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"You do not exist, I know that, but can I be sure that I exist? Does the I who allows you to exist in me necessarily have more real life than you, than the dead life that lives you?"

"There have always been very strange stories told of this Clarimonde, and
all her lovers came to a violent or miserable end. They used to say that
she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe she was none other than
Beelzebub himself.'

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“Tell me, do you miss your home in Prane?”
“A bit,” she whispered, half-ashamed to admit it. “I had no real fondness for the city . . . at least not the parts of it I was reared in. But I suppose nostalgia gilds everything, even the worst places.”

"The whole world runs on blood. Who has good blood. Who has bad blood. Whose blood is shed and whose isn’t. That’s what it all comes down to in the end."

"She digs her phone out of her pocket, taps over to Catty’s voice note as she walks, holding on to her sister’s voice as if it is a rope."

“There were three years between Alice and Catty Moore.
Three years that become two and then one and then somehow, Alice is seventeen and a half, older than Catty ever was. She spent those three years being exactly the daughter that she’s supposed to be, the kind that doesn’t fight, or scream, or run”

"She closes her eyes and spreads her arms and waits, as the rain soaks through shirt and skin and down to bone—
Waits, as it batters her open hands—
And she can pretend—
To feel her sister’s fingers closing around hers."

"Seconds that meant nothing because by that point, Catty was already dead.
It was fast, the man on the phone assures her father, and all Alice can see is Catty sprinting down the road ahead of her.
Slow down.
Come back."

“cause her mind only goes one place when left alone, and already she can feel the past dragging its feet, looking back over its shoulder, and here’s the thing, it might surprise you, but Alice doesn’t want to think of Catty.
She doesn’t want to, but she can’t help it—
It’s the rope that keeps her from escaping—
The rope that hauls her back again.”

"Time doesn’t heal.
It just wears you down.
Tricks you into thinking, as the present slips into the past, that it will stay there.
Safely buried in your wake."

“Why does Charlotte stay?
That is like asking—why stay inside a house on fire?
Easy to say when you are standing on the street, a safe distance from the flames.
Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.”

“A hundred years, apart, alone, with no one but Sabine.
A hundred years without another confidante, or friend.
A hundred years of waiting, wanting, and then at last, they were right there. She was so close. She could have caught the woman’s hand. Could have heard the man’s voice. Could have asked if there were others.”

"But it is their anniversary, and Sabine’s mood is high, her eyes alight with happiness, and so Charlotte only smiles, grateful that she’s spent the last few years learning to put up walls around her mind, to shield the thoughts that are not safe to share"

"It is easy, isn’t it, in retrospect?
To spot the cracks. To see them spread.
But in the moment, there is only the urge to mend each one.
To smooth the lines.
And keep the surface whole."

“And here is the awful thing about belief.
It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go.
In that moment, Charlotte wants so badly to believe Sabine.
And so she does.”

"But there is another piece—the way she feels when those men are in her arms.
When they are weak, and she is strong. When they are trapped.
And she is free."

"She decides early on that she will only take the lives of men"

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"How easy it is now, to trace the fractured path, follow it back to the moment when the first crack formed. How easy it was then, to pretend that it was nothing."

“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.”

"And if she blushes when they dance, it is only because she knows Sabine is watching her. As if her hand’s right there, at Charlotte’s back, guiding her across the floor."

“Still, as her father said, she is a quick study, and by the end of the month, Charlotte has become a decent mimic of the girl she’s meant to be. But it is only ever that, a posture, a charade. Playing dress-up for a life she does not want.”

“I suppose we should get back. I wouldn’t want to keep you from any suitors.”
“Alas,” she says, “none of them are suited to my tastes.” And surely it is just a bit of clever repartee, but Charlotte’s stubborn heart still quickens for a moment at the thought—the hope—of what could live between those words.”

“there is one thing that renders me invisible.”
“What’s that?”
“I am a widow.”
Charlotte’s heart sinks on her behalf. “Oh,” she says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. “How dreadful. I am sorry.”
Sabine leans in, her voice barely a whisper as she says, “I’m not.

“My name,” she says, “is Sabine Olivares.”
Sabine.
That name. Charlotte does not know, then, how many times over the years it will spill out of her, as a longing, or a plea, or a curse. In that moment, all she knows is that she finds it strange and beautiful and fitting.”

“She studies them, and tries to summon something. To understand what the girls find so alluring about this other sex. What makes their hearts quicken and their faces flush. Charlotte has read enough romance to know the way she should feel in their presence, and yet, while more than once the heroes in those books stirred her, reality does not.”

"Husband. What an ugly word. A rock tossed in a clear pool, muddying the water. She tried—and failed—to keep the thought from showing on her face."