Reluctant Immortals

Maybe we’ll prove that just because you come from a monster, it doesn’t make you one.

But it’s something I finally learned, though it took me years to figure it out: how a girl should never be the one to blame for the lies of men.

We're together now, shoulder to shoulder, his scent so achingly familiar. Like earth and cobwebs and red roses plucked fresh in the spring.

I don’t envy her for it. The thing about making it to old age is that not everyone else will. That means you get to sit back and watch the world slip away from you, one tragedy at a time.

That wasn’t one of the original rules, but the stories became twisted, don’t they? They got a mind of their own, and suddenly, you’re living someone else’s invention of what you should be.

It's almost sundown in Los Angeles, and Dracula's ashes won't shut up.

The thing about making it to old age is that not everyone else will. That means you get to sit back and watch the world slip away from you, one tragedy at a time. First it was her friends, the Texan and the laudanum-loving doctor and that odious lord I nearly married (sometimes, death is a mercy).

His loneliness has become a burden the whole world has to bear.