Phoebe Taylor and the Choice of Immortality
What do we give up when we choose forever?
What it means to choose a life without end
One of the quieter questions running through The All Souls novels concerns immortality—not the drama of becoming a vampire, but the idea of choosing it.
For most vampires in the series, transformation happens suddenly. Some are dying. Others are turned in moments of crisis or violence. Very few are given the opportunity to consider what eternal life might really mean before it becomes their reality.
Phoebe Taylor is different.
Her story begins in London at Sotheby’s Auction House, where she works among paintings, manuscripts, and historical artifacts that carry centuries of history within them. When Marcus Whitmore visits the auction house in Shadow of Night, he’s there to purchase two Elizabethan miniature portraits painted by Nicholas Hilliard—images of Matthew de Clermont and Diana Bishop from the year 1590. Ysabeau has sent him to retrieve them quietly so they can be returned to Sept-Tours and kept out of public attention.
It’s during this encounter that Marcus meets Phoebe.
At first their conversation is simply part of the auction house transaction, but Marcus is immediately struck by her intelligence and curiosity. He asks her to dinner, and what begins as a chance meeting gradually develops into something deeper.
Phoebe approaches Marcus’s world with the instincts of a historian. Her work has already taught her to think across centuries, tracing the stories carried by objects and artifacts. When she learns the truth about vampires and the de Clermont family, her reaction isn’t fear so much as fascination. Instead of turning away from the creature world, she begins to understand it.
Over time Phoebe becomes part of the de Clermont circle, and her knowledge of art and artifacts proves unexpectedly valuable. In The Book of Life, Baldwin quickly recognizes that someone who understands provenance, historical objects, and the movement of wealth across centuries can be extremely useful to a family whose history stretches far beyond the modern world.
Yet the most important decision Phoebe faces is still ahead.
Unlike many vampires before her, she’s given time to consider what immortality might mean. When she eventually chooses to become a vampire in Time’s Convert, the transformation happens with preparation and care. Miriam oversees the process, bringing a scientific understanding to something that was once far more dangerous and unpredictable.
Phoebe’s choice grows partly out of love for Marcus, but it’s also tied to her own fascination with time. As someone who studies history through objects and artifacts, she’s always been drawn to the long arc of human experience. The idea of living across centuries holds a strange appeal.
Placed beside Diana and Matthew’s story, Phoebe’s decision highlights a different kind of transformation.
Diana and Matthew are working to change the structure of the creature world itself. Their relationship challenges the Covenant and the centuries-old rules that separate witches, vampires, and daemons.
Phoebe’s choice is more personal.
While Diana and Matthew try to reshape the rules of their world, Phoebe must decide whether she’s willing to live within that world forever.
Choosing immortality means leaving her human life behind. It means accepting that everyone she’s ever known will eventually disappear while she continues forward through time.
Phoebe understands this, and still, she chooses it.
Which brings us to the question her story quietly raises.
Even with all the knowledge in the world, can anyone truly understand what immortality means before experiencing it?
Phoebe studies history for a living. She understands time better than most people.
But living forever isn’t the same as studying it.
Which leaves us with the question her story asks.
What do we give up when we choose forever?
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Next we turn to a different kind of discovery—one found not in magic, but in science:
Darwin, Margins, and the Future of Creatures
How does a nineteenth-century book help explain the mystery of the creature world?
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