Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies > Books: paranormal‎ (90)

“I read a novel where this hit man is supposed to assassinate a woman, but he ends up falling in love with her instead, just from watching her.”

“I read a novel where this hit man is supposed to assassinate a woman, but he ends up falling in love with her instead, just from watching her.”

"I’m authorized to offer you three favors now in return for three favors later.”
“I don’t understand. What kind of...favors?”
“Anything you want,” he said.

He had the kind of face you saw in magazines, sculpted and airbrushed to perfection. Sharp cheekbones eased into a strong jaw and a kissable mouth. He had a long, aquiline nose and jade eyes with a feline slant.

“I want to be beautiful without losing any aptitude I have. No time limits, no melting face, no surprises.”

“Then there’s one more thing before you go.” I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but the words wouldn’t stop. They came from a place of complete certainty.
“What?”
“Kiss me.”

It was time to shift from planning and preparation to payback and penance. By the time I was done at Blackbriar, there would be blood in the water.

“Wait, what’s a catalyst?”
“You’re one. It’s somebody destined for great things.”

Belatedly, I realized I hadn’t stuttered once. Apparently the behavioral psychologist had been right; I had a psychogenic stutter, exacerbated by stress, mental anguish, and anxiety. Right then, I felt no fear of ridicule, and it was easy to talk.

[The beautiful people] considered their ability to control other people an accessory, like a great purse or a cute pair of shoes.
“I can’t believe that worked!”
“I wasn’t sure it would.” Especially since I had no experience with manipulation. But I’d watched it happen often enough. Mimicry wasn’t tough, apparently.

“I was wondering if I could room with my friend, Vi,” I said, trying the persuasive smile for a second time.
Life can’t be this easy for the beautiful people.

“What the hell, you told Cam what I said?”
“I didn’t. I asked Jen what she thought of Cam, and I think Allison was ahead of us in line, but I would never—”
“Bet it was Allison.” His frown cleared. “She’s always trying to make Cam like her. She’s got this weird rivalry with Brittany. They’re supposed to be BFFs, but I get the feeling Allison would giggle if Brit fell down the stairs.”

I came up on my knees and hugged him; sometimes it felt like we were two halves of the same soul, and that was so stupid it made me feel like I lost IQ points just for thinking it.

“You already know I’ve spent a long damn time watching you. From the outside.”

“You hate rabbits,” Kian said gently.
“Yeah.” I did—since one bit me in the fourth grade—but how weird that he knew.

“Sort of like a double bluff. You tell me enough of the truth to make me think you’re on my side while you’re manipulating me for your own ends.”

“I want us to have a better relationship, a closer one. We have science in common, at least. I don’t know much about your new interests, but I could stand to be more physically fit. Maybe we could work out together? There’s a nice facility at the university…”

“Sweet,” I said, astounded at my acting skills. I should’ve gone to Hollywood when I had the chance, but when that old man offered to take me that

“Sweet,” I said, astounded at my acting skills. I should’ve gone to Hollywood when I had the chance, but when that old man offered to take me that one time at an abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere, I wasn’t sure I could trust him. Mostly because he had rope, duct tape, and lots of condoms in his backseat. Still, I’ll never know what could have come of it. How far I could have risen.

The poor guy needed to be done with whatever it was he’d left unfinished. I couldn’t have him running around naked forever. It just seemed wrong.
“I’m having a hard time not looking at your penis.”

“I tend to forget how beautifully your plans work when each and every one goes awry, including the one that left you stranded on a deserted bridge with a man who had every intention of burning you alive.”

My heart broke all too often. Even when people passed through me who’d gotten past their hardships, their heart-wrenching pain, and had lived long, full lives, seeing that part of them still cut me to pieces. So, maybe all this time I’d been hanging with Mr. Wong, I was really putting off the inevitable, the truth, not for his benefit, but for my own.

I dialed her number. Got her voice mail. Waited for the beep. Then I did my best creepy kidnapper voice. “This is a ransom demand,” I said, my voice raspy. Kidnapper-y. “Deliver one hundred boxes of Cheez-Its to the unmarked—ignore the license plate—cherry red Jeep Wrangler sitting in your parking lot by noon today, or you will suffer the consequences.” I paused to cough. Raspy was hard on the esophagus. “They will be dire.”

