Excerpts

"One hour until dawn," Pearl said. She leaped off the roof and landed catlike on the pavement. "Oodles of time, if we steal a car."

Her boyfriend, Jadrien, stretched out on the roof of Outback Steakhouse. He was a shadow, a lovely shadow, against the green tin. "Come back up, Pearl,” he said. “I’ll compare your eyes to stars, your lips to rubies, and your breath to industrial-strength air freshener."

"Your charm and sincerity overwhelm me."

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"Almost there," Grandpa said.

Pressing her nose against the car window, Lily frowned at the strip malls, gas stations, and industrial parks as they rolled by. "Really?" she said. She'd expected to see something a bit more picturesque than Walmarts and Home Depots en route to her dream school -- at least a stately forest or a field with a few photogenic cows. And she should hear trumpets playing, plus a massive choir announcing in verse the approach of her destiny.

Maybe she'd built up this moment a bit too much.

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Once upon a time, in a land far to the north, there lived a lovely maiden...

Cassie killed the snowmobile engine.

Total silence, her favorite sound. Ice crystals spun in the Arctic air. Sparkling in the predawn light, they looked like diamond dust. Beneath her ice-encrusted face mask, she smiled. She loved this: just her, the ice, and the bear.

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In the darkness, the heart of the fairy tale waited...

Julie picked up a scrap of shoelace. Once upon a time, it had been an entire sneaker. "Look what you did," she said, wiggling it under her bed. Snapping out a green vine, the Wild snatched the lace...

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Three blind and tail-less mice catapulted through the cat door, skidded over the linoleum kitchen floor, and collapsed in a furry heap at Julie’s feet.

"Uh, hi," Julie said to the mice.

The cat door bashed open again as Julie’s brother, Puss-in-Boots, launched himself inside...

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