Page 66 of Lucy Undying

My dead heart thudded dully to life. A poisonous hope spread through me. If Dracula was still alive, if he had gotten to Mina, then she’d be like me now. A vampire, lost and alone.

The Doctor was right. I could still feel him out there. I should have known he wasn’t dead.

I’d never stopped looking for Mina in every face I saw, as though I expected to see her exactly as I’d left her. Maybe I’d stayed away for that exact reason. Part of me had wanted Dracula to find her, and turn her, and give her to me forever.

57

August 19, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

I hate the monster. Not because of these holes in my throat, this exhausted stupor, these terrors and nightmares. But because he lied.

Jonathan is alive, and Mina is gone. I helped her pack and took her to the train station myself, clinging to her as I watched everyone else who got aboard. I made certain his red eyes were nowhere. Mina’s heading for Jonathan, which is far away from me, but also far away from the monster. She’s safe now. That’s what I wanted, is it not?

It is. I do want that, more than anything. Mina’s safe, and now I can sleep. She vowed to write and update me. She plans on marrying stale-pudding Jonathan as soon as they are reunited. Then they will travel back as husband and wife.

I can be selfless. I can be happy for my heart, my dearest, my best friend. I can give up my dream of Mina, a Mina who would look back at me as she boarded the train, instead of staring resolutely ahead. A Mina who would choose me over everyone else, instead of only staying with me when she had no better use for her time. A Mina who would see how desperately I loved her, and welcome it, and love me back. I will bury that dream, and mourn it, and wear the black of a widow.

Arthur’s here now. He arrived this evening, all smiles and calm solicitude. When I took his coat and hung it as an excuse to escape his small talk with Mother, I found a letter in his pocket. It was Mina’s beloved handwriting, so I read it. She wrote him before she purchased her train ticket, before she even packed, telling him to come to me immediately and watch things here.

More happy proof that even if she doesn’t love me how I wanted her to, she cares about me. I will hold on to that.

My time in Whitby is done. Arthur is escorting Mother and me back to London. In a month, I will marry him. I’m too tired to write more, and those wings are battering the window. I can sleep through it tonight.

“Fool!” I mock, smiling at my reflection in the glass. We have both lost her.

58

London, October 7, 2024

Iris

“Oh! Hey!” I try to keep my tone easy. Maybe Elle won’t notice the diary isn’t a normal book. “How did it go? Do they want the paintings?”

Elle sets down a bag and walks to the bed but doesn’t climb on. She looks flat, like a bottle of bubbly left out on the counter, all effervescence escaped.

“Is that a journal?” she asks.

I glance down at it and grimace. “Yeah. I found it hidden in the house.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“Because,” I start, and I can’t help but grasp the diary tighter to my chest. “Because it doesn’t belong in a museum. I knew this would be the thing you’d want in exchange for all the help. You can have anything else in the house. Hell, everything else in the house. But not this. Lucy, the girl who wrote it? Everyone around her told her who she was, who she had to be. She was constantly pretending, faking every feeling and smile and conversation, just to survive, because she was a teenage girl no one listened to. And because she was queer.”

I lower the diary and look at the cover, trying to explain why it means so much to me. “I don’t know if she even understood what she was feeling, but she was desperately in love with her governess. Writing in here was the only place she could ever be herself. I can’t let her story go into a museum to become an object of interest. She’d be a novelty. I can’t break her trust that way.”

Elle’s voice is surprisingly cold. “You’re the one reading her diary. You’ve already broken her trust. Besides, it was a long time ago. Just the scribblings of a silly, spoiled girl, right?”

Defensiveness rises around me like a flock of startled pigeons, flapping and clacking and clattering in my chest. I can feel my face turning red. “She was so much more than that. She was brilliant and funny and insightful and yes, also probably super rich, but that didn’t help her! People always think being rich negates bad things or makes abuse somehow tolerable. I promise, it doesn’t. It’s just part of the cage they trap you in. And everyone in her life was using her—everyone. No one respected her or listened to her. No one really saw or understood her or even wanted to. I know I’m being irrational, Elle, I promise I know. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Lucy. But I can’t let the museum have this. I know her better than maybe anyone else ever got to, and I love her.”

Elle softens. Some of the life returns to her face. “She’s that great, huh?”

“She really is. Here, come.” I pat the space next to me. “You can read it.”

Elle climbs into bed, sits between my legs, and leans back against me. She rests her head on my shoulder and snuggles in. “Read it out loud,” she says. “Your favorite parts. Bring her to life for me, too.”

Some of the tightness in my chest loosens. Elle’s not mad, and she’s not going to demand I give the diary to the museum. I knew she’d understand that teenage girls’ feelings and heartbreaks and hopes matter, and they always have. Especially Lucy’s.

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