“This,” Alaric explained to Sarah in what he thought was a kindly voice, “isn’t love you’re feeling. Only dopamine. Because Felix isn’t like anyone else you know. Being a creature of the night, he’s new and exciting and activates a neurotransmitter in your brain that releases feelings of euphoria when you’re around him…especially because you know you can never actually be together, and he seems complicated, and perhaps even sensitive and vulnerable at times. But I can assure you: he’s anything but.”“How dare you?” Sarah demanded hotly. “It isn’t dopa…whatever! It’s love! Love!”

“I will love you, Meena," he said fiercely, "until the end of time. I will never stop loving you. My life, before I met you, was nothing. Can you understand that? My life was nothing, meant nothing, even if I may not have known it. And then you came along, and suddenly, everything I knew, or thought I knew, was turned upside down. I will never be the same again. How could I be? You have shown me what it is to love, to feel and laugh and, yes, even to feel alive again. So whether you choose to be one with me or not, I will go on loving you, Meena, even after you are a rotting corpse in the ground. But, Meena, I would like to do whatever I can to prevent you from turning into a corpse. I think I mentioned that before.”

“But it’s there. Just because I haven’t told anyone doesn’t mean it isn’t there, all the time, lurking in the back of my mind, like one those NSync songs you can’t get out of your head.”

“You and me?” I let out a stunned bark of laughter. “There is no you and me.”“That’s what you think,” Chaz says, tugging on his coat. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait around until you figure out that isn’t true.”“Fine,” I say “I’m not asking you to, am I?”“No.” Chaz is smiling… but not like he’s happy. “But you would if you had the slightest idea what was good for you.”And with that, he yanks open the door and storms through it, slamming it closed behind him with enough force to cause the windowpanes to rattle.And then he’s gone.”

“I don't really know. I've never rescued a girl I love from the Furies before." He looked alarmed as he noticed my eyes were filling with tears. "Don't cry." "How can I not?" I asked him. "You just said you love me.""Why else did you think all of this was happening?" He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. "The Furies wouldn't be trying to kill you if I didn't love you.”

“Don't cry.""How can I not?" I asked him. "You just said you loved me.""Well, why else did you think all of this was happening?" He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. "The Furies wouldn't be trying to kill you if I didn't love you.""I didn't know," I said. Tears were trickling down my cheeks, but I did nothing to try to stop them. His shirt was absorving most of them. "You never said anything about it. Every time I saw you, you just acted so... wild.""How was I supposed to act?" he asked. "You kept doing things like throwing tea in my face.”

“Home. Wow. I’m already calling it home.Well, isn’t that what any place is? Any place that you share withsomeone you love, I mean?”