Though I was standing in front of a mirror, I wasn't really seeing my reflection. I was seeing, very clearly, that—at the moment—I was all in the world that Eric could think of as his own. I had better not fail him.

Snow, here?" Eric was as delighted as a child. "I love snow!" Why was I not surprised? "Maybe we will get snowed in together," he said suggestively, waggling his blond eyebrows.

I gave myself a mental shake. Snapping out of a slump, that was what today was all about.

The world seemed a bad and terrible place, all its denizens suspect, and I the lamb wandering through the valley of death with a bell around my neck.

As I watched Bill, waiting with apparent calm for death to come to him, I had a flash of him as I'd known him: the first vampire I'd ever met, the first man I'd ever gone to bed with, the first suitor I'd ever loved. Everything that followed had tainted those memories, but for one moment I saw him clearly, and I loved him again.

you have to play it out sometimes.

That's just not right," Sam muttered. "Claude needs to keep his pants on.