Never draw a conclusion before gathering all of the data.

Tim knows this, knows it's easy to draw them anyway--knows he has to discard them and keep digging, but hard as it is to do in a particularly violent case or when old grudges surface with the evidence, it's even harder when the evidence is textbooks on human sexuality and issues of Playboy ( Read more... )

( Spoilers for Thor. )

The provincial life was beginning to agree with me. Almost. No matter how much the heat tricked my mind into thinking the wine tolerable or the living conditions adequate, I remained a city boy. Not a day went by that I didn't bemoan my fate to Cicero, who, in a birdish sort of way, seemed to be getting annoyed by my complaints. After all, it ( Read more... )

It's sometimes hard to find the things you want ( Read more... )

After four years, these parties might be considered routine by some - though others might more kindly call them tradition. Once, Guy and Anthony had thrown birthday parties for each other like clockwork, filling their London flat with the great and the good - and the not so good, for variety's sake - and allowing the music and the alcohol to flow ( Read more... )

She has been speaking properly for two weeks now ( Read more... )

Spring had started to fall upon Eastern Wu again, rain showers washing away the dark soot of war, weighing down clouds of smoke until they rinsed away from the banks. In its wake, grass grew tall again, stretching toward the sky above, pleasant underneath Zhuge's feet as he walked toward Zhou Yu's land, no longer a stranger. When the soft whistle ( Read more... )

Later, she remembers that night only in bits and pieces. When the memories come to her, as they do for the rest of her life, it would only ever be in flashes - of smell (sex, and embers, and autumn), of color (blue-black of night, ice-white of moon, wild orange of fire and Francis’ hair), of taste and touch (rough leaves beneath feet, the ( Read more... )

It had been months. The way of measuring time here was different from what we had back in Rome, but I was still in my right mind enough to recognize months when I saw them going past. Months had gone by and I was still stuck on an island with nothing truly good and Roman in sight ( Read more... )

By the time he saw the silver cups, it was over. No matter that he'd had any number of brightly colored, deceptively strong drinks already; no matter that the room had gone tilted for him about an hour ago--Francis had seen the cups, and he knew what he had to do.

Grabbing a bottle of whiskey from one table, a carafe of hot water and a bowl of ( Read more... )