I was tops at the Scarlet O'Hara school of emotional distancing. I always thought about the uncomfortable stuff tomorrow, and, as everyone knows, tomorrow never comes.

Nobody said anything that time. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening. After all, someone had to keep an eye on the fridge.

One day, you will say it to me again. You will be sober. And you will mean it.

Mess with my weed again and I’ll be informing Daddy that there was an early casualty on the mission.” I saw him wince at my designation for Mircea and grinned.

I’d been declared—over my loud and sustained protests—Pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world.

He smiled at that, and then his gaze shifted to a spot over my shoulder and it faded. 'These doubts wouldn’t have anything to do with the company you’re keeping of late, would they?' I didn’t get a chance to answer before the shop door was thrown open and a furious war mage stomped in. Pritkin spotted me and his eyes narrowed. 'You shaved my legs?!' Mircea looked at me and folded his arms across his chest. I looked from one unhappy face to the other and suddenly remembered that I had somewhere else to be.

I'm about to rupture something," he was informed, as the big, gaily wrapped box she was carrying smacked into the small of his back again. She had an uncanny ability to hit the same spot every time.