It was a strange combination to absorb - the everyday concerns of the town doctor stuck in the middle of a discussion of his early days in seventeenth-century London.

How could you fall in love with a three inch worm?

It's easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.

Could I betray my absent heart to save my pathetic life?

Leave it to you, Bella. Anyone else would be better off when the vampires left town. But you have to start hanging out with the first monsters you can find.

It will be as if I'd never existed, he'd promised me. I felt the smooth wooden floor beneath my knees, and then the palms of my hands, and then it was pressed against the skin of my cheek. I hoped that I was fainting, but, to my disappointment, I didn't lose consciousness. The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.

It was very strange, for I knew we were both in mortal danger. Still, in that instant, I felt well. Whole. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, the blood pulsing hot and fast through my veins again. My lungs filled deep with the sweet scent that came off his skin. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect - not healed, but as if there had been no wound in the first place.