Page 10 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

10

London, October 4, 2024

Iris

Still convinced I’m being followed, I opt for a cab rather than the Tube. At least then I can slump and zone out.

“Where to, miss?” the driver asks. He has warm brown skin and a fantastic, sculpted black beard. I’d put him in his thirties, but I’m bad at guessing ages.

I glance down at my documents. “Hillingham?”

He enters it in his phone and frowns. “Nothing’s coming up.”

I look closer. “Oh, no, sorry. Haverstock Hill?” I show him the address.

“Right, close to Hampstead, near the old zoo. I know the area; my husband has a restaurant nearby.” He gives me the look all queer people share when we find one another. I instantly feel safer. And glad that my multitude of rainbow backpack patches—leftovers from my teen years, trying to make my family recognize my queerness—made him feel comfortable enough to mention his husband. Maybe it’s biased of me to inherently trust other queer people, but I do.

“Glad one of us knows where we’re going,” I say. “And glad it’s the one of us who’s driving. What’s Hillingham, then, if it’s not a street?”

He shrugs. “Could be the neighborhood, could be the house itself. It’s an old area with loads of historical mansions. Most used to have their own names.”

“Seems a bit pretentious.”

“Welcome to upper-class London.” He laughs, the sound brassy and bright, and I laugh with him. For once I don’t worry that he’s secretly working for my mother or spying on me. Goldaming Life is one of those subtly bigoted groups, despite their glossily diverse brochures. No one in power there is anything other than white and straight.

He pulls into the street. “I’m Rahul.”

“Iris.” I relax into my seat, letting the neighborhoods blur together. Part of me wants to take it all in, since I’ll never come back. But I’m too tired to care. London is a means to an end.

“Here for business or fun?” Rahul asks, and I’m glad he didn’t say “pleasure.” That phrase has always creeped me out.

“Business, I guess. My mom died. I’m sorting out her estate.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.”

He glances in the rearview mirror in surprise, then shrugs. “My mum’s the best, but my husband’s mum was awful. More relief than grief when she passed.”

“May they rest in silence.” I hold up my coffee cup like it’s a toast, then go to take a sip only to find it empty. It feels like karma for speaking ill of the dead, but why should I value that wretched woman just because she’s gone?

“Was your mum a Londoner?” he asks as we enter residential areas. The deeper we get, the fancier the houses. The street is lined with row homes, shared walls between them, each four stories tall and a delicious variety of cheery pastels. Thirty-one flavors of paint. I wonder how the car’s suspension can handle the cobbled road. Kudos to London for refusing to make concessions to little things like modernity.

I raise my voice to be heard over the clattering tires. “American. I don’t think she ever even visited the UK. I have no idea why she still owned this house.”

“Should be worth a mint if you decide to sell.”

“You in the market?”

He laughs again. “Can’t afford a house pretentious enough to have its own name.”

“Fair. Plus it’d be like adopting a pet someone else had already named. What if you wanted to call the house Cuddles, instead?”

“And it would only answer to the old name. Tragic.”

I like Rahul. Maybe I’ll just give him the house on my way out. Then again, that would draw him into Dickie’s orbit. Albert’s, too. Rahul seems lovely; I don’t want to do that to him.

Rahul carefully navigates roads that predate automobile traffic, twisting and winding into what I assume are the aforementioned Haverstock Hills. The houses get bigger, no longer built shoulder to shoulder, but instead sitting regal and chilly on their own lots. Gone are the pinks and blues and yellows; everything is ash gray, rust red, or chalk white. At last Rahul pulls to a stop in front of an actual mansion.

He lets out a suitably impressed breath. “Yeah, that house is not going to answer to the name Cuddles. Wait. Wait! I think this is the wolf house!”

“The wolf house?” I ask, intrigued and alarmed.

“Bit of a local legend. Ages ago a wolf escaped from the zoo, jumped through a window into a house, scared a woman to death, and then went back to the zoo.”

“Really? That actually happened?”

“I mean, I did say legend. And I’m not positive it’s this house. But this feels like a house a wolf would decide to attack, know what I mean?”

I do know what he means.

A wrought iron gate has the name “Hillingham” written out in an arc. It cuts into the sky like barbed wire, more a warning than a welcome. The house looks about as warm. It’s bone white, but the white of bones that have been left to decay, with great gashes of black blooming between its boards. The roof, a gray so dark not even the looming clouds can compete, looks intact. As are the windows, from what I can see. I should have asked more about the condition before demanding the keys.

“You staying here?” Rahul eyes the place dubiously, unwilling to ease the car closer to the locked gate. I don’t blame him. Not only because the gate looks threatening, but also because it’s old. I’d feel awful if it collapsed onto Rahul’s tidy cab.

