No one had ever called me unnatural before, except for the time I put ketchup on a taco. But seriously, we'd been out of salsa, so what else was I supposed to do?

Don't be too hasty," she warned. "Conserve your strength. If you're too eager to fight the undead, you may find yourselves joining them. Then you'd never see us again, and we'd be very sad." "Yes," said Christian. "I'd cry into my pillow every night." I resisted the urge to kick him. "Well, I couldn't visit if I was Strigoi, yeah, but hopefully I'd just die a normal death. Then I could come see you as a ghost.

Itʹs not just the dress or the hair. Itʹs you. Youʹre beautiful. So beautiful, it hurts me.ʺ

You can't," I murmured, swallowing the tears back with great effort. "You can't keep saving me, can't keep trying to. It's too late." "No," he said. His heart was in his eyes, and it was ripping mine apart. "Not for you. Never.

And sometimes, if I was really, really lucky, he’d smile at me. A real smile, too—not the dry one that accompanied the sarcasm we tossed around so often. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone—not to Lissa, not even to myself—but some days, I lived for those smiles.

I look him in the eye. "I will always love you.

I went to bed feeling melancholy, wishing I could have poured out all my fears and insecurities to my mom. Wasn’t that what normal mothers and daughters did?