The Burgess sisters arrived together. Tara and Lainie do a little bit of everything. Sometimes dancers, sometimes actresses. Once they were librarians, but that is a subject they will only discuss if heavily intoxicated.

She turns her head, Bailey catches her eye, and she smiles at him. Not in the way that one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittens but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone they have not seen in some time.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held.

He remembers when he was very small his mother once said she wished happiness and adventure for him. If this does not count as adventure, he is not sure what does.

It's a wonderful sort of feeling when people want to spend more time in a world you created.

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.

Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.