“I don't want to wear your dad's clothes. He hates me.""You'd rather wear mine?"Nash scowled.”

“But before I could come up with an answer, Tod appeared in the desk chair, where I'd sat minutes earlier. 'Hey. Am I interrupting something?' 'Yes,' Nash said. 'Get out.' But Tod was watching me, and I could tell from the angry line of his jaw that he'd been listening long before he showed himself. He'd heard what Avari had done to me. What Nash had let him do. 'You want me to go?' Tod asked me, his back to his brother. Nash implores me silently to say yes. Tod waited patiently. 'No,' I said, looking right at Nash. He scowled, and his shoulders sagged. 'Good.' Tod stood and kicked the rolling chair out of his way. 'I just checked on your friend in the straitjacket. But first...' The reaper swung before either of us realized what he intended to do. Tod's very sold first slammed into Nash's jaw. Nash's head snapped back. He stumbled into the wall. Tod shook his hand like it hurt. 'That's for what you let him do to Kaylee.”

“The three of you are enough to drive a mara mad.'She can wear my shirt," she growled in an imitation of Nash."No,she can wear my shirt,"she said switching to Tod's smoother tone.Then Sabine took off down the hall without a glance at any of us."I have a spare.Come on, Kaylee,before I choke on testosterone and melodrama.”

“I'm not a little girl." And he'd never spoken to me like that. Not ever. "I don't know what your problem is, but unless you pay the rent on my house or wear the black suspenders at the Cinemark, you don't get to tell me what to do.”

“No, you should stay right where you are, or my estranged brother and I will settle our difference by seeing who can break more of your bones."Tod glanced at him, brows raised. "You want to settle our differences?"Nash frowned. "No, I want to break every bone in his body, and I didn't think you'd let me do it alone."Tod nodded. "Good call.”

“And I don't think I want to meet this super-reaper." Nash stuffed his hands in his front pockets. "The garden variety's weird enough.”

“Leave the door open," my dad said, the second most common warning in his arsenal. Right behind, "Nash, go home.”