Page 55 of Lucy Undying

I followed her back toward the heart of the city. “Why do you do it, though? Why are you so obsessed with mortal bodies? Have you ever thought about studying what happened to us? Why we are the way we are?”

She scoffed. “We make no sense. We shouldn’t exist. Why study nightmares? Mortal bodies can be understood, which means they can be fixed. Perfected, even. And I’m determined to do just that.”

I wondered if that was why she clung to her body, why she never changed form. But before I could ask her, she hurried away toward her laboratory. She had work to do, and so did I.

Fed and rested at last, I strode into the city properly, filling my eyes with the spires and the walls and the buildings and the people, the same way I’d filled my belly with blood the day before. A different kind of nourishment.

Did you know back then it was called Constantinople as often as it was called anything else? Names are funny things. I wonder who I would have become if I hadn’t gotten my name back. A bride, or a queen, or a lover, or a doctor. I’ll never know. I was still Lucy.

But I didn’t want to be Lucy in Istanbul. I wanted to be someone else, someone capable of shifting the tides of war. The Spy. Being a spy was exciting, too. Nothing like it is now. I can’t understand technology. If you think vampires make no sense, explain to me how you can push buttons that don’t exist on a glass and metal rectangle to talk to someone on the other side of the world. If that isn’t supernatural nonsense, I don’t know what is.

No, back then spy work was about meeting people. Identifying targets and then convincing them to tell you things, give you access to information, trust you when they should know better.

I needed to be clever and resourceful and organized and capable. I never had been any of those things, but if I were pretending to be Mina, well, I could do it. I knew she’d be proud, seeing me there. So I styled myself Wilhelmina Vargasy. Depending on who was listening and what they wanted to hear, I was Hungarian, Swedish, British, or Moldovan. I spoke all those tongues, along with a few other languages. I forget which ones I know until I’m speaking them.

It wasn’t hard to get a job at a bar near the square. All they required was a face and body that would attract men, and I’ve always had that. Add a little mesmerizing on top of it? I was the best barmaid in Istanbul.

When I served drinks and chatted with them, men forgot what they were supposed to be careful of. It wasn’t only because I’m beautiful, or because I dazzled them as soon as the sun set. No, it was because I was nothing but a silly, pretty girl. What threat could I ever pose?

I hadn’t understood what I was getting into, though. I had some hazy ideas about intercepting messages, preventing attacks, perhaps stopping the war with a cleverly timed assassination. But Istanbul was a hornet’s nest. Spies upon spies, agents from every country imaginable, all cloak-and-daggering around the city, trying to outsmart one another.

It became very tedious and boring, figuring out who to seduce and what to steal and who needed helping versus who needed murdering. I’ve forgotten most of what I did, and certainly all the names of the men I did things to. They were small and arrogant people, scurrying around dealing lives for counterfeit money. All money is counterfeit. Useless, meaningless, imaginary.

I hated all of them, to be honest. All the men on every side, treating people like numbers, lives like gambling chips. But I hated the Nazis most, so that was where I focused my efforts.

It wasn’t all bad. They had the loveliest tea in Istanbul. Have you ever had it? I couldn’t drink it, but I could smell it. That part was nice. And the outfits! I had the most gorgeous evening gown, you should have seen it. As green as envy, as clinging as fear, as light as hope. I wore a diamond choker—I always like to cover my neck; old habits—and swept my hair back into an elegant chignon. The Lover taught me that one, too. She would have been fun in Istanbul, but also dangerous. She never did take sides. Only her own. And she would have hated the Doctor almost as much as the Doctor would have hated her.

I haven’t forgotten everything, though. One story does come to mind. My first triumph. The biggest problem in Istanbul was that the Ottomans—sorry, Turks, I get confused about when I am. Turkey was politically neutral, which made no one happy. All sides were constantly jockeying and conspiring to push the Turkish president to their cause.

I met…I can’t remember their names, let’s call them Hans and Baris. I met Hans and Baris one night in the bar. Because anyone listening to me heard what they wanted to, for them I was Hungarian, and thus on their side. Or at least Hans’s side. Baris was Turkish, and eager to be a wealthy man.

They picked me out almost immediately. They flattered me, bought me drinks, invited me to parties. Hans declared he loved me and wanted to free me from my life of drudgery serving drinks. There was just one snag—as long as Turkey was neutral, he would be stuck here. If we could tip things and make Turkey swing toward a German alliance, he’d be able to return home with me on his arm, where I could run his household and bear him many beautiful blond babies.

It was a good thing I’d had so much practice pretending to care when men were talking. He was insufferable.

Having “lured” me to their side, Hans and Baris gave me a task. All I had to do was seduce a guard working at the presidential office. He’d let me in, and then I’d leave a package behind.

“Easy,” Hans assured me. “And safe.”

“But why?” I pressed. “What’s in the package? Who’s helping us, in case something goes wrong?” Thanks to my excellent nose, I already knew it was a smoke bomb. The smoke would drive the president out of his office. Once he was exposed in the street, doubtless Baris would shoot him with the Soviet sniper rifle he had leaning against the wall in his room. I would most likely be killed and left surrounded by “evidence” that I was a Soviet spy. Hans and Boris would pin the whole thing on the Soviets and push Turkey into Germany’s waiting arms.

It was an obvious enough plan that I’d figured out all the details on my own. I just needed them to confirm there were no co-conspirators so I could make certain the entire plot was snuffed out.

Hans and Baris shared the long-suffering look they got whenever I hinted I had a working brain beneath my golden hair.

“Just trust me, liebchen,” Hans insisted, pulling me close.

That was where my abilities as a spy fell apart, because rather than manipulating them for more information, I opted for the simplest possible solution. I turned into a demon.

48

August 11, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

I don’t know why I did what I did.

No. That’s not true. I know why—to protect Mina. I’m not certain I know what I did, though.

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