Page 63 of Lucy Undying

August 17, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

How many days has it been since I started that last entry? I haven’t had the energy or will to finish it. I was correct to keep watch at the window. He came right to the glass. I don’t know how—we’re on the second story.

He scraped his nails down the window. I knew he would wake Mina, and once she was awake, he would have her. The only way to block his pathway to her was with myself. My body in place of hers. I undid the latch and offered my neck.

Mina found me there in the morning, unconscious, hanging half out the window. I wept as she chided me, so she became gentler and guided me to bed. I have tried to sleep as much as I can during the day since then. That way I can guard Mina against the hunger and the teeth that night brings.

What is he? My throat is icy cold all the time. The marks of his bite repulse me, yet I can’t stop myself from touching them, exploring their edges. The wounds of my efforts to protect Mina. The proof that I love her, better than anyone else ever will, better than she can ever know. I’m not evil, I’m not selfish, I’m a creature of pure love. My love will keep her safe.

Mina knows I’m upset. I’m having a harder time hiding everything. She thinks my weeping and odd sleep habits are about Arthur and his absence, and assures me he’s coming as soon as he can. She brushes my hair and tells me all the things Arthur loves about me. The lines that form between my brows when I’m puzzled or worried. The way I cover my mouth when I laugh, as though I can keep those peals from escaping. My delicate fingers, my golden waves of hair, my sparkling eyes. The ease with which I can converse with both lords and servants. My careless generosity.

But Mina and Arthur have barely spoken. Surely he hasn’t told her all those things! I think she says them to make me feel certain Arthur loves me, but it only makes me hope that Mina’s actually telling me all the things she loves about me. That I was wrong to fear she’s looking forward to being rid of me.

I don’t think she’s in love with me, but I do know now that she loves me, and that’s enough.

I have my own list. The collection of things about Mina that make my chilled heart swell and beat stronger. Her wit. Her fortitude. Her practical cleverness. The way certain light changes her eyes from plain brown to glowing amber. The way only I can make her lose her composure and laugh like we’re the careless schoolgirls we never got to be. The curve of her lower lip, the perfect dip in the center of her upper lip. The way she fits curled into me when she falls asleep in my bed. The way the blankets obscure and reveal as they drape over her form, and I

Or maybe she’s reassuring me about Arthur’s devotion because she’s worried about Jonathan’s. She’s been rereading his letters, obsessing over them, quoting parts to me until I feign sleep just to stop hearing them. She claims the words don’t sound like him, even though the writing is clearly his.

There’s something else in her obsession besides worry, though. I have devoted my artist’s eye to Mina’s expressions, and I know when she’s furious. She hides it well, but not well enough. Mina reads those letters and whatever she finds or doesn’t find in them makes her angry.

Maybe my monster meant only that she’s lost Jonathan’s heart, not that he’s perished. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Mina has me. I’ll keep her safe. I’ll protect her. I’ll stay awake here at the window, as the night flutters and swoops and presses close with hungry, sharp teeth.

54

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

My green dress was black with blood.

I sat, soot-stained and reeking of smoke in the charred remains of so many men and one precious woman. I had ruined everything, yet again.

Ingrid had kissed me like she was dying, every time. Desperate and passionate and frantic. And now she was actually dead, because she trusted me. Because I couldn’t tell her who I was. Because I was so distracted by the memory of Mina, driven mad by my questions of who she had become without me, that I’d failed everyone.

The secretary was dead, too, which meant he couldn’t give up the information. But what did it matter? The Nazis and fascists would try again, or they’d try something else. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. And the monstrous machine of war would plow on, devouring youth.

What we’d done that night didn’t matter. Ingrid was just another body, another woman broken and ended, and for what? The Doctor’s question was eternal, and the only question that mattered: And is the war over?

It wasn’t. It never has been. It never will be. All wars are the same war. Evil is banal, evil is boring, evil is predictable, and evil is everywhere. The heroes of that particular chapter, the liberators of Europe and Africa? Go backward or go forward, you’ll find the same blood on their hands. The same violence and atrocities in their own lands, or in foreign lands under the banner of their flags. The same dark deals, the same sacrifices of young bodies in service of old money.

Though I understood at last in that room that I couldn’t impact things in a way that would matter, I have no regrets about helping the sides I did. The Nazis were exceptionally good at evil. And still are. Different names, same agendas. Sometimes even the same name. Time really is a circle. No one ever learns, nothing changes, nothing matters.

I never did. Learn, or change, or matter.

I went back to the Doctor’s lab that night. I slumped in the corner and wept, thinking of Ingrid, thinking of how poorly I’d done. To my surprise, the Doctor came and sat by me. She didn’t hold me or comfort me, but her willingness to leave a man bleeding unobserved on her operating table for a few precious moments was a huge gesture.

“You were right,” I said, miserable and lost. “I tried to be smart this time, and it still didn’t fix things. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know where to go or who to be. I don’t know how to exist. How do we keep existing?”

“Stay here with me,” she said. “Help me in my studies. The people I’m working with now are making so much progress. We’ll do astonishing things. We’ll defy mortality at every turn, we’ll fix bodies, we’ll…” She trailed off. “We’ll steal back as many souls from death as we can.”

But I didn’t care about people the same way the Doctor did. She wanted to understand how they worked. To know all the ways they could break, rot from the inside, die. She wanted to save their bodies.

I just wanted to know how to make them love me. How to make myself someone worth loving. How to stop being a monster.

“You should study us,” I said. “Figure out what’s wrong with us, so you can fix it. So you can fix me.”

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