The upshot of her tirade was that I was the devil's spawn and should be locked up in a tower before I unleashed hordes of the living dead to slaughter them all in their sleep. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

I got to eavesdrop at a window. As Clay said, I did have another option. I could wait in the car and let them fill me in later. So, eavesdropping it was.

I don’t care if I get one at all. Just as long as I keep getting anniversaries.

I want you to have big dreams, big goals. I want you to strive to achieve them. But I don't want to see you beating yourself up every time you make a mistake.

Before we left town, Antonio pulled into a strip mall and went in to get subs and salads, leaving Clay and me half naked and bleeding in the car, and Cain unconscious in the trunk. No wonder I was anxious to get back to Toronto. Spend too much time around these guys and you become a little too nonchalent about blood-soaked clothes and bodies in the trunk

We drove to the airport. On the way, Clay gave him "the lecture," including all the do's and don'ts of meeting the Alpha, which was only slightly more complicated than an audience with the queen. Don't sit until you're invited to. Don't talk unless he asks you a question. Don't eat before he does. Don't make direct eye contact. Jeremy demanded none of this, but that wasn't the point.

Don't talk to the crazy kids. I longed to shout back that we weren't crazy. I'd mistaken her kid for a ghost, that's all. I wondered whether they had books about his sort of thing. Fifty Ways to Tell the Living from the Dead Before You Wind Up in a Padded Room. Yep, I'm sure the library carried that one.