“Not a creature was stirring, not even an elf.”

“Eric followed Vlad Tepes’s stubby finger, identifying me as the future Happy Meal. Then he stared at Dracula, looking up from his kneeling position. I couldn’t read his face at all, and I felt a stirring of fear. What would Charlie Brown have done if the Great Pumpkin wanted to eat the little red-haired girl?”

“Well, that's certainly... adequate," I told him, burying my face in his chest. I knew immediately I'd picked the wrong word."Adequate?" He took my hand, placed it on the part in question. It immediately began to stir. He moved my hand on it, and I obligingly circled it with my fingers. "This is adequate?""Maybe I should have said it's a gracious plenty?""A gracious plenty. I like that," he said.”

“I gripped the stapler even harder and felt like a fool planning to battle a crazy man with a stapler that even, I suddenly remembered, contained no staples. Well, strike that line of defense.”

“The god entered some women so completely that they became immortal, or very close to it. Bacchus was the god of the grape, of course, so bars are very interesting to maenads. In fact, so interesting that they don't like other creatures of darkness becoming involved. Maenads consider that the violence sparked by the consumption of alcohol belongs to them; that's what they feed off, now that no one formally worships their god. And they are attracted to pride.”

“Once again, I had that feeling of drowning when I hadn’t even known I was in the pool”

“I love him," I said, but even to my own ears I didn't sound happy about it.”