Page 85 of Lucy Undying

“Oh my god, were you the moonlight?”

Lucy’s shocked. “You noticed?”

“Uh, yeah. Moonlight doesn’t usually freeze when you see it.”

She bites her lips and nods sheepishly. “It’s been a long time since I had enough power to pull that trick well. I was a little rusty. Sorry. Anyway, I’m glad you found the journal first. I don’t think I could have read it. Or at least, I couldn’t have read it without hating the girl who wrote it for how vulnerable she was.”

I open my mouth to argue in her defense, but Lucy holds up a hand to stop me. “I know. Hearing you talk about me, hearing you read the journal out loud, hearing the generous, adoring, protective way you took my worst and silliest thoughts? I could finally see that girl again. I could finally forgive her and accept that nothing that happened was her fault. She didn’t deserve any of it. And all the pain and searching that came after was what I had to go through to get back here. To get back to that Lucy. To…find you, so you could help me see she deserved to be loved.”

“She still deserves to be loved.” I take Lucy’s hand in mine, linking our fingers. “No matter what that bitch Mina—”

“No,” Lucy says, the word sharp and fanged. Her eyes flash red, and for the first time I feel a spike of fear. She takes a moment to calm herself, then squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry. I’ve held Mina in my heart for so long. It’s hard to explain, but when you become…this, everything crystallizes. Core beliefs—religion, fear, love—that you held most tightly in life become unbreakable chains in death. I always felt lucky that the only thing I believed in was Mina. It’s hard to use a dead woman against someone.”

She smiles wryly, but it’s a performance. Her voice gets lower, more urgent. “Mina never hurt me. Mina never would have hurt me. She might not have loved me the way I loved her, but she did love me. Holding on to that, having that wrapped around me the last hundred and thirty years, I think it’s helped me stay sane.” She tilts her head. “Mostly sane. Okay, sometimes sane. I’ve had a lot of weird years. Okay, decades.” She pauses. “Maybe we should get into that later.”

I don’t want to argue with her about Mina. I know she’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter now. I don’t even feel jealous, only sad. Lucy loved someone who couldn’t love her back. But maybe that’s what I inherited. Not Mina’s deserved retribution, but a chance to be the Murray-Goldaming who loves Lucy for exactly who she is.

As though keen to reassure me, Lucy says, “I think you’re right about the men, though. I was too busy being repeatedly attacked by a vampire to notice they were preying on me, too. I’m glad Doctor Seward is dead. Wish I had been the one to do it.”

“I wish you had, too,” I say with a laugh.

“Quincey was sweet, though. In his own way. Obnoxious and rather dim, but sweet.” She smiles at the memory, far away and sad. I wonder how many happy memories she has. I’d hope with as many years as she’s lived it’s a lot of them, but somehow I know it’s not.

I frown, something new occurring to me. “Oh, wait. Which one of us is being inappropriate? Because I’m twenty-five, so does that mean I’m in a relationship with a nineteen-year-old? Or am I in a relationship with a one hundred and…” I pause, unable to do math quickly in my head even at the best of times.

Lucy leans dazzlingly close. She looks down at my lips, the sweep of her eyelashes like gold veins in the blush marble of her cheeks. “One hundred and fifty, give or take; I lose track. But the answer is both. Maiden and crone, but never mother. I’m an impulsive, emotional, infinitely hopeful nineteen-year-old and an ancient, exhausted, unfathomably wise old woman.”

“Well, that’s good, at least. We’re both creeps, so we cancel each other out.”

Lucy laughs and I press my lips to hers, desperate to taste that laugh, to swallow it, to make her part of me forever. Her mouth answers back hungrily. She tugs me forward with so much force I fall onto her. Gone is the tender consideration of our first explorations. It’s obvious now how careful we were being with each other.

We are not careful now.

Lucy grabs her portrait and tosses it aside, lifting me onto the chair instead. As her mouth explores me I know, in the tiny part of my brain still capable of rational thought, that I should be concerned about that mouth and what it contains. But all I can think of is how much I want it on me. Where I want it on me. How I never want it to stop. Besides, isn’t loving someone always giving them the power to destroy you?

I reach out to tug her shirt off, needing less between us, needing nothing between us, but my hand hits one of the beams. Then I stand, and my head hits another one.

“We need more space,” Lucy says against the delicate skin of my collarbone. I’ve never felt fragile, but somehow knowing what she is makes everything heightened. Every part of me is aware of its vulnerability. Pleasure and pain are separated by the thinnest line. I’m trusting Lucy to navigate it.

We definitely need more space to do that navigation properly.

“Second floor,” I gasp, her tongue dipping down between my breasts. It’s still deliciously cool, but she’s well on her way to warming up for the end target. “There are beds.” I contradict myself by grabbing her and pulling her closer. My fingers slide up her thighs of their own accord, the space between her legs exerting an irresistible magnetism. I need to touch her, to feel her, to reassure myself that she, this, us—it’s all real.

Lucy stumbles blindly backward, pulling me with her. She disappears and I let out a cry of dismay—both because she isn’t touching me anymore and because she fell. But she smiles up at me from the third floor. She landed on her feet.

“Cat,” I say, laughing. She holds out her arms. I don’t even think about it—I drop. She catches me around the waist but doesn’t set me down, stepping forward so the wall is holding me on one side and she’s holding me on the other.

“Bedrooms are too far away,” she says, desire making her voice thick and slow like honey.

I’m about to agree when I hear two things in quick succession. The first is a knock at the front door. And the second is Anthony, saying, “Yes, she’s here. Come on in.”

“No!” I scream, but it’s too late. Lucy’s already moving. I race down both flights of the narrow servants’ staircase. Lucy leaps over my head, passing me. I burst out into the kitchen and grab the knife from my purse on the counter, barely slowing. I catch only a glimpse of Lucy in the hallway before a flash of orange leaps at her. They both wind up in the den, out of my sight.

“Help Anthony!” Lucy shouts. Something slams into the den wall so hard the whole house shakes. Plaster dust rains down on my head. I pull up short of the entry.

The front door gapes open like a wound. Beyond it, late afternoon calmly and quickly slips toward twilight. Next to it, Anthony lies unconscious on the floor. Ford is crouching over him, attention fixed on his neck with deadly intensity. Her mouth drops open, fangs extending.

Shit. I drag the knife across the top of my arm. Ford’s head snaps up, frenzied black eyes fixed on my invitation.

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