Page 10 of Lucy Undying

I’m reminded of the magic show Mina and I went to once. Every time the magician reached into his hat, somehow there was another rabbit inside. Every time the maid summons me, somehow there’s another man calling. And then I must perform my own magic. Look at the Magnificent Lucy, conjuring a delighted face out of thin air! Marvel at her disappearing act: The real Lucy—poof!—is gone, replaced by a smiling, nodding, giggling doll, the perfect companion!

I’ve been doing that magic trick for years, though. It keeps Mother happy.

Today my caller was the cowboy, Quincey Morris. He just showed up on our doorstep. Mother barely hid her outrage at the lack of manners. She berated me afterward. As if I had invited him! As if the very things that attract him were not relentlessly forced upon me by her. If she’d let me be my silly, unpleasant, wicked self, we’d have far fewer gentleman callers.

I was surprised to see Quincey alone, though. (I know I should think of him as Mister Morris, but it feels absurd to be formal with such an informal man. If anything, I think of him as the cowboy.) He’s never visited without Doctor Seward. Quincey said Doctor Seward was busy with a patient today. But I’ve been reading detective stories, and I cleverly noticed a key detail: Mister Morris was not using Doctor Seward’s cab, but rather a rented one. Therefore, I suspect that Doctor Seward is unaware of his friend’s location. Intrigue!

But really, it was not so bad. At least listening to Quincey as he talks in my direction is easier than enduring Mother. He never criticizes me, never pinches me, never cries and says I’m all he has in the world and if I leave him he’ll die.

I think he truly loves the animals he hunts; perhaps, then, he truly loves me. Or could come to. I would be his English rose, plucked from my home and toured around America for display, like the upsetting wax figures in the tent next to the magician. (We didn’t stay long there. Fake people, dragged out and set up whenever anyone wished to look at them. I felt far too much kinship for my liking.) Would Quincey want me to be demure and proper in order to surprise his rough and rowdy American friends? Or would he want me to acclimate? To hunt by his side, riding wild across the American West?

For all my dreams of being a predator, I don’t think I would like it. I’m a creature of habits and comfort. Sleeping under the stars sounds romantic until one considers the lack of proper baths and toilets.

Once I get past how difficult it is to wait for Quincey to finish a single dawdling, drawling sentence, he’s harmless. He would be kind to me, I think, or at least indifferent in a pleasant way. And he would take me far, far away from Mother. Imagine if my darling came with us! We could explore America together and have such wonderful adventures with Quincey as our heroic cowboy guide.

Oh, but what if he wanted to marry me and stay in England? I would die of humiliation. I could better handle being the object of spectacle than being on the arm of spectacle. If he couldn’t make me thrillingly rough like the American wilderness, I certainly couldn’t make him viciously polite like British society.

I nearly forgot the best part of his visit! When he was leaving, he shook my hand. He actually shook it! I could not help a burst of laughter. He was not offended at all. I wish I could have him as a friend. If we could be honest with each other, we’d get along very well indeed. But I’m not allowed to have friends like Quincey Morris.

Why would his friendship reflect poorly on me, while it makes Doctor Seward more interesting to society? If Arthur Holmwood can be friends with Mister Morris, why can I not?

Arthur. He is everything a man of his station should be. And if I were everything a woman of my wealth and status should be, we would make a perfect pair.

Arthur’s as handsome as he is charming and pleasant, if one can stop wondering what that dreadful pale mustache would feel like pressed against one’s own face. If Quincey Morris baffles me and Doctor Seward unnerves me, Arthur merely breaks my heart. Another magic trick. Arthur holds up a mirror and in it I can see what the world sees. Exactly who I ought to be, who I should be. Who I can never be.

It always leaves me wondering what is so broken and strange inside me that I imagine a life with Arthur and it makes me want to follow my father’s steps into the night, never to

I’m getting maudlin. Perhaps I should have Quincey back to regale me with more tales of absurd heroics. Wrestling an alligator, or challenging a buffalo to a fistfight. I’ll write and ask him to call on me again. Mother hates the crass American, but until she has figured out whether he is wealthy or simply connected to wealthy men, she’ll be polite and allow him to visit.

But, oh! Three days! Three days until I am reunited with the only person I wish to see on my doorstep. My darling, my darling, coming to me.

12

Boston, September 25, 2024

Client Transcript

There I was, offering myself to four men who had always wanted me. Anger and horror warred on their faces. Anger won. They held up crucifixes in an attempt to banish me, but also as condemnation.

The most humiliating part of their rejection was that I didn’t actually want any of them. Not in that way. I was just cold and confused and always so very, very thirsty. And Arthur had given me back my name. It was more than either of the brides had, and I was grateful. I still am.

I let them drive me away. It was not the crosses, but the looks on their faces. Was I really that horrifying? I retreated into my mausoleum. I tried to remember how they had looked at me before. I said my name out loud, pulled it on like a dress, but it didn’t fit quite the same way it used to. As though I had grown and shrunk at the same time.

Raven appeared next to me, pulling me close. “That is why you can never go home.” She caressed me, giving me the physical intimacy I had been ravenous for long before I woke up in this dark place. “They think you’re a monster now. They’ll kill you.”

Maybe they were right. I hadn’t considered it before then, lost in the hunger and new sensations. The relief of plunging my teeth into a neck, the burst of feelings built by Raven’s fingers or tongue, the way I could smell and see and feel the night around me. I had been ruled entirely by my senses up until then, but now I was forced to think. All the next day as the sun made its relentless trek across the sky, I thought about the things I’d been doing with Raven and Dove.

Not the sex—I didn’t feel guilty for that, and I still don’t—but the killing. Is it murder when a wolf sinks its teeth into a rabbit? When a hawk snatches a mouse? Where is the line between murder and survival?

I didn’t know then. I still don’t. I have lines I won’t cross; many of us do. Not all of us, as you’ll see.

The simple ease of my newborn existence was gone, though. Everything was wrong and right and neither. I didn’t want to be a bride alongside Raven and Dove anymore. Their spell over me was broken. I needed someone else to tell me what to do, and I knew exactly who that was now. With my own name, I’d remembered one other: Mina.

Mina had always been so good at taking charge of me. I knew if I could find her, she would lecture me about how being an undead creature of the night simply wasn’t becoming of a young woman of my station, she would tsk over how silly I was being, and she would set me right. I really believed in that moment that she could fix everything. As soon as the sun set, I was ready to go.

“Stop that,” Raven said. She held me back, her fingers a manacle around my wrist. I had begun drifting away on a shaft of moonlight. She often had to remind me to hold my human form.

Oh. That requires explanation. The sun binds us to what we are when it rises, so we can’t change our shape then. It’s crucial to have a body when dawn arrives. Being able to turn into moonlight or mist is all very well and good until you’re stuck that way under the brutal rays of the sun. I once lost months because I forgot to change back in time and got scattered by daylight.

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