“I’m not stupid,” I said, growing tired of his questioning everything I did. “I do use common sense.”
“You have to have common sense to use it.”
I stiffened. He did not just say that. “You did not just say that.”
“When it comes to humans, Dutch, you are blind. You do things for them that no other person alive would do.

“When are you going to answer him?” Cookie asked, drawing my attention.
“When he deserves an answer,” I volleyed.

A hopeless sigh slid through Cookie’s lips as she finally looked at him. “You’ve set the bar too high now. No one will live up to—” She gestured to all of him. “—all of that. You’ve ruined my daughter.”

“Holy house of hogs getting blasted by the blue birdie brigade...”

“Holy house of hogs getting blasted by the blue birdie brigade...”

“Looks like you’re not the only new kid in town. Did you get a load of the new chick?” Garrett let out a sharp whistle. “Hawt! Girl’s got a pair that would drive a priest crazy.”

“Ya know, like sucking face and having gropefests?”
He scowled. “Why is it so hard for you to speak English?”
“That is English. Not my fault you can’t understand it.”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Lukas, but the world’s changed since your time. People suck. They steal, they lie, and they kill each other in horrible ways for no good reason. Some are just bad. Badder than the demons.”
He frowned. “I can’t believe that.”

“I want to stay because of you. I’ve never come across someone like you. Your strength and determination is astounding. It’s odd because you’re so incredibly infuriating---My entire life, all I wanted was to find something different. Special. I never would have guessed I’d have to sleep for so long to find it.”

The girl’s too-tight black sweater dipped to a dangerous V, showing off cleavage that would make a porn star proud, and ended just above her belly button. The skirt—if you could even call it that—hung at least seven inches above regulation and bordered on sheer.

“This is your chance to save the human race. You’re going to give it up to spend a couple of years with a guy you just met?”
“Is it worth the r

“This is your chance to save the human race. You’re going to give it up to spend a couple of years with a guy you just met?”
“Is it worth the risk?”
“Yes,” I insist.

I’m so confused. I don’t know this guy—I’ve never seen him in my life before today.
So why do I miss him?

He’s at my house in the middle of the night.
Did he follow me? What the hell is he doing? Every sliver of logic within me is screaming to go get [my uncle]. He’s just down the hall.
But instead I sit there, staring.

Crimes. I hate using that word to describe Quinn.
What is wrong with me? Even after last night, I’m still trying to find a way to justify his actions.

I shouldn’t want Benson so strongly—especially after having just seen Quinn this morning—Quinn, who makes my chest ache with longing and my mind spin in bliss.
Somehow I always wind up forced to trust Quinn. Quinn who never stays, who never answers questions.
Who makes my heart leap and my blood warm.

I pull away before I can lose my wits completely. It’s not fair. “But...doesn’t it bother you that I spend half my time thinking about Quinn? You know,” I add in a mumble, “whenever I’m not thinking about you.”
“Think I’m afraid of a little competition?” he taunts playfully, pulling back ever so slightly.

A small surge of guilt shoots through me as I realize I’ve hardly thought of my parents the last few days. Slowly, so slowly I didn’t realize it until just this moment, Benson has slipped into their place.

Family.
I straighten in surprise as the word races about in my brain and then settles.
But why shouldn’t Benson have become my family?
I think of Elizabeth’s warnings against him yet again and a prickle of anger makes my face heat. No one, no one, has proved as loyal as Benson. I would take him over the whole lot of them.

Because if someone’s got to steal a car, it’s going to be me.

“Are you stealing this car?” I ask, horrified.
He pauses, then looks up at me. “I would do a lot of illegal things to keep you safe, Tave,” he says with an intensity that makes my toes warm. “Just be glad this one doesn’t actually hurt anyone.”

I was watching the shadows on the wall behind Val’s chair. They were too lively and there were way too many of them. One or another of them always seemed about to turn into something I could recognize—a Komodo dragon or an alligator or a ninety-tentacled space alien.

I’d had it. I’d had it.
I could have done one of two things. I could have screamed, run back out the front door and never come back. I could have become the Phantom of the Shelter, only coming out at night to clean kennels. Or I could get so furious I forgot to be frightened, thinking this monster, this magic user, living in my house, married to my mom—and run forward, straight at the snake-shadow thing, and screamed at Val.
I chose the second.
“What the gods’ holy engines is it with you?” I shouted. “I’m sick of your stupid horrible shadows crawling around! What are they! What are you? What are you doing out there in the shed? What are you? What are you doing here?”

