She had always been the least of the sisters, called Beauty because she had no other, better characteristic to name her as herself.

Oh, why does compassion weaken us?' It doesn't, really...Somewhere where it all balances out-don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live?-if we could go there, you could see it doesn't.It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.

Vampire. Dangerous. Unknowable. Seriously creepy. This one's name was Constantine. We'd met before.

But it was equally clear to her that this was her fate, that she had called its name and it had come to her, and she could do nothing now but own it.