i screamed at him to stop , terrified race would fire the gun by accident , but neither one of them was listening to me . bax grabbed the barrel of the gun my brother had pressed to his head and shoved it up and back toward race 's startled face . i knew now that race was n't any kind of saint , but there was no way he was going to be a match for bax

between finding a way to save stefan and coming home defeated , while he languished in prison . no , she thought , standing by a silvered mirror , almost afraid to look at the exotic beauty she had become . no , we ca n't even think of the word failure . for the sake of stefan 's life , we have to succeed

'' you 're entirely too good at that . '' he waved a cloud of smoke jaxon blew into his face away , giving a slight cough . '' do you really have to smoke that thing while we wait for sanche to quit pouting ? '' now it was jaxon 's turn to glower . '' first of all , he 's not pouting

they had branched off the main road and were making their way along a little lane that led around back to the rutherford gates , when they chanced to see caroline ward , standing at the door of a tiny , run-down looking thatched cottage that stood set back a little distance from the road in a square of bedraggled garden . she looked , even from a distance , to be very angry indeed . she appeared to have been knocking at the door , and now raised her hand to deliver another smart buffet to the woodwork . '' hello , aunt caroline , '' julia called out . caroline turned at the sound of their voices and came down the short walkway to join them in the
lane