He was short and hairy and didn’t know how to wear Newworld clothes and spoke with a funny accent and used a lot of really dreeping words that nobody in Newworld had used in two hundred years. Have you ever heard anyone say “ablutions?” I didn’t think so. He looked like the kind of creepazoid you’d cross the street to avoid walking past too close to. And this guy who looks like a homeless crazydumb who’s about to start shouting about the evil magician who planted electrodes in his brain stands there smiling gently at my mother...and she laughs and puts her arm through his because she loves him. Uggh.

I always thought that “my heart turned over” was just a phrase.
And then he smiled. At me. At me.
My heart turned over.
He wasn’t too pretty. Trust me. He was not too pretty. Oh, did I mention the dimple? He had a dimple in one cheek. Oh. Gods. Oh. Gods.

I had way, way too much to think about...and Casimir’s face started drifting across my mind’s eye and that made my heart beat even faster than thinking about Val’s shadows did.
Funny, I thought vaguely, that Takahiro’s face appeared a few times too. Takahiro was my friend, even if he was annoying a lot of the time, but he was too tall and too solemn to crush on.

"I am Indelible Ink," he said. "My sister is Invisible Inq." He pronounced her name with a clipped "q" as he pushed off the doorf

"I am Indelible Ink," he said. "My sister is Invisible Inq." He pronounced her name with a clipped "q" as he pushed off the doorframe.

“Compassion?” he hissed. “Why would you have sympathy for a monster?”
“Because we’re not so different!"

“Compassion?” he hissed. “Why would you have sympathy for a monster?”
“Because we’re not so different!"

"They’re calling him the Wolf of Whitechapel on account of how he carves up the bodies. One of them had a purse on him and a gold watch, but the murderer didn’t touch it. Wasn’t interested in anything but tearing that man apart like an animal.”

Four. I knew all four victims.
And in turn, I realized, I had been victim to each of them.

The Beast writhed on the floor, caught somewhere between man and creature in the midst of a transformation. He was doubled over in pain as claws slid into his bloody joints and then out again. His back buckled and strained as the two sides of him fought for control. In one instant he was the Beast, snarling and furious; in the next he was Edward, reaching out a hand toward me and trying to form words, and then back again.

“We’ll find the missing ingredient, and we’ll get rid of the Beast.” I realized how desperate my voice sounded. Desperate for him, or desperate for me, now that I had someone in my life who shared my secrets?

This is what had fascinated me about him—monster and man sharing the same breath—and now it terrified me.
Well, I could be a monster, too.

I leaned my head back against the worn wood of the stairwell, eyes closed, uncertain if I was making the biggest mistake of my life by helping a murderer, or if I had found the one person in the world who understood me.

If we couldn’t strangle the Beast out of him, if there was no way to separate the two, then I’d kill him myself.

You’ve always had that animal inside you, stirring, since you were an infant. It’s been more of a friend to you than any of those girls who titter behind their fans in church. You’re afraid that if you rid yourself of it, you’ll be hollow. A shell of a person content to let the days pass in boredom and chores, never really feeling, never truly living. Not like how I live."

"I won’t let anything, or anyone, come between us."
His pupils were already starting to elongate. In moments the Beast would fully emerge. He leaned close enough that his lips grazed my earlobe. “I won’t let you go.”

"We must not let the other family have such power over the future. We must make those children ours.”
“And failing that?”
“And failing that …” Lucia

"We must not let the other family have such power over the future. We must make those children ours.”
“And failing that?”
“And failing that …” Lucia suddenly looked sad and tired. “Failing that, I will kill them myself

Eliot Post and his sister, Fiona, would be fifteen tomorrow and nothing interesting had ever happened to them.

It was Grandmother always. It was never Audrey or Gram, or any other pet name like they used with Cecilia. Not that it was forbidden, but Grandmother was the only thing they ever thought to call her. It was the only title that carried the authority her presence demanded.

He and Fiona might as well have been corked inside a bottle, sailing nowhere on a tiny balsa-wood ship.

Yes, the boy’s eyes, the slender but strong bridge of the girl’s nose, the high cheekbones and arching brows on both. How could she have missed it? Whoever had camouflaged them had done a masterful job: they had transformed divine into dull.

