I've had years to see the funny side.

Ah, bless. I've missed her. Do you have bullets?"

"Uh, no."

Skulduggery paused. "Excellent.

[...} What did I tell you about wandering off? Why don't you ever do anything I say? If I didn't know any better, I would swear that you feel a compulsion to disobey authoriy figures."

"That can't be what it is," she said.

"Well, that's what it seems like."

"But I don't view you as an authority figure."

"Oh, not this again.

Stephanie thought about the world she’d grown up in, and how different it was from the world she’d been introduced to, and yet how similar. There was joy and happiness in both, just as there was heartbreak and horror. There was good and evil and everything in between, and these qualities seemed to be shared equally in the worlds of the magical and the mundane. It was her life now. She couldn’t imagine living without either one.

If you don't see me in five minutes, then I've probably died a brave and heroic death.

Bravery, after all, isn't the absence of fear. Bravery is the acknowledgement and the conquering of fear.