I think the very word stalking implies that you're not supposed to like it. Otherwise, it would be called 'fluffy harmless observation time'.

Fortunately, among werewolf women, the word "bitch" is not offensive. I was having a lot of fun with that."Hey there, bitches!" I called as I came through the door. "What are my favorite bitches up to today?

I am your sire. I am to guide you through your first days as a vampire. Your first feeding is a rite of passage, a sacrament. It will not be wasted on some hormone-driven frenzy. This is why I wanted you to feed from me.”“I will not drink it in a house, I will not drink it with a mouse. I will not drink it here or there, I will not drink it anywhere,” I wheezed, hoping I was able to communicate adequate sarcasm through the crippling belly cramps.“Did you just quote Green Eggs and Ham?

To say I had some pent-up anger would be like saying Britney Spears had minor impulse-control issues.

I haven't had a lot of good, soft things in my life," he said against my forehead. "Not since my family sent me away. Apart from being your sire and feeling that pull to you, it's that goodness, that softness and warmth, along with the resolve and strength in you, that I love. Being turned hasn't taken that from you. If someone were going to design the perfect mate for me, it would be you. Even when you infuriate me with your pigheaded stubbornness and your temper and incredible lack of anything resembling self-preservation—""Stop describing me please.""You're the most fascinating, maddening, adorable creature I've ever met," he said, sighing and pushing my hair out of my eyes. "So, when I seem possessive or I'm raving like a lunatic, it's just that part of me is still very afraid that I'll lose that—that I'll lose you. I love you.

You can't worry about the future so much that you miss out on the present.

Well, that cinched it. He was an asshole. I was definitely going to end up sleeping with him.

Does Hallmark make a “Sorry I tried to drink your blood and touched you in a vaguely inappropriate manner” card? I settled for “How much do you remember?

Did I just get psychically pimp-slapped by a little old lady?

I was just turned last week. I'm a librarian."He stilled, as if I'd just told him I was the inventor of the tube top. "I watched a movie about a librarian once. Well, she was a librarian by day, a call girl by--"I stopped him with a quick lift of an eyebrow. "If you finish that sentence, we cannot be friends.

Wait, Richard Cheney, as in Dick Cheney? You're a vampire named Dick Cheney? Somehow, that makes you seem more evil.

My grandma Ruthie, Jettie's sister, had been married four times, so many times I started calling every old man I saw at the grocery store Grandpa.

Misery, thy name is Mudslide

You are the night.""I am the night," I repeated."You are the night."I cocked my head, sending him a questioning look. "I am the night?""Jane!""Why is it that when you say my name, it sounds like a curse word?

Are you going to answer my questions, or do I have to whack you with a stick until delicious candy surprises fall out?

If looks could kill...well, Dick was already dead, so nothing would happen. But Gabriel was not laughing."See Dick," Dick said, pointing at his chest. He then swept his hand dangerously close to mind. "Jane. Dick and Jane. Come on, you humorless jackass. That's funny.

I fixed your car," he said, tossing the keys from a jade dish on the little maple end table.I palmed them and eyed him speculatively. "You fixed my car?""I have walked the earth for more than a century. I managed to pick up some skills along the way," he said, before reluctantly adding, "and one of them is finding skilled mechanics."I smirked, leaning against the wall. "You almost had me there.""I supervised," he insisted.

And soon we were just rolling around on the ground, cursing and screeching and ripping out handfuls of hair. Without super hearing, I wouldn't have heard Zeb whisper, "This is the coolest thing I have ever seen.""Maybe they'll get muddy," Dick said. "Please, Lord, let them get muddy.

Zeb was kindergarten teacher--a good one. I always thought it was because he was the same emotional age as his students.

You want to stab me again, don't you?"He didn't look at all ashamed. "Think of it as testing the limits of your new abilities."I groaned. "I've created a monster.""I don't think someone who recently crawled from the grave should be throwing around labels like 'monster,'" he said, making sarcastic little air-quotes fingers. "It wasn't a grave," I sniffed. "It was a comfy four-poster.

Leaving knots untied and scattering seeds to distract them will only work on vampires with OCD.

I always hoped for this spark of chemistry and compatibility, a flash of clarity to let me know that this was the guy, this was the time, so I should leg go and enjoy myself. But it never came. And by no small coincidence, neither did I.

Why not? If you're not going to let me see you naked, we might as well be girlfriends.""You're a twisted little man.""Come on, Stretch, share with the class.""No!" I laughed."Prude.""Perv.""Schoolmarm.""Some other word that essentially means perv.

Don't worry about being nervous. A lot of vampires have trouble with this from time to time. It happens to everyone.""If I was a forty-year-old man suffering from erectile dysfunction, that would be a great comfort to me, thanks.

Dick called, but he just left dirty voice-mail messages. Let's just say if I'm ever in the market for a massage involving canola oil and marabou feathers, I'm covered.

