23
" I broke away from Samedi and sprinted down the gangplank, screaming out Bram's name. His head turned, and he started limping toward me.
"Nora!" I heard someone yell.
Bram met me halfway. He scooped me up with one arm and pulled my head toward his. I didn't fight it in the least. He kissed me harshly, and I returned it, leaping up on my toes, seeking out his chapped, broken lips with my own, inexpertly, needfully. And then he just held me as I cried, soaking his dirty T-shirt with my tears, his cheek on my head.
"I thought you were gone," I managed to get out. "I thought you were really gone..."
"I thought I was, too," he said, laughing weakly. "But I'd never leave you if I had the choice. I was going to get back to you, or grind to dust trying. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)
29
" If anyone should talk to her," Renfield piped up, "it should be me. We're the most compatible, culturewise. I'm sure that on top of feeling as if she's been thrust into one of the many levels of Hades, with all of its attendant demons, she feels like a lady wandering, lost, amongst the mannerless cads of the slums."
We were all silent for a moment before Tom asked, "You do realize that we're sitting right here, right?"
"Oh, I am horribly aware of this fact."
"Just checking. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)
30
" Now. Bram, you are a good friend and an uptanding young man, but I'm afraid that tradition dictates I now attempt to scare you within an inch of your unlife."
"Understood," Bram said, taking his arm back as I got myself under control.
My father is a gentle-looking man. Thus, why I started laughing again as he attempted to look stern. "What are your intentions concerning my daughter?"
Bram cast a look my way, laughing himself, before clearing his throat and doing his best to look scared. "Why, to care for and protect her until I rot away, sir. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)
31
" And Bram?"
Panic punched me in the chest. So far today she'd been willing to touch me, laugh with me, confide in me, and now she was wondering if Chas shouldn't go out with me? Had I misread something somewhere?
Chas shook her head and grinned. "Nah. Bram's too busy waiting."
"Waiting?" Nora didn't take her eyes from me. Maybe she wanted me to answer.
"For the right girl," I said curtly.
"And he has very specific physical preferences," Chas said. I grabbed her wrist and squeezed. She'd better not.
She did. "For some reason, he is terribly attracted to black hair. Tom's a leg man, himself...attached, unattached, doesn't really mtter. But Bram likes the hair."
With all the various methods of Chastity Disposal flying through my imagination-should I just shoot her, or should I open her skull and puree her brains with a motorized mixer, or perhaps set her on fire?-It took me a minute to notice me a very shy smile.
I dropped Chas's wrist. I almost dropped my machete.
Nora looked away and moved a few steps in front of us, leaping into the grass to flatten it for herself as she went.
"I win," Chas whispered.
"Smoke all you want," I whispered back. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)
36
" Seriously, why do you read that crap?" asked the girl.
Book Boy snapped his volume shut and removed his glasses from his nose. "I speak the truth! In all of these books the girls are throwing themselves at the romantic heroes- romantic heroes who are dead, ho drink human blood. Be of good cheer, my brothers, for I tell you there is hope!"
One of the other guys, a large black chap, rolled his lone eye. "Okay, you're cut off. Someone get him a cookbook or something."
"Or, you know, some fair damsel to seduce," the girl said, looking up from her reflection. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)
37
" I got a demerit, professor." There was a kind of naughty amusement in her eyes that I found myself really liking.
I smiled slowly. "Why did you do, Miss Dearly?"
"She henpecked Elpinoy in a most spectacular fashion," Renfield offered. "I think at one point she was actually hanging on his back." Nora made a sound of annoyance. "Alas, I was looking at a computer screen with Dr. Samedi at the time, and thus I'm afraid that neither of us can vouch for this with certainty."
The laughter bubbled out of me before I could hold it back. "Were you?" I asked her.
"Define 'hanging.'"
"Bra,." Elpinoy appeared in one of the lab doorways. He gestured to the exterior doors. "Take her out. Now. Never in my life have I encountered such a little-"
"Lady?" I asked, trying to keep a straight face.
"Out."
"'Phone call,'" Nora said, affecting his tone of voice and looking right at him. "'Let-ter.'"
"Not until Wolfe orders it!" Elpinoy marched into his lab again and slammed the door behind him.
Nora stood up, her skirt bouncing a bit atop its puffy petticoat. "That man is an infuriating ponce."
"And you're an excellent judge of character. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)
40
" Marked.” My face was on fire, my limbs shaking. “All of you. I will take all of you out with my own bare hands!”
There was laughter building in Bram’s voice as he responded. “As cute as I’m sure that would be, your attempt…if we thought the people who might try to trace that chip could make you absolutely, one hundred percent safe, I would carry you to them and hand you over myself.”
I gingerly rested my fingertips against my forehead, breathing deeply, trying to calm myself down.
“There are some very bad men out to get you, Miss Dearly.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“By the way, you have quite the vocabulary, for a princess.” He still sounded amused.
This statement was random enough to get my attention. “Princess?” I asked, confused.
“You know, a princess. A New Victorian girl.”
My lips parted to fire off another question before it clicked. “You’re a Punk.”
“Born and bred.”
“Fantastic. "
― Lia Habel , Dearly, Departed (Gone With the Respiration, #1)