Mina watched Jacqueline for a moment. Her gaze was not unkind, but there was a hot of unabashed hurt there too. It wasn't Jacqueline's fault, of course. None of it was; not the truth about Tom, nor her failure to understand, nor even Mina's sense of loneliness. But she could imagine how Jacqueline was feeling right now. Flustered. Guilty. Empathetic, perhaps.

Switching over to Norse, Mina spoke in a gentle, calm voice. "You know, I'm not a Kindred philosopher by any stretch of the imagination, but there's something I've noticed over the last few centuries. It's that vampires find different ways to cope with immortality. Some do it by turning off their humanity. Others find someone or something to live for."

She let the unasked question hang in the air: What did she have to live for now?