“Louis-Cesare and Ray were in trouble.I could tell because I could see them, not clearly, but in fits and starts, little glimmers like a couple of ghosts, if ghosts made "oh shit" faces on the one hand agitated French gestures on the other. And that sort of shit wasn't going to go unnoticed for long.Aaaaand it didn't.”

“Dorina?" Louis Cesare's voice was loud in my ear. The one I had squeezed against thephone, which was squeezed against my sore shoulder, becuase I was using both hands tokeep Ray's point in his pants."The fey, damm it!" I told him. "They're for the fey!""Which one?" Louis Cesare asked, his voice going velvety soft."All of them- No Ray! Ray, cut it out!""All of them?”

“Can we just do this?” Ray asked tightly, clinging to Zheng’s already slightly elongated arm. Because Louis-Cesare wasn’t the only one with a master power around here. “Let go,” Zheng told him. “I’m the rubber band; you’re the spitball. And spitballs don’t hold on to rubber bands.” “Die in a fire,” Ray told him savagely. But he let go.”

“Louis-Cesare. It's good to finally have you in hand.”

“Louis-Cesare slowly pulled himself into a half-standing position against the side of the winery.'What? Did you think one little mage was going to do me in?' He swallowed hard. 'Hell, that was just a warm-up.”

“ I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only Child of Mircea’s younger, and far stranger, brother Radu, he was a first-level master--the highest and rarest vampire rank. A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were very good at killing things. And Mircea’s bug-eyed crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. The collaboration hadn’t exactly been stress free, but to my surprise, we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. By the end, I’d even started to think that it was kind of nice, having someone to watch my back for a change. Sometimes, I could be really stupid.”

“Louis-Cesare looked pained. Ray was even dirtier than I was, and his bright red briefs had gotten a tear across the butt at some point, flashing a glimpse of hairy cheek whenever he moved. An awesome trophy he was not.”