Page 73 of Now Comes the Mist

“See what?” I ask, frightened.

Dr. Van Helsing drags Arthur over to where Jack is standing, and Arthur goes quiet and still at once. They are all looking in the directionof my dressing table. “Forgive me,” Dr. Van Helsing says. “I wished to give you and Lucy privacy, but I also had to keep myself nearby. This proves that I was right to worry.” He sighs and runs a trembling hand over his tired face. It is the first time I have ever seen him afraid. “I stood in the hall outside, and when I saw that, I knew.”

My weak heart picks up as I begin to wonder … Iwonder… I struggle to sit up against my pillows, pleading, “Saw what? What is it? Tell me.”

None of them seem to hear me.

“But … buthow? This is not scientifically possible. A trick of the light?” Jack strides across the room, not to my dressing table, but to the full-length mirror I have looked into before every ball and every party for the past several years of my life. One of the last times had been with Mina as we prepared to celebrate her engagement, surrounded by flowers from the men who love us. It was not that long ago, but it feels as though a lifetime has passed.

“I will explain more later,” Dr. Van Helsing says. “God help me, I will have to.”

“But how can a mirror do that?” Arthur asks, his voice thinner and more ragged than I have ever heard it. “I am not as educated a man as either of you, but I know that a mirror cannot—”

“It is not the mirror’s fault,” Jack says slowly, exchanging glances with Dr. Van Helsing.

Arthur’s already pale face goes even whiter. “What do you mean? You blame Lucy?”

“No one blames Lucy for anything,” Dr. Van Helsing says evenly.

I cry out in frustration as I try and fail to sit up in bed. My limbs are shaking too hard, but not just from illness. I am also trembling because I think I know what they have seen in the mirror—or rather, what they havenotseen. And if I am correct, then perhaps there is a sliver of hope that I have not given up everything in exchange for nothing. Perhaps there is still time, still a chance for me to find Vlad, to fix all of this. “Please,” I call. “Dr. Van Helsing, show me!”

“Don’t, Van Helsing,” Jack says urgently, glancing at me. “It will weaken her heart—”

“It is too distressing,” Arthur whispers as though to himself.

But Dr. Van Helsing studies my weak, tortured face, and then turns to look in the doorway. Quincey and two maids are standing there, grouped together like startled birds. In Quincey’s hand is a large silver cross, attached to a chain around his neck. He is whispering a prayer, and I seeDr. Van Helsing look thoughtfully from me to the cross and back. I stare back at him in confusion, and something must pass through his mind, some assurance, for he nods.

“One of you,” he says to the maids. “Please bring Miss Lucy’s hand mirror to her.”

“Van Helsing,no,” Jack says. “How will this help her? It will only frighten her.”

“This is not a good idea,” Quincey agrees.

But Dr. Van Helsing ignores them and nods again at the maids. Harriet collects my little silver hand mirror from the dressing table and brings it to the bedside. For the first time in the many years in which she has served as my lady’s maid, she looks as though she is afraid of me. “Miss Lucy,” she says hesitantly, clutching the mirror to her chest. “I don’t want to do this.”

“It’s all right. Show me, Harriet,” I say, my breath coming in short, ragged bursts.

A tear slips down her cheek as she holds the glass out, her hands shaking badly. I take it, half-hopeful, half-terrified that I will see nothing at all where my reflection should be, the way I had seen nothing when Vlad had stood before a mirror.

But what I see is infinitely worse than nothing.

My reflection is ghastly, a nightmare captured by light and silver and glass, and at first I cannot believe I am looking at myself. My eyes, dark and tilting at the corners, have whites that are dotted with blood. Those are my nose and my cheekbones and my clear pale skin tinted with gold, but they are all speckled with blood. That is my neck, long and smooth but for the wounds Vlad’s fangs left behind—bright white weals with wet red centers, purple bruises surrounding them like halos—splattered in blood.

Blood, blood, blood. Every inch of me is covered in blood, droplets big and small, as though someone has opened a vein in front of me and covered me in the violent spray. All the drops are moving slowly, creeping over my body like living organisms, suspended in the unholy canvas of my skin. I scream and almost drop the mirror in my haste to run my hand over my face and my neck. But when I look down at my palm, it is clean.

There is no real blood splashed all over my skin. No evidence of what I have done or what I have asked for … except in my reflection in the mirror.

I stare into my own eyes, horrible flecks of scarlet dancing through the whites like gore on clean linen. I am breathing much too fast, and my weak heart is pumping at a rate it cannot sustain. I feel as though my headhas been detached from my body and is hovering and spinning over the bed and the distraught girl gazing at the reflection not of her face, but of her soul.

Out, out, damned spot, I think. I feel the sudden urge to laugh as I had done that night in the churchyard when Harriet had found me, drained of blood and virtue.Hell is murky.

Vaguely, in my swoon, I register Jack pushing my maid aside. He seizes the mirror from my loosening grip. Van Helsing is there, calling out orders, and Arthur takes hold of one of my hands despite the doctor’s warnings. “Lucy, Lucy,” he weeps over and over again.

His voice is the last thing I hear before I give myself to the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The next morning, I wake to find Dr. Van Helsing at my desk, surrounded by books and papers and ink. His jet-black hair stands on end as though he has been raking his hands through it, and he looks exhausted, but there is a strange, intense, almost excited energy about him. He has angled the desk chair to face my bed, and so the second my eyes are open, he is coming over.

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