Page 111 of Lucy Undying

I hold the phone against my ear as I throw my bag onto the kitchen table. “They’re coming for him.”

“For who?”

“For your vampire boss, that’s who.”

“Iris, slow down. I need you to tell me what you’re talking about. Very clearly and specifically.”

“Stop pretending!” I shout. “We both know I know about the vampires! Just tell him to get out of town. And to stay away from me. I’m done. I’m done with you, I’m done with Goldaming Life, and I’m sure as fuck done with Dracula.”

There’s a clattering sound on the other end of the line. “Tell me exactly where you are and—”

I hang up and put my phone on silent. It’s not my problem anymore. It hurts, how stupid I am. I stare at my bag, with its devastating history of Lucy’s only true love.

There’s a knock on the front door. Lucy followed me. She’s going to explain, apologize, fix this. I want her to. I want her to give me a reason why this was all a big misunderstanding. I open the door, ready to shout at her, ready to throw myself at her and beg, but—

He’s on my doorstep. I’ve never gotten a good look at him in the daylight. All those sunken, bony, aggressive features, each more dominant than the other, not softened in the least by his sensual, full red lips. He smiles, the smile of every man who’s ever looked at a woman and known he could do whatever he wanted and there was nothing she could do to stop him. Every man who assumed she secretly wanted that, too.

All he needs is an invitation.

“Well, come in,” I snap, then turn and walk into the kitchen. Dracula hesitates. In all his endless days, has no one ever surprised him? What a mind-numbingly boring existence. I can’t believe no one’s managed to kill him before now. He’s so predictable. So obvious.

“Well?” I demand, hand on the fridge. Between one breath and the next, he’s beside me. I open the door and toss out containers of garlic and rotten food, everything foul, noxious, and overwhelmingly malodorous. He recoils as though struck, lifting one arm over his nose to physically block the assault. Funny how much he hates being forced to experience something he didn’t consent to.

And he’s so shocked. He really thought I didn’t know what he is. I can’t decide which is more offensive: that he believed my wide-eyed victim act, or that he doesn’t even remember we’ve met before. Guess traumatized little girls aren’t memorable.

I grab the bag I got from the Cathedral of the Madeleine the day I moved here and spread crumbs in a circle around myself. Lucy’s idiot suitors weren’t good for much, but their accounts of fighting Dracula did give me all the information I need on how to render him powerless.

“Communion wafers,” I say, just in case Dracula hasn’t noticed. “Ground up into powder.” I wonder why only Christian religious iconography works on him. What it means, if anything, because it’s meaningless to me. Doesn’t matter how it works, though. Only that it does.

I give myself a moment to relish his look of disgust. “I know exactly who you are, fuckface.”

He twitches, rage overtaking him. I’m not allowed to be crude, I’m not allowed to be bold. All those nights on the trail I played the lost girl. A demure, proper young woman, one whose future he could steal by corrupting her. Joke’s on him. I don’t have any future at all. I never did.

Lucy’s face flashes in my memory. She was already pulling away from me during our fight. She’s not coming for me, because it’s not me she cares about. How could I have been so wrong? And why do I still love her?

Grief threatens to drown me. “If I kill you, do they all die?” I whisper. I need to know. Maybe the Doctor is wrong. But does it matter? Either way, it’s what Lucy believes will happen. What she was willing to do without ever telling me.

Dracula just stares at me.

“Well?” I demand. “If I kill you, do all the other vampires you created die, too?”

I’ve heard terrible noises in my lifetime. The sound of my dad’s head thunking against the wall like a melon dropped on the floor. The sound of my mother, ignoring my father’s horrible moans, calmly telling Dracula she’d be happy to help him with whatever he needed. The sound of my silver knife cracking through my mother’s ribs to make sure she stayed dead.

But nothing was as bad as the laugh that escapes Dracula’s lips. It’s discarded snakeskins rubbing against each other, dry and rasping castoffs of life. “How,” he says, the words so painstakingly formed it’s like human speech itself is a foreign language to him, “could you ever kill me?”

I close my eyes. I don’t want to look at what I’m willing to keep alive just so Lucy survives, even if she isn’t mine anymore. I’m a selfish, evil person, and I don’t care. “Just get out.” I open my eyes, glaring at him. “Go! Get out!”

“But we aren’t finished.” He takes a step toward me. “We’ve barely begun.”

I gesture to the circle at my feet. My survival instincts are all telling me to run, but I’m safe right here. “You can’t touch me. And I can’t—I can’t lose her. I don’t care. Get out, run away, slither back into hiding.”

If he lives, so does Lucy. Maybe she’ll never forgive me. But at least I won’t be the reason she dies.

His smile spreads like blood seeping down a white tablecloth toward a little girl hiding underneath. My heart speeds up. I’ve missed something. I’m as stupid as Lucy’s failed saviors, I just haven’t figured out how yet. What did I do wrong? What did I fail to see?

He steps straight over my line of wafers.

I stumble back and he catches me, those iron arms pulling me close. I shove against him, I claw and punch, but it’s useless. He’s immovable. He’s inevitable. He presses his cold lips to my ear, holding me so tightly now I can’t even shudder away from the wet whisper of them.

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