Tom turns on Maria.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to be,\u201d Tom says. His eyes are intense. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to be evil. He doesn\u2019t have to be the Devil\u2019s skin. He can just be him, no matter what you or he or anybody else says. So you shut up with your stupid death rays that don\u2019t do anything and your \u2018oh, you really are, aren\u2019t you nee nee nee\u2019 and you leave my little brother alone.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
Maria shrugs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to know if I should set this thing to \u2018holy,\u2019\u201d she says, mildly; but there\u2019s two shots in a charge, and Tom\u2019s standing right there, so she fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso,\u201d says Tom, calmly, \u201cAs a general life lesson, never let a boy adventurer walk right past you and touch your gun. That\u2019s just not cricket!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tom turns on Maria. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to be,\u201d Tom says. His eyes are intense. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to be evil. He doesn\u2019t have to be the Devil\u2019s skin. He can just be him, no matter what you or he or anybody else says. So you shut up with your stupid death rays that don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-3975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-4","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Maria-Chained.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6334,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975\/revisions\/6334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3975"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=3975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}