The Butcher's Bill: 1.3.1, Interlude 1, 1.3.4

As if sensing that I was trying not to think about him dying in a bloody mess in my arms, Grue broke away from the mercenaries and made his way over to me. "Skitter." The relief in his voice was like a bloody gazelle haunch in front of the lion that was Lancet's echo, and only a quick mental effort kept me from turning on the ability to see his veins. As he came close, I held out a hand to keep him at bay.

"No hug." I said quietly, wishing that I had left the mask off so that he could see the pain in my face. "Remember what Tattletale said. We don't know what effect touching me with your shadows will have, now."

He stopped cold. "Shit."

"Now that I can describe it from the inside, Tattletale might be able to give us a more accurate prediction... but trust me. For now, you do not want to risk it."

—The Butcher's Bill: 1.3.1



Brian sat and watched helplessly as Taylor stared blankly at the television. She sat with the same sort of distracted look on her face that she used while paying attention to her bugs, but somehow he thought she wasn't really paying attention to anything at all. Even though she was only across the living room, it felt like she was miles away. He looked down at his hands, still oozing darkness.

How could he help her like this? Too many times, she'd helped him pull back together. She'd been his rock, his pressure valve, his shelter from nightmares and bad memories.

"Oh," Taylor's voice, a croak. "Oh, Brian."

—The Butcher's Bill: Interlude 1



Now he couldn't even get close to her. He looked down at his hands as shadow pooled out of them. He could hold it in, keep his focus on staying calm, but the one time that he had tried to get close to Taylor she had stiffened and pushed him away.

It wasn't worth the risk, she had said.

A small blurb in the top left of the screen read: "Skitter, leader of the Undersiders - now Butcher XV?"

"What about Trump powers? Any idea how they'll interact?" For once, Grue's shadows weren't roiling around him in an emotional frenzy; the only evidence of them was the purposeful smokelike wisps that crept out from under his helmet.

Tattletale winced and reached up to grab what looked like a cross between a blindfold and an icepack, then tugged it down over her eyes. It was an incongruous look over her typical purple-and-black costume. "Not yet. I'm pushing my powers to even get as much as I just did. Do me a favor - Accord will be here at 9:30 on the dot, so give me some quiet until 9:28?"

—The Butcher's Bill: 1.3.4