Most of the people you read about being turned meet vamps in clubs or over the Internet...Ew, did you...?""Yes, I met a vampire on the Internet, went to his evil love den, and let him turn me, because I'm that brainless.

I grabbed my purse, which was conveniently place by the front door. Gabriel was such a considerate abductor/host. He even left the front door unpadlocked.

Idiot," I said, before grinning broadly and crushing his mouth to mine. "We need to pick new pet names for each other," he muttered as I hefted myself up from the ground.

Get the point?" I asked, offering the boys a triumphant smile.Gabriel, Zeb, and Dick stared at me, aghast. "What? Sarcastic postkill comeback. Isn't that what you're supposed to do in situations like this?Too harsh?

I offered you a choice, and you took it."I shot him what I hoped was a truly scathing glare. "Some choice. I was dying. Some drunk shot me from a pickup. Why wouldn't I have just woken up with gonorrhea like every other girl of loose moral fiber?

She's your mother. I asked, Plus, you do look a bit like her. When you're angry, you both get these tense lines around your mouth...Look, there they are.

Jane Jameson."He grinned. "Like the porn

Would you kick her ass already?" Dick said, shoving me back toward Missy. "Come on, Stretch, man up. You do better than this! Get mad."I nodded, rolling a dislocated shoulder back into place with a grunt and staggering back toward my opponent. Behind me, Zeb yelled, "She tried to hurt Fitz!" He turned to Gabriel and Dick. "That'll get her mad."Gabriel rolled his eyes. "She's been framed for murder twice over, shot in the back, her arms were set on fire, and her parents are being held hostage. You think tampered dog water is what's going to make her angry?" "You tried to hurt my dog!" I wheezed as I lurched toward a grinning Missy.

I wanted to call you, but I find myself feeling...awkward when it comes to you.""'Awkward' is the word du jour," I agreed. "So, I make you nervous?""Not quite nervous," he said. "Just unsettled."I wriggled my eyebrows and inched a little closer to him. "Unsettled, that's even better.

Besides, my drinking blood's not nearly as weird as that time I caught you shaving your legs.""I was curious!

Wait, is this a nice-ish way of telling me we had sex and I was lousy? That's how you can tell I'm inexperienced? Because, if so, that's just rude. And what were you doing at Shenanigans? And how did you find me on the road?"Gabriel looked wounded. "To answer your questions in order: The only body fluid I exchanged with you is blood--""That's very comforting, thank you.

We finally settled on Francis Ford Coppola's version of Dracula, which, unfortunately, Gabriel seemed to think was a comedy. I think it was the combination of Keanu Reeves's British accent and Gary Oldman's elderly Count Dracula hairstyle. They're just misleading.

I would have taken Zeb, purely for entertainment value, but he had an actual date, with a real girl. That hadn't happened in a while, so I was a good friend and put my own needs second to the possibility of him actual sex with a real girl.

What was that?" Rich combined the pain of a crooked arm with the indignity of a flicked ear. I could only hope the situation didn't escalate to the dreaded purple nurple.

Some vampires wouldn't react if you shoved a rosary down their pants, though I wouldn't recommend testing the theory.

This is not how people behave in a Cracker Barrel!

She had a knack for relieving the tension in a room by pretending my rudeness away with cooking. Many, many chickens had given up their lives to cover my conversationalist shortcomings.

Not one word about proposals, no matter how much she pushes,” I told my friends. “No matter what she says or how loud she cries, don’t try to throw that up as a distraction.”Gabriel’s lips twitched. “I don’t think it’s going to be that bad. It’s one woman against five supernatural creatures... And Zeb.”“You laugh because you haven’t heard my mother’s thirty-minute verbal dissertation on appropriate seasonal flower choices. We’re better off letting her yell at us for being dirty, premarital fornicators.

because daytime leaves vampires less than, well, conscious, I told him, “Take your muffins to Boston and shut it, Terrance.” And then I hung up on him.

Mama Ginger came calling, to set the alarm on my biological clock. Oh, and to remind me that there’s no point to me being a woman if I never have children.”“Well, if that’s true, I wasted a hell of a lot of money on panty hose and lipstick.” Jettie snorted.

I don't care what tomorrow brings, as long as I have you.

Wait until you meet my family. At Thanksgiving, we kill everything we can find, put it into a pot, and call it 'holiday gumbo'.

Hubert's wife, Mindy, was a tiny powerhouse of a woman with a halo of wild blond hair and eye makeup so complex it took me a while to locate her pupils. She was clearly the brains of the operation, such as she was.

Jane: "Look, Dave Chandler left me on the ninth floor of our university research library without my panties after we lost our virginity together. He never called me again and actually turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction whenever he saw me on campus. Unless you're going to do that, I don't think were gonna have a problem. Gabriel?"Gabriel: "Sorry. Something strange happened inside my head when you said the word "panties". The overwhelming urge to kill Dave Chandler combined with a simultaneous loss of blood to the brain.

