She sighed. Loudly. "Physical appearance is not what is important."Yeah right. Tell that to any girl who hasn't bothered to put on a presentable shirt or fix her hair because she's only running into the grocery store to get a quart of milk for her grandmother, and who does she see tending the 7-ITEMS-OR-LESS cash register but the guy of her dreams, except she can't even say hi—much less try to develop a meaningful relationship—since she looks like the poster child for the terminally geeky.

Don't," she begged, knowing that surely she was trying his patience, that his kindness would stretch just so far, that if he were truly kind he could never have survived as a vampire.

Little girls who hang around with vampires need to get used to dead things...In fact, little girls who hang around with vampires already are with dead things.

And there was this sweet-looking little old lady with her white hair in a bun and everything, the typical grandmother type, and she was swearing her head off. I guess Alzheimer's had brought out her inner sailor.

That's very kind of you," she said bitterly, for she no longer believed in kindness. "And you're willing to do this...why? Because you're fond of helping others?""I'm fond of revenge," the dragon answered.

Dragons don't ask for maidens, he said. Dragons are offered maidens. Alys shook her head to show she didn't understand.Is a king likely to be a maiden? Or a village headman? It's the men who make the laws that decree that maidens be offered.