“Can you tell me what happened?"Her lips thinned as she shook her head. "'Tis not a happy tale.""You have me reading a book about a girl who tries to kill an entire town. Anything else at this point would be a pick me up.”

“Sam…”“What?” she whispered.“Tell me what to do to fix it.”She shook her head and closed her eyes as though she couldn’t bear to see him. “You can’t fix it.”He had to. Failure here was not an option. “Let me try.”

“Your woman tells me you will hunt me down and eat my marrow while I live.""Did she?" Charles looked at her, and she saw the approval in his face. She doubted anyone else would have read anything at all. His voice was a caress, just for her. "Would you like that, love?”

“I just wanted one person who would look at me and not want to see someone else.”“Who looks at you like that?” I lift my head up and lower my hands so I can see her face, and I can’t imagine anyone looking at this girl and wanting to see anything but her.“Everyone who loves me.”“Who is it they want to see?“A dead girl.”

“Without moving her head, she turned her dark eyes toward me and answered, “Jenna, you are different from all the others who seek me. You come to me with an unselfish heart.” She paused and turned her head to match her eyes. “You seek to save someone and give up your own happiness in return.”Save someone and give up my own happiness in return,I repeated again in my head, trying to understand what she meant.“Ah, Jenna,” she continued. “Don’t let your mind worry you. Not everyone has happy endings.”

“In the happy times, in the tell-me-again times, when I’m seven and there are no stepbrothers and it’s before the stepfathers, my mom lets me sleep in her bed. Her bed is a raft on the ocean. It’s a cloud, a forest, a spaceship, a cocoon we share. I stretch out big as I can, a five-pointed star, and she bundles me back up in her arms. When I wake I’m tangled in her hair. “Tell me again,” I say and she tells me again how she wanted me more than anything. “More than anything in the world,” she says, “I wanted a little girl.”