"Before or after?" he demands. "Because I'm thinking it would have been after."

He hates it when Asher just goes all still and blank. Nathaniel would rather the vampire feel something. Anything.

Nathaniel looks at the floor, and he feels utterly stupid in the get-up Jean-Claude had ordered Stephen to put him in.

"I should have mattered enough," he says, jaw tight. "Anita dismisses me as her house leopard, so what I want or don't want never factors into what she does, but it should have with you!"