“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.”

“It always confused me how Smalley managed to keep enrolment limited only to Guardian bloodlines. I don't know, maybe she put some charm up that made people think about dead puppies every time they stepped on campus. That's what I would have done, anyway, if I were headmistress.”

“Quit that." Lisa jabbed an elbow at my ribs."Quit what?""Quit looking at him like that," she warned in a hushed tone. "I'm not kidding, Amelie. He's dangerous. He boils kittens in ritual sacrifice."Katie wrinkled her nose. "He does not, Lisa.""You don't know that.”

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

“I frowned at him. "Isn't sarcasm the opiate of the masses?""You're thinking of religion," he replied. "Sarcasm is the Xanax of the morally bereft.”

“No one had ever left me so simultaneously relaxed and knotted up all at once (except maybe Rhett Butler, which doesn't count since he's not a real person).”

“Lots of things are impossible. Doesn't mean they don't happen every day.""Actually that is what impossible means. You should Google it," I suggested. "Wait, does Google qualify as an impossible thing?”