“Let the record show,” Aunt Lucia declared, “that we shall test the children’s potentials with three heroic trials. This will illuminate their characters and determine their lineage. It will prove their possible worth to remain alive.”

Meanwhile she had to prepare for the gathering of the Board. There were weapons to sharpen and armor to mend.

Indeed, one did not face one’s brothers and sisters without taking careful precautions against carnage and bloodshed.

She gently pushed them away. Tears were in her old eyes. “Be brave,” she whispered. “Do no let them separate you. You are stronger together.”

Eliot stared into the darkness and wondered about his father’s side of the family. Why was no one talking about them? Uncle Henry, Aunt Lucia, and possibly Grandmother had murdered. Could the other family be somehow … worse?

Fiona might have tried to drive him crazy, dreamed up the worst insults in the world to throw at him, but she’d never in a million years have snitched on him.

An image of Eliot, beaten and bloodied, flashed through her imagination—and her only thought was to protect him.
She yanked the rope.

She grabbed Eliot’s hand.
Normally this would have violated their brother-sister-never-touch-me agreement, which had been in place since they had been toilet trained. But tonight, Eliot let her.

She wanted to be Fiona Post … whatever that was … shy and awkward … scared … but herself.

Fiona would have given anything to be as confident. Every time she had to talk to strangers, her heart pounded so hard she could barely hear her own mouse voice as it tried to squeak out something clever.
If shyness were a disease, Fiona would have been rushed to intensive care and put on a social respirator.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’ll always be here for you.”
Behind the door, Fiona quietly started to sob again.
Eliot didn’t let go.

There are tens of thousands of people, all around you, maybe hundreds of thousands, who at some point have experienced somet

There are tens of thousands of people, all around you, maybe hundreds of thousands, who at some point have experienced something that they can’t explain. And these people are silent. They are ashamed. They are afraid. They are convinced that they are the only ones, and so they say nothing. That is the real reason the Pax Arcana is so powerful. Rationality is king, and your emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.

That’s one of the things that sucks about magic: it moves molecules around; and when molecules move, electrons shift; and when electrons shift, the air becomes electromagnetically charged. This is why all of those reality shows about ghost hunters basically amount to a bunch of guys with science degrees getting excited while they talk about energy readings, and you’re just sitting there bored watching a TV screen fill up with fuzz and static before the cameras go off-line.

“I’m involved with somebody else.”
Of course she was. All the good Valkyries are taken.
“OK, but you maybe saved my life, and you’ve seen me naked,” I said. “In some countries we just got married. Can I at least know what name you go by?”

The woman set Sig’s chocolate orgy out in front of her and deposited my steak on the table.
“Y’all must work out,” the waitress observed a little sourly. She apparently did not.
“I’m going to throw this up later,” Sig said expressionlessly.
“I have a tapeworm,” I said cheerfully.

Stop being stupid, [Tana] told herself, even though it was much too late for that. She’d been a hundred kinds of stupid already.

Stop being stupid, [Tana] told herself, even though it was much too late for that. She’d been a hundred kinds of stupid already.

The tan carpet was stiff and black with stripes of dried blood, spattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas. The walls were streaked with it, handprints smearing their dingy beige surfaces. And the bodies. Dozens of bodies. People she’d seen every day since kindergarten, people whom she’d played tag with and cried over and kissed were lying at odd angles, their bodies pale and cold, their eyes staring like rows of dolls in a shop window.

if you do come into physical contact with a vampire, you are legally obligated to report yourself to the authorities. Do not attempt to wait to see if you’ve become infected. Do not attempt to self-quarantine. Call 911, explain the nature of the attack, and wait for further instructions.

Tana started giggling, which was bad, she knew, and put her hands over her mouth to smother the sound. It wasn’t okay to laugh in front of dead people. That was like laughing at a funeral.

He bent helplessly toward her.
She bit her tongue. Bit it hard, the pain chasing through her nerve endings and alchemizing into something close to pleasure. When her mouth opened under his, it was flooded with welling blood.
He groaned at the taste of it, red eyes going wide with surprise and something like fear.

“Allow me to explain how my whole life has prepared me for this moment. I am used to girls screaming, and your screams—your screams will be sweeter than another’s cries of love.”