“The woman glanced at Nina as if for support, but the vampire was stifling a laugh, badly.”

“My family, as always, is very supportive. My teenagers, Ben and Nina, had so little interest in interacting with me that it freed up time to work on the book.”

“The vampire is not a bad man, and he loves you”

“Nina looked up, her eyes fixing on mine with such ferocity I could almost see the undead vampire in them. "There is something under here," she said, and I shivered."Yeah, we know, dirt nap," Jenks said."Rachel already told us.”

“A woman laughing is a woman conquered.”

“Nina stared at the woman who had raised her and saw the truth at last. Her mother was a lioness. A warrior. A woman who’d chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn’t know how. And with that small understanding came another, bigger one. Nina suddenly saw her own life in focus. All these years, she’d been traveling the world over, looking for her own truth in other woman’s lives. But it was here all along, at home with the one woman she’s never even tried to understand. No wonder Nina had never felt finished, never wanted to publish her photographs of the woman. Her quest had always been leading up to this moment, this understanding. She’s been hiding behind the camera, looking through the glass, trying to find herself. But how could she? How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother’s? ”