In Mercy, Rain (Wayward Children, #7.5)

by Seanan McGuire

No one who had seen the Moors would encourage children to go through impossible doors, to listen to the entreating of silent signs. Even the ones who loved the Moors, as she did, completely and with all their hearts, couldn’t be so cruel.

Jill would have her beautiful dresses and her jewels and her doting vampire lord, and Jack would have hard work and harsh lessons and learn to forge the steel her parents had slid so smoothly into her heart into a weapon that she could wield, not merely a spike to impale herself upon. The Wolcott twins had started from the same place. They had never once been the same.

Weakness is always easier to perceive from the outside, and every good predator knows how to pick out the most vulnerable members of a herd.

Jack might not notice looking at anyone differently than anyone else, but that was at least in part because she seemed to be one of those lucky few who found beauty everywhere she looked.

for what monster could possibly be lonely in the company of so many of their own kind?

Alexis stared at her, eyes wide and heart pounding, and in that moment Jack knew three things without question: that Alexis was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen, and that it was no surprise Alexis had managed to attract a phantom lover. It was more of a surprise that the ghost hadn’t found himself in a queue of living lovers twelve deep. The third thing was that there was no point in her staying here and making moon-eyes at the other girl, who would never see a shadow as its own living creature, and would never love her as she was already halfway into love with Alexis.

it never ends well when the living dance with the dead.

“I’m not going back, either. The door we found said to be sure, and I’ve never been as sure of anything as I am that I belong here. I’m going to stay here for the rest of my life, and someday this is going to be my protectorate, my windmill, and I’m going to dance with the lightning and laugh with the thunder, and no one will ever tell me I look like my sister again.”

“The Moors spin on stories, and this is a classic one: the formerly dead maiden and the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter.”

There was still rain. There was still laughter. Sometimes, that can be enough.