to dance the polonaise and to make small talk with the viscount at Mother’s garden party and to stuff oneself into an elaborate costume to be presented at court. All things considered, the murder scene was not so bad. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

35 " As we trod up the front walk, Jackaby let out a thoughtful “Huh.” I followed his gaze to the transom ahead of us. It read, in clean, frosty letters:

r. f. jackaby:

exquisite frustration

“Are you feeling exquisitely frustrated of late, Miss Rook?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t put it as such, sir,” I said. “I don’t think that one’s for me.”

Jenny materialized between Jackaby and the bright red door. “Ah,” said Jackaby. “Good afternoon, Miss Cavanaugh.”

“I couldn’t find it,” Jenny said without preamble as we mounted the steps.

“What? Right—the Bible. It’s fine. I’ll see to it myself. That church is a long way off. It was quite ambitious for you to even consider the trip. I shouldn’t reasonably have expected as much of you.”

“I made it to the church just fine, thank you very much for your vote of confidence. Do you have any idea how many Bibles and psalm books and hymnals there are in a parish that size? You said to look for a shield, but none of them had anything obvious like that. If the shield is somehow inside one of them, it could be any of them.”

“That’s all right, you did your—” Jackaby began.

“. . . So I just brought all of them.”

The door swung open to reveal a small hillside of books heaped on the front desk.

“Hrm.” Jackaby grunted. He stepped inside and began to dig through the stack, picking up battered old books and dropping them back onto the heap.

“Thank you, Miss Cavanaugh,” Jenny intoned behind him. “It was nothing, really,” she replied to herself. “I underestimated you, Miss Cavanaugh. Oh, I was just happy to help. You are special and precious to me, Miss Cavanaugh. Please now, Mr. Jackaby, you’re simply too much.”

Jackaby paid her dialogue no mind, and appeared to have forgotten that anyone else was in the room at all.

“I’ll just go fetch that bail money for Miss Lee, shall I?” I suggested, and excused myself. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

37 " Jackaby was still engrossed in his examination when I came back inside. “Books. Books. Just books,” he was muttering. Jenny was hovering by the window. I joined her.

“How did you manage it, by the way?” I asked. “All those Bibles, all across town? It is a remarkable feat.”

“It looks more impressive than it is,” she said, still not meeting my eyes. “I borrowed Jackaby’s special satchel, the one that holds anything. The whole pile took just one trip. The real trick was keeping myself solid all the way home. That’s the bit I’m really proud of—” She turned to face me. “Oh, Abigail, it was amazing. People saw me!”

“People saw you?”

“I was in disguise, of course. I wore my long coat and gloves, and I had that floppy white hat on, so they didn’t see much, but still—people saw me and they didn’t gasp or make a scene. Someone even mumbled Good day to me as I was crossing the footbridge! It was exhilarating! I have never been so excited to have somebody see me—actually see me—and not care at all!” She glanced at Jackaby. “Although you would think I would be used to it by now.”

“Jenny, that is absolutely amazing!” I said.

“It is, isn’t it?” she said wistfully. “Just a little bit, at least? Oh, Abigail, I’m exhausted, I’m not ashamed to tell you. I had planned on setting my spoils out in nice triumphant rows when I got back, but it was all I could do to hold myself intact by then. Solidity is sort of like flexing a muscle, except the muscle is in your mind, and your mind is really just an abstract concept. I was basically flexing my entire body into existence the whole way home. But did it merit so much as a Good job, Jenny from that infuriating man?”

Jackaby surfaced from his perusal and looked up at last. His cloud gray eyes found focus on Jenny. From his expression, I couldn’t tell if he had been following our conversation or not. “Completely unexceptional,” he said. “Nothing at all in this batch. We will need to scrutinize them more closely, of course, just to be sure. Oh, and Miss Cavanaugh . . .”

She raised an eyebrow skeptically.

“You performed . . . quite adequately,” he said, “despite expectations.”

Jenny opened her mouth to reply, but then closed it again. Her face fluttered through a series of potential reactions. Finally she just threw up her hands and vanished from sight with a muffled whuph of air closing into the space where she suddenly wasn’t.

“What in heaven’s name was all that?” said Jackaby.

“Exquisite frustration, I believe, sir.”

“Ah. Right.” He slumped into the desk chair and began to fidget absently with the spine of one of the Bibles. “Miss Cavanaugh is a singular and exceptional spirit, you know.”

“Only a suggestion, sir, but that is precisely the sort of thing you might consider saying when she is still present and corporeal. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)

39 " I really have no time for all that How are you? I am fine, thanks. Here’s another inane question. Here’s an equally banal reply. Charmed. Delighted. nonsense.” “They’re called niceties, sir,” I said. “People say them.” “They’re stupid. And people are stupid.” He paused at the front door. “Come to think of it, the word nice used to mean stupid, so I suppose that’s apt. "

― William Ritter , The Dire King (Jackaby, #4)