And sometimes I believe your relentless analysis of June leaves something out, which is your feeling for her beyond knowledge, or in spite of knowledge. I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.What will you do after you have revealed all there is to know about June? Truth. What ferocity in your quest of it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality. I want to fight your surgical knife with all the occult and magical forces of the world.

I remembered those frantic seconds when I__ thought all I loved and knew, all that was Sydney Sage, would be lost from this world. My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. We__ destroyed it, but it was terrifying how touch and go it all had been. At any moment, the Strigoi could have gained the advantage and killed one or all of us. Life and death were inextricably bound together, and we wavered between them. But we__ triumphed over death tonight. We were alive, and the world was beautiful. Life was beautiful, and I refused to waste mine.

Huge difference between being happy at will, and chasing euphoric moments as an escape. One doesn't cost a dime, the other will tax your soul.

We each sell alittle piece of happiness. You are elevating someone's spirit in some way, and to do that you have to understand the source of their angst and then you have to frame your product as a solution.

You are divine being.

Adrian smiled and clasped my hands, taking a few steps toward me. "And as for who you are, you__e the same beautiful, brave, and ridiculously smart caffeinated fighter you__e been since the day I met you._ Finally, he put __eautiful_ at the top of his list of adjectives. Not that I should have cared.__weet talker,_ I scoffed. __ou didn__ know anything about me the first time we met.___ knew you were beautiful,_ he said. __ just hoped for the rest.