The sky was low, all muted indigos and greys and sun-gilded cloud edges. The wind rustled the fallen leaves and made my cheeks prickle. It was the best kind of autumn walk: stormy and solitary and secluded.
Something bloomed right then and there in the small dark space between us. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew enough to know it was rare and delicate. And it felt so real I might have been able to reach out and touch it if I tried.
I blinked, pushing myself up into a sitting position. I felt less like a truck had run over me and then backed up to make sure the job was done properly. Now it felt as if the truck had hit me only once.
I tried not to look as if I was hiding a handsome young lad under the mattress.
With her long dark hair and green eyes, she was pretty as a doll. You know, the kind of doll that came to life at night to kill monsters.
Could one write a strongly worded letter to the deceased requiring their full cooperation?
We were so close to home now, I would have tripped an old woman with a cane if she’d stood in the way of the first available chair.
We’d been waltzing and eating tea cakes with a murderer.
I could think of a hundred things I’d rather do than follow a possible murderess and the ghost of her victim.
I love you, too,′ he whispered, one corner of his mouth lifting into a smile. I grinned back, then kissed him until I felt light-headed and breathless.
Not me.” He bent his head, voice dropping to a husky whisper. “Never me.
Or to want to take a photo of Nicholas with his fangs out and wearing a black cape lined with red satin and then hang it over my pillow in a heart-shaped frame.
I’d seen elevated social mamas do far worse in the name of securing a husband for their daughters. An eldery, gray-curled grandmother once tripped an eligible bachelor on his way to the gaming table so he would fall at her granddaughter’s satin-slippered feet. Instead he’d landed on a footman and broken his arm.
Get the hell away from her.” “I mean it Solange,” he said, his jaw clenching. “Get off her. Now.
A girl in long pigtails nearly closed the door on her thumb as I approached. Her friend nudged her. She nudged back. They whispered furiously to each other. I overheard a lot of “you ask her” and “no, you ask her”. And then the second girl shoved her friend right into my path, solving the argument.
Hunter had inherited her grandfather’s house after he died at the Battle of Violet Hill. She’d spent weeks finding and dismantling all of the hidden anti-vampire booby traps. Quinn didn’t find the second holy water dispenser until he took a shower and nearly died.
I kicked a pebble into the pond, accidentally scaring the sleepy swan. He squawked and burst into flight, scattering feathers. Jenna and I both squawked back and threw a stake at it. He dive-bombed us, insulted.
I yawned so widely a bear could’ve mistaken my mouth for a cave and crawled in to hibernate for the winter.
The more magic you used to keep monsters away, the more monsters were drawn to you.
They love. They laugh. They die. If that’s not living, what is?