“Now he was kissing me, not in a scary way, not with hostility, but with warm, seductive intent. In a hayloft, in the barn, in the middle of the night. This scene brought to you by the letters W, T, and F.”

“He gave a hard smile and the oxygen in my lungs evaporated. “Weboth know I’m not a gentleman.”“Yeah. Okay, let me out. I’m tired.”“There’s something else,” he said, and I groaned.“What now?”“This.” He stepped closer to me, so close that the containers weresandwiched between us. His eyeslooked down into mine, intent and golden, like a lion.“Oh, no, you don’t!” I hissed, dropping everything. I pushed hardagainst his chest; it was like shovinga tree.“Yes,” he said very softly, leaning down. “Yes, I do.”

“Everything is fine and bright. Day must follow every night. My power keeps me safe from harm. The Goddess holds me in her arms.”

“It happened again this afternoon. Just the way it did that other night. We were talking--talking about how to protect her, actually--and then, suddenly, I looked at her and it was as if I'd found an entire universe in her eyes.”

“David held up his hands. "Hold it. This is going nowhere. You two are both afraid, and being afraid makes you angry, and being angry makes you lash out.""Thank you, Dr. Laura," I said snippily."I'm not afraid of her," Hunter said, like a six-year-old, and I wanted to kick him under the table. Now that I knew he was actually alive, I remembered just how unpleasant he was.”

“Stay here!" he commanded me, then he raced off after Cal. I stopped for just a moment. Then I ran after them.”

“Of course, when we got home, we found that Dagda had peed on my down comforter. He had also eaten part of Mom's maidenhair fern and barfed it up on the carpet. Then he had apparently worked himself into a frenzy sharpening his ting by amazingly effective claws on the armrest of my dad's favorite chair. Now he was asleep on a pillow, curled up like a fuzzy little snail. "God, he's so cute," I said, shaking my head.”