Page 125 of Lucy Undying

105

Salt Lake City, January 27, 2025

Lucy

I wish Vanessa could see my dress. It’s not quite my Istanbul gown—and offers more coverage than my Paris feathers—but oh, I feel pretty. It’s slinky and clinging, a perfect sunset lavender. The color of transformation. The color of freedom.

Doubtless Mina would have chided me for my frivolity in stopping for a costume change, but I had a few hours to kill before the gala started. And besides, it’s a gala. I have to blend in. I can’t wreck my chances of finding Iris by showing up early or looking out of place.

My accessories are a precious backpack strap bracelet and a black handbag. The bag doesn’t match at all, but I needed something big enough for my invitation. I hold it casually at my side as I saunter up the walkway to the entrance of the flagship Goldaming Life Center.

Unlike their utilitarian, brutally modern chrome office building, this feels more like a house of worship. There’s an elegant grandeur to the masonry. It’s meant to inspire awe, but also intimidate. The stone is a forbidding gray punctuated by arched windows set with reflective stained glass that makes it impossible to see inside from the front. A gold-tipped spire reaches up to pierce the skies.

Arthur would no doubt approve of his name being slapped on this building. He always did dress to impress and intimidate. It worked, too. No one looked under the façade, including my mother. I still can’t believe he was penniless. Until my postmortem donation, at least.

I suppose that makes me the true founder of Goldaming Life. Their first conned fortune, their original unwilling and unwitting donor. I’m their past, which has a nice parallelism, since I’m here to take their future.

I’d hoped to mingle and work my way inside, but there’s no crowd. What kind of gala is this? It’s just me and the front entrance guard, a life-size slab of butcher meat packaged in a tuxedo. He frowns, unable to place me. I look like I belong, though, which gives him pause.

“Invitation?” he asks.

“I have it right here.” I reach into my handbag and retrieve Dracula’s jaw. Iris was right. It’s a tough accessory to work around.

He blinks down at it, frowning as his marbled-beef brain tries to process what he’s seeing.

“You can smell who this belongs to, can’t you?” I prod. “Oh dear, you’re a very dull boy. I see why they make you stand at the door.” I laugh, because men hate to be laughed at, even after they’ve died. “Go find someone with authority and tell them I’ve got Dracula. Unless they give me Iris Goldaming, I’ll destroy every single one of us.”

“Let her in,” a voice crackles over a radio. The meatsack looks up at the doorframe. I follow his gaze to see a lens. Some little spy, watching us. I wave a cheery hello with Dracula’s jaw.

“You can go in now,” he says, still not sure what just happened.

I prance past him. I’m not letting myself think about anything except how pretty my dress is, and how soon I’m going to see Iris, and how after I get her out of here, she’ll be free. They’ll think it’s a bluff and let her go, assuming they can kill me after Dracula is safe again. They’ve been packaging and selling vampirism as a lifestyle for so long, they can’t imagine someone would reject it. That lack of imagination will be why I win.

The long hallway is arched like a headstone. I twirl down the shiny marble floors toward an open door. A towering blond vampire steps aside to let me pass into the ballroom. This one holds no Nazis, no champagne towers, no orchestra. Just a dozen vampires circled tightly together in the center.

On the far end are two massive doors with an actual throne in front of them. They’ve not opted for subtlety. A glittering chandelier hangs overhead, throwing thousands of lights like a constellation across the mirrored ceiling. That ceiling fails to reflect everyone in the room beneath it, except the person who matters the most. Inside the circle of vampires, Iris is dazzlingly beautiful in a golden dress. Though they’ve done a wretched thing in covering up her skin with makeup to hide all the imperfections and subtle shades of life.

My whole body’s a smile. I win. I save the girl this time, on my own terms. It feels like saving myself, too. I beat Dracula, and I beat the Goldaming machinations, and I’m giving Iris the wide-open future she deserves. The one I deserved, too. The Queen was right. We deserved better, and we never got it, but we’re giving it to Iris.

“My little cabbage,” I say. “Let’s go.”

The vampire circle shifts, opening. The vampire next to Iris is clearly her mother, like a colder, cruel, bleached-of-life version of her. I want to kill her, but I don’t have time. We have to get moving.

But Iris doesn’t run to me. Even when Ford nearly ripped her arm off, she didn’t look like this. Iris is terrified.

“No!” she shouts. “Lucy, run! Go! Get out of here, now!”

The golden doors open.

Like an impossible vision, a dream held so long it has lost all details and meaning and become only feelings, she walks through.

The woman I loved so much I shaped my entire afterlife around the idea of her. The woman who was my core of belief and hope and want, so unshakable that not even death could kill it. She renders me powerless, even now.

“Mina,” I whisper.

106

The Testament of Mina

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