“All of us had a way of regaining the control that life had taken away from us. For Sloane, it was numbers. For Lia, it was keeping her true self buried beneath layers of lies. Michael intentionally provoked anger instead of waiting for someone else’s fuse to blow. Dean did everything he could to keep his emotions in check. And I use knowing things about people as an excause to keep them from knowing me.” Jennifer Lynn BarnesThe NaturalsBad BloodCassie Hobbes Book:Bad Blood Source: Bad Blood
“It was one of the great ironies of my life that I’d inherited all of my mother’s features, but none of the magic with which they’d come together on her face. She’d been beautiful. I was odd. Odd-looking, oddly quiet, always the odd one out.” The NaturalsCassie Hobbes Author:Jennifer Lynn Barnes
“Did you know that the average life span of the hairy-nosed wombat is ten to twelve years?” Apparently, Sloane had decided that when I said I was fine, I was lying. The more coffee my roommate ingested, the lower her threshold for keeping random statistics to herself—especially if she thought someone needed a distraction. “The longest-living wombat in captivity lived thirty-four years,” Sloane continued, propping herself up on her elbows to look at me. Given that we shared a bedroom, I probably should have objected more strenuously to cup of coffee number two. Tonight, though, I found Sloane’s high-speed statistical babbling to be strangely soothing. Profiling Sterling hadn’t kept me from thinking about Locke. Maybe this would. “Tell me more about wombats,” I said. With the look of a small child awaking to a miracle on Christmas morning, Sloane beamed at me and complied.” SloaneSloane TavishCassie Hobbes Book:Killer Instinct Source: Killer Instinct