Page 48 of Lucy Undying

That’s unkind of me. The poor man is dead.

But I don’t care. I’m not feeling kind, or sweet, or happy. Mina wants to attend the funeral of the captain of the ghost ship (his dead body was found tied to the helm!), which will suit my mood as well as anything else. I’m tired of Whitby. I’m miserable, I want this to be over, and I also never want to leave. Is this how prisoners condemned to death feel?

Poor Arthur. I’m comparing our impending marriage to being condemned to death. He doesn’t deserve me. What a wretched wife I willbe.

We settled on September for the wedding. Next month! I can’t breathe when I think about it too much, but I may as well get it over with.

Mina’s cross, too, more worried each day she doesn’t hear from Jonathan. She’s received no letters from him, though she sends out ever so many. I’ve peeked over her shoulder. Most of her missives are written in her shorthand code. When I asked her why, she startled, then smoothed her face into a smile.

“Because it’s faster,” she said.

Mina’s keeping secrets, and I cannot even be intrigued. She’s keeping them from me, not with me. I can feel her getting farther away, like a storm receding. No amount of wishing will keep her here. I know she doesn’t love me—I’ve given up that foolish dream. Could anyone ever love me as much as I love them?

Arthur was supposed to visit again, but his father is ill so he sent his regrets. Maybe his father will be ill on our wedding date, and Arthur will send his regrets, and I can—

I can what? Nothing. Mina will be married. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Mina is asleep. I’m going to walk in the night, where I can make whatever expressions I want, where I can be nothing because no one expects anything from me.

Except, there—

Out the window! I think I have just seen the missing dog. It looked more like a wolf, though, tremendous and frightening. Perhaps I won’t go out tonight, either.

42

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

Naturally you’re questioning my phrasing when I say that I “let” Dracula kill me. After all, the Lucy that Dracula found was a child.

But she was also a fool. A sad, lost, confused little fool. When Dracula came to her, when he pursued her with relentless fixation, it really did seem like love. Or at least like being wanted. Not for money, or looks, or status. But for her whole self.

I speak of that Lucy in the third person because she feels like another person. Like a dream barely remembered. That Lucy, tragically young, had never been her whole self with anyone. That much I recall. But Dracula didn’t care about any of it. He wanted me regardless.

It wasn’t romantic. I never felt affection or attraction for Dracula. He terrified me. It’s horrible in ways even now I can’t let myself think about, lest I tip over that careful line of sanity and never come back.

I wonder, though. Whether I wanted what happened, one way or another. I hadn’t wanted to die, but had I really wanted to keep living my life? Because Dracula didn’t choose me, not at first. He wanted Mina.

I put myself in front of him on purpose. I offered myself up to him willingly. And I didn’t fight tooth and nail to get away once he started, because by then it felt inevitable. I was always going to be devoured by an uncaring man; it was just a far quicker, more violent draining.

So, I couldn’t judge the Lover for her choices. By being her stalker’s victim over and over, she was saving countless Parisian dancers from the same fate. Did that make her noble? I thought it might.

And so I took the Lover home, and we kept dancing in circles. The same routines with different costumes and backdrops. Coral and René became Marie, then Adelaide and Pierre, then Josephine.

While I was finding beautiful women and men, trying not to feel so empty all the time, I watched the Lover’s own endless cycle. She went through it four, five, a dozen more times. I tried to talk her out of it, tried to scare her—what if he decided to dump her body in the river? What if he decided to burn her? But she never listened.

Then one night I found a body in the familiar alley. Three stab wounds in the back. Gutted in the front. Her skull half smashed in, carefully leaving her eyes staring blank and unseeing. But the blood was fresh. It was a different girl, another dancer, an innocent who couldn’t ever wake up again. And I was livid.

The Lover was a fool, just like I had been. I hadn’t saved Mina by offering myself to Dracula. I died and left her alone, and he stalked her anyway. The only reason she survived was because the men in her life made the right choices to protect her. Because she was smarter and stronger and better than me. Because she deserved to survive in ways I never had.

I gently carried the dead dancer to our apartment and laid her on the chaise longue. The Lover, busy pinning up her hair, glanced over in confusion and disapproval.

“Lucy,” she said, “we don’t kill people!”

“We don’t,” I agreed. “But your paramour does. You aren’t saving women by being his victim. You need to stop him, not pause him.” I was angrier with myself than with her, really. I’d let myself be killed as though that was the only way I could protect Mina. It had been worthless. Meaningless. A sacrifice no one asked for or needed.

“Oh, Lucy,” she said with a sigh, sitting next to the corpse and brushing the girl’s hair back into place. “It doesn’t matter, does it? None of it matters. Not really.”

“It has to matter. She has to matter.” Because if she didn’t, nothing did. I walked out. I was never going back to that apartment. Paris was poisoned for me.

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