Page 109 of Lucy Undying

I was right about Lucy’s letters. They aren’t love notes. They’re suicide notes.

I walk, numb, barely registering crosswalks and streets. At last, I drift like a bad dream into the perfume store. Lucy’s already there, a frantic expression on her beloved face. Her beloved, lying face.

She rushes to me, inspecting my cut lip, checking me for other wounds. “Are you all right? I can’t believe I let this happen. Iris, I’m so sorry, I—”

I hold up a hand to stop her. “If Dracula dies, you die. You didn’t think I should know I’m helping you kill yourself?”

92

Salt Lake City, January 25, 2025

Lucy

The overwhelming scents bombard me like a thousand screaming detonations. It’s hard to keep hold of myself with so much sensory input, but I try to focus on Iris’s dark forest eyes. I want to make it better. I want to say something, anything, so she doesn’t look this sad and angry. So I don’t have to know that I’m the one who made her feel this way.

My old instinct seizes me. The one that let me survive my life at Hillingham. Lie. Divert her, distract her, say and do whatever I have to so she laughs and forgives me and we can move on. Nothing broken, nothing changed.

Nothing learned.

I grasp that instinct by the roots and tear it up. I won’t lie to Iris, just like I’ll try not to lie to myself. “Did Dracula tell you that?” I ask. If he knows I’m hunting him, things will be much more difficult.

Iris explodes. “No, he didn’t tell me that! Not a lot of chatting between when he forced a kiss on me and then bit my lip. I was too busy scrambling to keep him from my neck!” Iris holds up a hand to cut off an employee approaching us with samples. He takes one look at her expression and turns on his heels. “God, I cannot believe we’re having this conversation in a mall. Dracula didn’t tell me anything, because he doesn’t think I’m worth talking to. I met another one of your old friends. The Doctor.”

“The Doctor is here?” There’s a brief spinning moment where I wonder if I’ve gotten time wrong again. If I’m confused about where and when I am.

“Working for Goldaming Life. While she was taking my blood, she mentioned you and said something about how killing Dracula would end everyone’s misery. And then your therapist sent transcripts of your life stories.”

“You read them?”

She grimaces. “Some, yeah.”

I don’t consciously take a step back, but there’s more distance between us now than there was a single moment ago. I need her to slow down. I need everything laid out more clearly. I need this wretched shop to stop assaulting me with perfume. “Those stories weren’t for you. You know how others violated my privacy in the past, Iris. I can’t believe you would do that.”

Iris takes a step toward me, eyes blazing with anger. There’s still blood on her lip. I want to kiss her so I can taste it. I hate that he touched her, that I wasn’t there to stop it.

“I had no way of contacting you,” she says. “I was only reading the sections that mentioned the Doctor, trying to find some clues. I was worried she was a new threat,” Iris says. “Besides, I fell in love with you reading your journal. How is this different?”

There’s a sound like wind as my vision narrows. I’m withdrawing, pulling deeper inside. I can’t afford to shut down. I can’t be anything less than fully invested in my body when I’m around Iris. But I don’t want this to be happening. I don’t want her to know what I’ve been. What I’ve done.

“You fell in love with an innocent nineteen-year-old,” I say, my voice as hollow and empty as I am. “I don’t want you to know the other me.”

“I fell in love with you! Are you forgetting that I was fully into you in person, too? Not just the journal!” Iris grabs my hand, trying to draw me back to myself. She’s still livid, but she’s not leaving me. She’s not running away. She should. Instead, she keeps talking. “Loving someone is being known. I thought that was what you wanted. I thought we’d have—god, I thought we’d have time. That we were doing all this so we could be together without fear. But you lied. You never wanted that. I read how often Mina came up. How desperate you were to be reunited with her. Your hunt for Dracula was about taking some of her back into yourself and then dying once and for all. God, did you ever even— Was I just the means to your end?”

“Oh. I forgot.” I flinch.

“You forgot? About which part?”

“About how I hoped Dracula would have some of Mina’s blood.”

“You ‘forgot’ about that?” Iris looks aghast. “Seems like it motivated you to make your entire life about hunting vampires!”

“I never stopped being nineteen! Every feeling I have feels like the only feeling I’ll ever have. But I’ve had about a hundred and thirty years of all-consuming feelings, so I’m sorry if sometimes I lose track of them. And yes, at the time, I was motivated by the idea of taking part of Mina with me. And yes, I forgot about it. I really did. I wasn’t planning on draining Dracula anymore. Just killing him.”

“That’s not any better! Because you didn’t tell me that killing him means you dying, too!”

“This was your idea, Iris. You couldn’t have left all this behind any more than I could have.” I don’t want to be angry, though. I put my hand against her cheek, feeling the heat of her. I linger on every detail of her face. Her eyes are filled with tears, makeup smeared beneath them like bruises. I put those tears there. I bruised her heart. And there’s nothing I can do to make it better.

“You don’t understand,” I say.

---