It's inappropriate for the queen of the dead to be afraid of ghosts.

He said my name the way diabetics talked about hot fudge sundaes.

I trudged around on the muddy river bottom for half an hour, patiently waiting to drown, before giving up and slogging my way back to shore.

The vampire bible, bound in human skin, written in blood, and full of prophecies that were never wrong. Trouble was, if you read the thing too long, it drove you nuts. Not "I'm having a bad day and feel bitchy" nuts or PMS nuts. "I think I'll commit felony assault on my friends and rape my boyfriend" nuts.

I was so furious I was actually dizzy with it. There were so many bitchy, sarcastic observations to make, I was having a sarcasm stroke. "My God! You people! You're - you're so stupid you're making my eyeballs throb. They're throbbing, dammit!

We have souls. Sure we do. Otherwise we'd do bad things all the time. You know, like politicians.

He snarled at me. "This isn't over yet, Betsy." "Excellent," I said. "I would also have accepted 'You haven't seen the last of me' and 'You'll regret this'.