Page 40 of Lucy Undying

My new friend gestured at her head. “Now, be a dear and describe my injuries to me. In detail, please. We have to be each other’s mirrors, ma petite chou.” It made sense. She wanted to know what had been done, so she could avoid it in the future. The back of her head had gotten the worst of it. I told her about the damage using all the correct anatomical terms, which delighted her to no end and made me miss the Doctor a bit.

The base of her skull had been smashed in—it was still a little concave, but I didn’t want her to worry about it. Eventually it would even out, and in the meantime, I could fix her hair to cover it. She could see for herself the jagged knife mark in her belly, but not the wounds in her back. I traced them, detailing exactly which internal organs each stab would have hit.

“How did he sneak up on you?” I asked, curious. I had been distracted by her. What had she been distracted by?

“That’s in the past, it already happened, why care? We have to move on to the next adventure!” She pulled me to the bathroom.

There are few pleasures that are the same in both mortal and immortal life, but a hot bath after you’ve been through something wretched? That’s one.

It was strange, though. Raven had made everything physical, constantly pushing the limits of pleasure and pain. Sex, but no intimacy. The Queen shared her past with me, but our emotional connection was only on her terms and very one-sided. And the Doctor had neither the time nor the inclination for sex or intimacy. She was as utilitarian with our relationship as she was with life and death itself.

But with the Lover—that’s how I came to think of her—our time together was oddly innocent. She was unconcerned with her own nakedness, oblivious to mine. There was a familiarity with her, a sort of recognition, that I couldn’t explain. Like we had known each other for ages, instead of hours.

I washed her hair and she washed mine, and nothing was fraught or filled with any sort of tension, delicious or otherwise. It was…nice. It had been a long time since I’d had any experiences I would have described as “nice.” Tenderness with nothing else attached.

When we were clean, we tried on dress after dress. We laughed and twirled and modeled for each other. I settled on a rose silk number, sleeveless—such a thrill; I’d never been allowed that before! It fell down my figure like a curtain meant to tease at what was behind it. I covered it with a shawl so sheer it might as well have been a rainbow. Stockings, soft and well-made, felt like heaven. And I wore the prettiest red heels, round-toed, with straps that buttoned across my foot. I loved those shoes. I wonder whatever happened to them.

The Lover wore a similarly cut dress, but in an indefinable color. Gray or blue or silver or white. It shifted with the light, like it was made of clouds, and rendered her nearly colorless. An artist’s canvas, waiting for paint.

She had a collection of postcards and advertisements featuring women’s fashions. Copying what I saw, I worked her hair in waves and pinned it to cover the damage to her skull. She fussed with my golden hair until she was satisfied, then colored my lips red, rubbed rouge onto my cheeks, and dabbed kohl above and beneath my eyes.

Such a small thrill, such a painfully sweet bit of normalcy, to feel pretty again.

The Lover danced and spun around our apartment, and with her, I felt lighter. She had a magnetically innocent charm, an eternal youth instead of just eternal life. After the trenches, after my captivity, after everything that had happened since I died, it turned out I needed to be nineteen again. A freer and happier and wilder nineteen than I could ever have been during my life, but still only nineteen.

We went out, arm in arm, and reveled among the revelers. She taught me to look for men and women drunk on champagne, because it made their blood fizzy and intoxicating.

It’s adorable when you wrinkle your nose like that, Vanessa. It doesn’t really change the blood. It was the Lover who was fizzy and intoxicating. I let myself be swept along with her through the glittering Paris nights. Everyone happy, everyone glutted on freedom, everyone exorcising the demons of the last few years. I was dizzy with the thrill of it all, alcoholic blood or not.

As for the attack, I forgot about it. I had come directly from the trenches; brutality and violence were hardly shocking. And besides, it hadn’t mattered in the long run. In a way, I felt lucky. How would I have found the Lover otherwise?

I didn’t know yet I would always have found her. And the Doctor. And countless others. But I hadn’t figured it out. My attention was elsewhere. The women on stage— Oh, the women. They were a display case full of the most delectable pastries, confections of every flavor imaginable. They’d always invite us into their dressing rooms after, because everyone wanted to be near the Lover once they saw her. Everyone loves something precious and fragile. They loved me, too, because I was beautiful and happy and fun again.

They had no idea that we were the most dangerous things on the streets of Paris. It made me affectionate and protective. They didn’t trust me because they were safe. They were safe because they trustedme.

I’d nearly always find someone to join me in a dark corner or costume closet. Sex, as frantic and hungry as it had been with Raven, but lacking the blood-soaked haze and confusion. I knew exactly what we were doing now, and how to do it. It was still without love, but at least it was with tenderness, with humor, with delight. Oh, French women.

French women.

Sometimes I think about them, my stages full of soft delights with their cupid lips, assured fingers, warm tongues. I wonder what happened to them. I hope they were happy. I hope life was one long thrilling jaunt from smoky club to brilliant spotlight to laughter-filled dressing room. I hope they aged joyfully, that they only got softer and warmer with time, that the lines of their faces told winking stories of pleasure and happiness, never want or fear or pain.

But this was Paris in the 1920s. None of that was in their futures.

Still, they didn’t know what was coming, and neither did I. The Lover and I owned that brilliant city. We joined the dancers, performed on stages, drank our fill but never killed. The Lover was adamant about that, and I didn’t mind. I only wanted to be full enough to take the edge off the infinite gnawing emptiness always stalking me. Blood did that. So did sex. If I ever got too empty, I remembered Mina. I remembered myself. And I didn’t want to think about either of those things, so I made sure I was never thirsty and I was never alone.

Though I could have been happy at any of the clubs—they were all basically the same—we never danced on the same stage more than seven nights in a row. The Lover was searching for something, and when she didn’t find it, we moved on.

On to the next club, the next dance hall, the next soirée. Every night was a bright burst of pleasure, every daytime rest an eternity, the only true marker of the passage of time the rotation of our dresses. I didn’t pay much attention to the Lover. In all those arms, on all those stages, among all those frantic bursts of blood or pleasure, I wanted to be lost.

But I couldn’t escape my past. Unlike in the trenches, Mina was everywhere. She always said Paris was for fools and dreamers, but I still found her constantly. Not in the mouths I kissed, the pleasure I gave and received, the audiences of adoring men. No, I found her in the narrowed eyes watching us as we laughed too loudly walking arm in arm down the streets. In the scandalized outrage of women tricked into coming to the clubs. In every pursed lip and judgmental gaze.

I knew exactly how Mina would feel about what I was doing, and I wished desperately to discover her watching me, horrified and disappointed. She’d cover my bare shoulders with a sensible coat and march me back home.

Every dance, every stage, every kiss was a dare for Mina to come find me.

I know it’s not rational, but I felt close to Mina when I was in Paris. Like at any moment I would see her, and she would be the same, and then I could be the same, too.

So it wasn’t just the Lover searching for something in every crowd. We understood each other, though neither of us ever said what we were looking for.

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