Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Impossible to Scare

Walking to school over the snow-
muffled
cobbles, Karou had
no sinister premonitions about the day. It seemed like just
another Monday, innocent but for its essential Mondayness,
not to mention its Januaryness. It was cold, and it was dark
—
in the dead of winter the sun didn’t rise until eight
— but it was
also lovely. The falling snow and the early hour conspired to paint
Prague ghostly, like a tintype photograph, all silver and haze.
On the riverfront thoroughfare, trams and buses roared past,
grounding the day in the twenty-
first
century, but on the quieter
lanes, the wintry peace might have hailed from another
time. Snow and stone and ghostlight, Karou’s own footsteps
and the feather of steam from her coffee mug, and she was
alone and adrift in mundane thoughts: school, errands. The
occasional cheek-
chew
of bitterness when a pang of heartache
intruded, as pangs of heartache will, but she pushed them aside,
resolute, ready to be done with all that.
She held her coffee mug in one hand and clutched her coat
closed with the other. An artist’s portfolio was slung over her
shoulder, and her hair
— loose, long, and peacock blue
— was
gathering a lace of snowflakes.
Just another day.
And then.
A snarl, rushing footfall, and she was seized from behind,
pulled hard against a man’s broad chest as hands yanked her
scarf askew and she felt teeth
— teeth
— against her neck.
Nibbling.
Her attacker was nibbling her.
Annoyed, she tried to shake him off without spilling her coffee,
but some sloshed out of her cup anyway, into the dirty snow.
“Jesus, Kaz, get off,” she snapped, spinning to face her
ex-boyfriend. The lamplight was soft on his beautiful face. Stupid
beauty, she thought, shoving him away. Stupid face.
“How did you know it was me?” he asked.
“It’s always you. And it never works.”
Kazimir made his living jumping out from behind things,
and it frustrated him that he could never get even the slightest
rise out of Karou. “You’re impossible to scare,” he complained,
giving her the pout he thought was irresistible. Until recently,
she wouldn’t have resisted it. She would have risen on tiptoe
and licked his pout-
puckered
lower lip, licked it languorously
and then taken it between her teeth and teased it before losing
herself in a kiss that made her melt against him like sun-
warmed
honey.
Those days were so over.
“Maybe you’re just not scary,” she said, and walked on.
Kaz caught up and strolled at her side, hands in pockets. “I
am scary, though. The snarl? The bite? Anyone normal would
have a heart attack. Just not you, ice water for blood.”
When she ignored him, he added, “Josef and I are starting a
new tour. Old Town vampire tour. The tourists will eat it up.”
They would, thought Karou.

Excerpt granted with permission by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, New York, N.Y. Copyright (C) 2011 by Laini Taylor