Somewhere fate laughs in her far-off country, because now I am the human and it is Grace I will lose again and again, immer wieder, always the same, every winter, losing more of her each year, unless I find a cure.

I remembered standing in the middle of the street in front of The Crooked Bookshelf, filled with the certainty of a future. I had heard the wolves howling behind the house and remembered how glad I had been to be human.

I remembered the pain as clearly as if I were shifting — the pain of loss. I felt the agony of the single moment that I lost myself. Lost what made me Sam. The part of me that could remember Grace's name.

Sam came around the back of the car and stopped dead when he saw me. "Oh my God, what is that?"I used my thumb and middle finger to flick the multicoloured pom-pom on top of my head. "In my language, we call it a hat. It keeps my ears warm.""Oh my God," Sam said again, and closed the distance between us. He cupped my face in his hands and studied me. "It's horribly cute." He kissed me, looked at the hat, and then he kissed me again.

One day a wolf bit a man and the man caught it. Magic or science, it's all the same. The only thing magical about it is that we can't explain it." ~Sam

You're not going to die," I told her, lifting my head to look at her. "I'm not done writing songs about you yet.

We were miles away from our real lives.

Sam reached his hand toward mine, and I automatically put my fingers in his. With a guilty little smile, he pulled my hand toward his nose and took a sniff, and then another one. His smile widened, though it was still shy. It was absolutely adorable, and my breath got caught somewhere in my throat.

I never knew there were so many different ways to say good-bye