“Death and blood didn’t turn on a vampire. Fear and the chance to take blood did. There was a difference.”

“Keep your vampire mitts off me. I'm not your friggin' blood toy.”

“I smirked as I recalled how Jenks’s kids took to Ceri, and how Ellasbeth’s mother, another pure-blood elf, adored Jenks. I didn’t have any such “charmed” feelings for the lump of somnolent rock in the belfry rafters, and as far as I knew, neither did any other witch.”

“My blood rose, mixing with my lingering fear of the unknown to drive her to a fever pitch. Her lips touched my lower neck and vertigo spun the room, burning tracings of desire to settle deep and low in me. I exhaled into the promise of more to come, calling it to me. I breathed it in like smoke, the rising passion starting a feeling of abandonment inside. I didn’t care anymore if it was right or wrong. It just was. ”

“Sure, it was nice now, but eventually there would be running and screaming and blood on the floor.”

“I thought Trent should get over his pixy paranoia and admit he had an eerie attraction to them, like every other pure-blood elf I’d met. So he liked pixies. I liked double-crunch ice cream, but you didn’t see me avoiding it in the grocery store.”

“Eloy turned to her, his lip curling when he saw her face, but I hadn’t won anything in our verbal pissing match. “Can we please have some blood?” Winona awkwardly flipped him off with her thick fingers, and I almost applauded.”