“Maybe.” I’m tempted to ask him to drive me to the nearest hotel. But no. I can’t delay. I brace myself and nod. “Yeah,” I correct. “I’m staying here. Assuming there are no wolves and that it isn’t a total health hazard. Can’t afford anywhere else.”

“Mum left you houses but no cash? That’s a proper British tradition. Sure you aren’t a lady?”

I laugh. “Might have been, back in the day. Definitely not a lady now; ask anyone who knows me.”

He grins and holds out a card. “Give me a call if you need a car again, yeah? Or if you get inside and there’s wolves, but more importantly if there’s mold or fungus. I played The Last of Us; no one should breathe that shite in.”

I tuck his card into my wallet and then pay him. I’m hyperaware every time I use my credit card that Dickie can probably track it somehow, but this charge makes sense with the story I gave him. “I promise not to start a zombie apocalypse.”

“Good. And I mean it—call if you need to get away. Or if you need food.” He hands me another card, this time for a restaurant called Haverstock Himalayan. Then he glances back at the mansion that’s my one desperate gamble for freedom. His eyes narrow. “This house feels…off.”

“So, you’re saying you don’t want to buy it from me.”

“I’ve never worried that my flat wants to eat me alive. Can’t say the same for this place.”

“Maybe that’s why my mom owns it. She loves vicious things.” I correct myself. “Loved, I guess.”

Rahul waves goodbye. “It was nice to meet you, Iris.”

“You, too.” I smile, meaning it, and get out of the car. He watches as I take the estate keys out. Even though they were in my pocket, they still feel cold. Heavier than is reasonable, too. The gate key isn’t hard to pick out. It’s ornate iron, black with age, large and heavy enough to double as a weapon in a pinch. I don’t know what to hope for. Maybe that the key won’t work and I won’t be able to get in.

The key turns with barely a whisper. The gate swings open as though it’s been waiting for me this whole time. I check for a spring mechanism, but there’s nothing. Maybe it’s the angle of the drive. Either way, the effect is…unnerving.

I give Rahul a thumbs-up. He answers with a pained smile, then pulls away. I wish I had asked him to stay until I was inside, but odds are if the gate key works, the house key will, too. And I have his number. I only feel mildly pathetic that right now kind Rahul, a cabdriver I spent thirty minutes with, feels like my only lifeline.

If only I’d gotten the angel’s number. Then I could have had two whole friends in London. Alas.

As soon as Rahul’s cab is out of sight, I turn back to the house. The front yard looks like opulence turned to neglect, though “yard” feels like the wrong word for an ancient mansion. Maybe “grounds”? That sounds vaguely British. The rosebushes have grown tall and straggly, years’ worth of thorns petrified beneath a few desperate blooms. The hedges are similar, long ago having defied the neat boxy bounds they’d been designed for. A few steps in and I already feel sealed off from the street. I look back to make sure I can still get out if I want to. I should close the gate and relock everything behind myself, but I’d almost welcome a burglar. We could explore the house together, and they could advise me on what moves fast and for the most money.

I walk up the cracked flagstone path. There’s a fountain with green sludge pooled in the bottom, a water-stained stone bench mostly hidden beneath a weeping tree, and a statue so eroded by time and weather it has no discernible features. Or maybe it was always intended to be an expression of exhausted despair?

I pat it as I ease by. “I feel you, babe.”

No one has lived at Hillingham in a long, long time. That gives me some hope. The less things have been messed with inside, the more likely there are valuables. Heavy drapes and heavier dust obscure any hint as to what’s beyond the rippling, thick glass of the front windows. I resign myself to suspense and climb the porch steps.

The craftsmanship is solid; nothing seems precarious. The front entrance is a double door, carved with elaborate swirls and set with impenetrably dark stained-glass panels. There’s also a decidedly unwelcoming door knocker: an iron ring hanging from the mouth of a baleful wolf’s head. I half suspect if I tried to use it, the wolf would biteme.

Besides, I never knock on a door I know no one’s behind. It’s asking for something unexpected to answer. Superstitious, yes, but superstition has served me okay in the past.

Instead of knocking, I choose from the three remaining keys. One is a modern key, which I assume will be for the rental in Whitby. One is a small, unassuming key, simple in design and old-looking. The last key matches the door, heavy and ornate. Once again, it turns with barely any effort. Despite all the disrepair here, someone has taken pains to make certain the keys still work. I take a deep breath and reach for the doorknob. But I don’t have a chance to turn it before the door swings silently open on its own.

“Don’t you know you should never invite a stranger inside?” I whisper as I cross the threshold.