Rachel?” came Ivy’s voice from her room. “Where’s my sword?” “In the foyer where you left it last week when the evangelists were canvassing the neighborhood

And while seeing Trent in his tighty-whities would make my decade, I’d found out long ago that I couldn’t stay mad at a man wearing nothing but underwear. They looked so charmingly vulnerable.

There were no more choices, no more options, no more clever ways out of a tough situation. And the rush, I realized in a brutal wash of despair, is a false god I’ve chased my entire life. One that cost me everything in the blind search for sensation. My entire existence amounted to nothing.

Her elf is going to do just that,” he said, the red glow of the ever-after sun turning his hair auburn, almost as red as mine. “I did not work this hard at getting her to accept who she is to let you take your spoiled brat of a little-boy temper tantrum out on her. She stays on my side of the lines.

I'm only going to be here for a time, then leave you." His gaze met mine. "And I will cry when I go, because I could love you forever.

I said school starts tomorrow. I didn’t say I was going to be there.

The warm dampness of her breath made me shiver at the mix of the familiar and the unknown, with a soft exhalation she shifted her head and her lips found my collarbone, teasingly shy of my old scar. Tendrils pulsed in time with my heart, building on the ones before to an unseen height.