Janine Hathaway offered to be my guardian, " said Lissa suddenly. "Janine Hathaway?" Tatiana's eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. "I'm sure she has other commitments. No, we've got much better choices." A better choice than Janine Hathaway? Not likely. Before Dimitri, my mother had been the gold standard by which I measured all badassedness.

Christian's family lived under the shadow cast by his parents. They had purposely become Striogi, trading thier magic and mortality to become immortal and subsist on killing others. His parents were dead now, but that didn't stop people from not trusting him. They seemed to think he'd go Strigoi at any moment and take everyone else with him. His abrasiveness and dark sence of humor didn't really help things, either.

Impossible situations are our specialty.

I sighed and gestured toward him. "I'll take him." In an undertone, I added, "Don't let me down, Zmey.

She snuggled back under the blanket with me, turned toward me so that she could rest her head on my chest. “I hear your heart,” she said. “Do you check every once in a while, just to make sure I’m not undead?

And sometimes, if I was really, really lucky, he’d smile at me. A real smile, too—not the dry one that accompanied the sarcasm we tossed around so often. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone—not to Lissa, not even to myself—but some days, I lived for those smiles.

I heard some interesting things about your performance up here." "I hear interesting things about your 'performance' all the time Doug, but you don't hear me making jokes about it.