Pritkin muttered something that sounded fairly vicious. “My clothes are warded! Even if I wished to accede to your demand, it would not work on them.”“Then strip.”“I beg your pardon?” He sounded almost polite suddenly, as if he believed he couldn’t possibly have heard right.

I felt betrayed and absolutely livid, but my body wasn’t smart enough to know it. It had liked the feel of his hands, wanted more of it, wanted it now. It was almost like there were two of me, one who heartily approved of the mage and one who would have dearly loved to see him dead.

I narrowed my eyes at it. Ming-de’s little gift, I assumed. “You look better in color,” I snapped.He sent me a sultry look over his shoulder. “Really? Most women think I look better in nothing at all.

I’m beginning to sense a theme,” Mircea said, tossing his suit coat over a buckskin-covered chair. A moose head with huge, outspread antlers loomed over it, its bright glass eyes looking oddly lifelike in the low light. Mircea took in the room, his expression slightly repulsed yet fascinated. “I believe there is only one thing to say at this point.”What’s that?”Yee haw,” he said gravely, and took me down like a rodeo calf.

Think you can maybe not die for five minutes?""I'll try,"I told him seriously."You know, if anyone else said that, it would be funny.

It's okay. You aren't my type.What's your type?Someone who gets into less trouble.

We’re going jogging.”“I don’t run for recreation. I run when someone’s after me with a weapon.”“That can be arranged,

He had the look of an atheist who’d just had a visit from God: stunned, disbelieving and faintly ill.

My sometimes friend, sometimes enemy, all the time pain in the ass.