Page 69 of Lucy Undying

I’m opening the latch on my window. We can be alone together, the darkness and me.

60

Boston, September 26, 2024

Client Transcript

I raced back to England, taking every form of transportation I could find. Motorcycles and ambulances and tanks and trains and boats and even an airplane. The only thing that mattered was speed. I had to see Mina. Just from a distance. If she was still alive, if she was happy, if she was thriving, then I wasn’t pointless. I was worth something. My love had mattered, even if she never knew.

And if Dracula had gotten to her, well…I wouldn’t be alone anymore, would I?

But when I arrived at last, London was different. My quiet city was an older, grizzled, scarred version of itself. It hummed with low, constant dread. Familiar sights were pocked from bombs and choked with smoke. Cars and ambulances and soldiers were everywhere. And Mina was gone.

I went to her house, but there was another family there and they had no idea who Mina Murray or Mina Harker were. The Harkers no doubt lived somewhere else together, but I’d never been there. Why hadn’t I been there? It was odd that I’d never visited my closest friend after she returned to London a married woman. The end of my life was a pain-soaked haze I deliberately never thought of, but I knew Mina wasn’t in it.

Sitting on a bench in a park—unsure why I was there, but drawn back to some of my old routes as a human—I puzzled through my options. Surely there were records that could tell me what had happened to Mina. But I had no idea where or even what those records were. I was a vampire, not a detective. And in life I had been a wealthy young heiress, so someone else always handled details.

Which left me with one other option. Treading the paths of my life had brought up additional memories. If I couldn’t find Mina, then perhaps I could find some of my other old friends. Surely one of them would know what happened to Mina, since they were the ones who had hunted Dracula. They could help me, as long as they didn’t know who they were helping.

Fortunately, finding directions to the sanitarium was easy. It had been turned into a hospital for wounded soldiers; everyone knew where it was, and it was busy enough that I was able to walk right in without anyone noticing me.

I did shift my appearance ever so slightly, though. I hadn’t forgotten the sound of a saw cutting laboriously through Dove’s spine.

“Excuse me,” I asked one of the nurses. He had a body that spoke of past brawny health withered away. An old scar on his neck drew my eyes and for a moment I wondered if he, too, had been bitten. But instead of two points of pain that would never leave him, it looked like he had been ripped into. “Have you worked here long?”

He nodded, barely glancing at me.

“Do you know Doctor Seward?”

His eyes narrowed with suspicion. He stopped what he was doing and really looked at me. “Yes.”

“Do you know where I could find him?”

He turned and spat on the floor, which hardly seemed sanitary. “He went to America, decades ago. Good riddance.”

I hadn’t been looking forward to a reunion with the man, but it was a blow. It not only took Doctor Seward off my list, it also took off the cowboy. I couldn’t imagine Doctor Seward going to America without his Texan friend.

I wandered outside, walking as I thought. Who else could I look for? The third option was the lecherous old Dutch man, and I hoped he was dead by now, anyway. The idea of him still out there, looming and leering and holding young women’s hands so they couldn’t escape him, was so unfair it made my teeth grate against each other.

That was the worst part of trying to find Mina. It forced me to remember other things. I was digging around in the grave of my past, and I didn’t enjoy what I was unearthing.

Arthur was the only option left to me. But that, too, proved impossible. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember ever once visiting his family’s estate. How had we been engaged and I never saw his home?

An older woman, with hair as white as fresh snow and joyful wrinkles around her eyes, took pity on me as I sat crying on the steps of an old tea shop Mina and I used to frequent.

“Are you lost, dear?” she asked.

“Yes,” I sobbed. “I’ve been away so long, and now I can’t find anyone. I need to see my friend, but no one knows where she is.”

“Have you tried a directory?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

She tutted and helped me stand, then guided me to a library. Inside, she sat me at a table and then brought over a bound book. It thudded down, heavy with the weight of souls. She tapped the cover. “If they live in London, they’ll be in here. Or maybe someone you used to know will be. Would you like help looking up names?”

I stood and wrapped my arms around her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Thank you,” I said. It was exactly what I needed. Both the directory, and the reminder that even in the worst of times, there’s still kindness walking among us. “I can manage from here.”

She bid me good luck and farewell. Honestly, if I were going to turn anyone besides Mina into a vampire, I think I would have chosen her. All the vampires I knew had been changed when we were young and impulsive and selfish. How much better to change when you’ve already grown fully into yourself, with all your wisdom and compassion and power?

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