Jane: "Missy was not so subtly reminding me that she had done something nice for me and here i was being rude when all she was asking me to do was attend a nice party. This was the way southern women worked all peaches & cream laced with arsenic.

Go on, you've claimed your thirty pieces of silver, go do something crazy like put gas in that penis replacement you call transportation.

Ah, spite, the stuff of fairy tales.

There was not a lot of room for someone like me, who kept the gossip mill running like a hamster wheel.

Hi Maggie, it's nice to see you again,' he said, smiling so sweetly I thought I might need insulin.

I held it together for the rest of the drive home but as soon as Kelsey dropped me off I flopped face down on the couch and sobbed like a reality TV star on confessional day.

He was always 'checking in' to see if I needed any help with my campaign, which on the surface seemed nice enough, but it was done in a condescending tone that made me want to staple his lip to his tie.

If one is going to spend her afternoon singing hymns to the great porcelain goddess, she might as well do it in a really plush ladies room. Stupid fear of public speaking.

I’ve never done this before. I didn’t go to human bars. Mudslides aside, I’m not much of a drinker. Club people are not my people. Now, book-club people—

It seems kind of light for a dozen books. I think it's probably that unnatural number of Jason Statham DVDs you ordered."He has to have filmed a nude scene at some point in his career. I don't care how many shoot-'em-up action movies I have to watch, I will find it," I said solemnly. "Oh, yes, I will find it.

It took me awhile to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful obsessive research to learn the rules. There was a label maker involved. I'd rather not go into it.

Wal-mart started selling "Vampire Home Defense Kits", including holy water, crosses, stakes, mallets, and a book of quick blessings to bar vampires from your door. The fact that these kits were generally useless didn't bother me nearly as much as the idea of holy water being sold at wal-mart.

Vampirism: (n) 1. The condition of being a vampire, marked by the need to ingestblood and extreme vulnerability to sunlight. 2. The act of preying upon others forfinancial or emotional gain. 3. A gigantic pain in the butt.

...I supplied in a tone so saccharine that it should have tipped him off that his testicular health was in serious peril.

Ophelia was beating some poor underling for not knowing her arse from the sparse collection of cells between her ears.

Don’t tell them he’s upstairs , I commanded my brain. Tell them he moved to Pacoima to start a commune for vegetarian vampires. Tell them he’s looking into getting a sex-change operation and renaming himself Lulu Pleshette.

I am not the kind of girl who trusts a man to tell her everything she needs to know in his own due time, so I did some research on my sire. You can take the girl out of the library, but you can't take the neurotic, compulsively curious librarian out of the girl.

Most of the funeral stuff is going to be done during daylight hours,” I said. “I’m not even going to be able to attend the burial. Humans get upset when vampires burst into flames right next to them.

In a werewolf pack, you cannot interfere with the mate choice of a clan fellow. You cannot intentionally harm that werewolf’s chosen mate. You are not, however, required to help that person should he find himself in a life - threatening situation.Somehow, Zeb had managed to stumble into several such situations in the few months since he ’d been engaged to Jolene. He’d had several hunting “accidents” while visiting the McClaine farm, even though he didn’t hunt. The brakes on his car had failed while he was driving home from the farm—twice. Also, a running chainsaw mysteriously fell on him from a hayloft.He would never get that pinkie toe back.

The scent of growth, quiet and green, hung heavy in the air. I heard everything. I saw everything. I could count the craters on the moon. I could count every mosquito buzz past, bypassing my tender skin out of respect for a fellow bloodsucker.

Vampirism: (n) 1. The condition of being a vampire, marked by the need to ingest blood and extreme vulnerability to sunlight. 2. The act of preying upon others for financial or emotional gain. 3. A gigantic pain in the butt.

Welcome to the fascinating world of the undead! Please use this guidebook as ahandy reference as you make your first steps toward eternity. Inside you will findinformation on vampire nutrition, relationships, and safety. But before learningabout your future, a word about our past…—From The Guide for the Newly Undead

Aunt Jettie: "yes, i'm wandering the earth seeking revenge on ben & jerry for giving me the fat a$$ and coronary & I give out love advice to the tragically lonely."jane: "Is that an ironic eternal punishment for the lady who died an eighty-one year old spinster." jettie: "single by choice you twirp."jane: "banshee."jettie: "bloodsucker.

Up until two years ago, I was one of the top-selling real estate agents in the tricounty area. I went to a convention in Boca Raton. I had one too many margaritas, met a tall, pale, and handsome man in the bar, and woke up a vampire.""I was mistaken for a deer and got shot," I offered.""Oh.

Love? Love is for children and poor people...

Sophie was a walking truth serum. If she was touching bare skin, she could yank the truth out of you like a loose tooth. I’d spent several unpleasant hours in her company during the Council’s screening process for humans who planned to work with vampires. That’s when I learned that you don’t refer to Buffy, the Winchesters, or even the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys in front of Council officials. They do not have a sense of humor about that sort of entertainment.