Page 29 of Lucy Undying

She found and saved those girls because they were representations of who she had been. The girl no one protected. The girl who was merely an object for others. That was the core of the Queen, the thing inside her that became a bottomless pit of need. We’re all driven by our needs, different ones for each of us, something older, deeper, stranger than blood.

Her desire was to protect the memory of a girl who had been stolen and abused. She dressed her collection in silk and jewels, trained them, and made certain that they never wanted for anything. She saved them from their pasts, but she alone decided their future.

She glanced at me and saw immediately what I held. Then she gestured with one clawed finger. I followed her into her sitting room, and then past it. She led me down stairs carved into the earth. And as she walked, her steps ginger with remembered pain, she talked.

“That was who I was when he found me. I do not remember what city I was in. They never told me. After the audience—those who paid extra to touch my bound, mutilated feet, those who paid extra to touch everything else—had gone, the man who owned me was locking me up for the night. But he failed to notice I’d stolen a blade. I plunged it into his eye, and then into his stomach, over and over. When I turned around, covered in blood, at last free, Dracula was waiting.” She paused, looking over her shoulder at me. It was as dark as a moonless night on the stairs, but we could both see just fine. Her smile glowed like the memory of joy. “I leapt and bit him before he bit me. I went right for his throat. I think he never meant for me to be a vampire, but I woke up in a shallow grave thanks to my ferocity. And I have made him pay for it ever since.”

I wished I could be like her. I wished I had a story like hers, where she died fighting, where she never gave in. But I also needed her to see what she was really doing here. “You have to give them their freedom, too,” I said.

As though she hadn’t heard me, she continued down the stairs. “You are the only living creature besides Dracula who knows any of my story now.”

My heart swelled. We were finally connecting. She trusted me. We could work together to make a better life for her girls, and then—

She whipped around and snapped my neck.

27

May 22, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

I am a creature entirely miserable. I should try to repent, but I don’t know what to repent of, or why. I cannot bring myself to care about or trust in a distant God, fickle and unreachable and unknowable. Didn’t I already have that in my father?

We can add blasphemy to my list of sins, because I do not give two figs about God.

Mina has written. Raptures about dear, dreadfully boring Jonathan. She asks about Arthur—how she heard he has still been calling on me, I don’t know. I certainly didn’t tell her any more about him. Why would I have wasted any of my time with Mina talking about Arthur? But town is filled with gossips. Mina has her heart set on us both being brides, and she’s made it clear who she thinks my groom should be.

Maybe this is how I fix the strangeness in my soul. I can pretend to be in love with Arthur as well as I pretend everything else. He’s made himself useful. Not only is he helping Mother sort out the legalities of our estate, but he also endures her endless complaints and chatter with the noblest of patience. Which saves me from having to do the same.

Maybe it would not be such a bad thing to have a husband. After all, I’ve had to manage Mother all these years on my own after Father leftus.

I do not want a husband. I want Mina. I want Mina’s happiness.

What is the opposite of a honeymoon? A vinegar sun, perhaps. Sour and stinging and harsh and burning. That’s how I feel about our upcoming trip to Whitby. Mina is meeting Mother and me there; we will spend a few weeks together before Mina’s wedding comes like an executioner for my heart.

I am resolved, then. I’ll put on a good show, pretend to be happy and in love with Arthur. That way Mina will feel free to be happy, too. Is that not proof I’m capable of love, despite what Mother tells me when I question her?

Just yesterday, Mother wept and threw things and told me how cold and careless I am, how little I care for her and her sacrifices, how selfish and cruel I am, until I cried and promised to never leave her. I wonder how Arthur will feel when he discovers that marrying me means also marrying Mother. If only I could marry them to each other!

But Mother’s wrong. I’m not entirely selfish. I can put aside what I want, all for Mina’s sake. No matter what Mother says, I am not her heart walking free. Her heart could never love someone more than she loves herself. Could anyone ever love me as much as I love Mina?

28

London, October 5, 2024

Iris

The diary is better reading than I’d hoped. Lucy Westenra is seventeen, charming and witty and droll, perfect company for a lonely night. Her anecdotes give me context for this home and her life here. There’s a small cast of characters, including her demanding-bordering-on-abusive hypochondriac mother, her hilariously inept art instructor (who’s obviously in love with her), a nosy neighbor determined to catch her in some sort of misdeed, and a former governess named Mina (whom Lucy is obviously in love with).

Lucy’s life seems relatively simple, despite the complications of her mother and her mysteriously absent father. She loves nothing more than going on walks with Mina, trying out new places for tea, and trading harmless pieces of gossip.

She’s also viciously descriptive. I laughed so hard I almost cried over a description of a disastrous dinner party in which she compared her mother’s would-be suitor to a flatulent octopus slowly deflating over the many courses.

But as the pages turn, so, too, does Lucy’s story. Mina comes by less. I wonder if Lucy was even aware she was in love with Mina? That intensity wasn’t just a schoolgirl crush. Their gradual drifting apart as Mina moves on to other young charges devastates Lucy. Whenever she tries to figure out a way to get Mina back in her life regularly, it ends in a fight, with Mina chiding Lucy that she’s spoiled. Mina always harps on about how she has to struggle to make ends meet, but she certainly never says no to luxurious trips to the coast on Lucy’s dime. Lucy doesn’t see it. She has a huge heart, and it makes me sad.

She’s also started editing her own thoughts. Sentences and paragraphs crossed out as though she can’t even feel what she feels in private.

The next passage enrages me. “Oh, you motherfucker,” I whisper. Lucy’s much older art teacher just tried to kiss her during a lesson! When she tells him to stop, he insists it was her fault, that she tricked him, that she made him fall in love with her.

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