“Caring about him was like trying to love a tree stump - a cold, mean-spirited paternalistic tree stump. With fungus.”

“Relax. This isn't the scary part yet.""Mmm, not helpful.""Try to think about puppies," he suggested. "No wait, not puppies. Think about kittens. Demons don't eat kittens. Too many hairballs.""Hey, maybe we could try not talking for a while.”

“He frowned. "Who cares about that? Screw the gerbils.""Screw them?" I raised an eyebrow. "Lyle, this is not your personal recreation time.”

“Just because a guy wears glasses and smiles at you doesn't mean he's nice." Lisa dug around in her purse for a tube of lip-gloss. "Maybe he's a visually impaired cannibal. Did you ever think of that? Like one of those serial killers you love so much.""I don't love serial killers," Katie argued, defensive. "Not romantically, at least.”

“Maybe it's a training exercise," Skye suggested, ignoring her friend's rudeness. "I wouldn't mind a little training with him. The personal kind, know what I mean?"It would be hard not to know what she meant.”

“Jackson," I asked carefully. "Are you on any illegal substances I should know about?""Nope.""Eaten any strange looking mushrooms?""Not lately.""Any near brushed with eternal damnation that might be affecting your judgement?"He grinned. "That hard to believe, huh?”

“Okay, to be fair, I had tried to Google-stalk him. But Google-stalking is a far cry from having your demonblood best friend park his vampmobile across the and use his x-ray vamp vision to spy into someone's house. That's just rude.”