“Who is this Marlowe guy anyway? He's an ass. Threw him out. Threatened to have Ysmi sit on him if he returned.Why are there two severed heads rolling around the house? Cats tried to eat one. Mostly prevented.Headless guy is in hallway broom closet with head that I think is his.”

“There was some sort of commotion going on outside, and I decided I’d had enough. I went to the door and stuck my head out. Marco was gasping for breath on the sofa, and two of the guards were bent over a cell phone.“What are you doing?” I demanded.“Trying to record this,” the smart-ass from the shopping trip told me. “Nobody is going to believe us otherwise.”“Well, cut it out. It isn’t funny!”“On what planet?”I glared at him, which did no good,because he simply went back to to tinkering with the phone. So I looked at Marco. “Can’t you do anything with them?”Marco flopped a hand at me, tears streaming down his reddened cheeks, and tried to say something. But all that came out for several moments were asthmatic wheezes. I bent over his prone form, starting to worry about him, and he put a hand on my neck and pulled me down.” It…is…funny,” he gasped.”

“I barely heard him, I was too busy watching Pritkin, who had slumped over with his head on the sofa arm, shoulders shaking helplessly, and what looked suspiciously like tears leaking out from under his closed eyes. "Not that bad," he muttered, and then he was off again.”

“So I guess this makes me your sidekick, right?” he asked. “Like I could be…” “Robin?” He scowled. “I ain’t no Robin.” “What’s wrong with Robin?” “What’s wrong?” Ray rolled his eyes. “Two words: green Speedo. And he was lame. Batman was always having to save his ass.” I didn’t say anything.”

“I'm tired, I'm hungry and I have a head in a bag," I warned him. "Do not fuck with me.”

“Pritkin, it’s a hotel room, not a death trap!” A glance over his shoulder showed him impatient blue eyes under a fall of messy blond curls. “Anyway, you’re here.”“I can’t protect you from everything,” he forced himself to say, because it was true. It was also frankly terrifying in a way that his own mortality was not. He’d never had children, but he sometimes wondered if this was how parents felt when catching sight of a fearless toddler confidently heading toward a busy street. Not that his charge was a child, as he was all too uncomfortably aware. But the knowledge of just how many potentially lethal pitfalls lay in her path sometimes caused him that same heart-clenching terror.And the same overwhelming need to throw her over his lap and spank the living daylights out of her, he thought grimly, when she suddenly popped out of existence. “Cassie!”

“I looked up to find a slim blond figure standing in the doorway to the kitchen. For a frozen second, I looked at him and he looked at me, and then I screamed and threw my coffee, which hit him square in the groin.”