Page 103 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)
103
Salt Lake City, January 27, 2025
Iris
“I always knew she was evil, but I never understood how evil until now,” I mutter as I sign yet another piece of paper in an infinite stack of pieces of paper. My mother is a vampire. She’s an actual undead creature of the night, I’ve sold my soul to her, and she’s making me do paperwork. Again.
People keep knocking on the door, summoning her out for terse conversations I’m not part of, but she never leaves me unattended.
“And sign here.” Dickie taps with one unsettlingly long finger. I swear he has more knuckle joints than he should. “And here. And here.”
I’m still exhausted and aching. They gave me what my mom referred to as a “mini transfusion.” Enough to keep me upright without diluting my own remaining blood. She wants me weak. Not that it matters. I’m literally signing away the rights to my own life.
“That should do it. Congratulations, Iris.” Dickie smiles at me, an expression as dry and joyless as a three-hour corporate training session on sexual harassment. “I look forward to working together.”
“Me too.” I smile at him, a smile as fake and lifeless as his much younger wife. But now I’m thinking about her and him and wondering if their foreplay involves reading company bylaws. I hope she murders him for the life insurance.
It’s baffling to me that the most vampiric person at the company is human. I wonder what’s holding him back. “Why haven’t you taken the old fang plunge yet?” I ask. “Why’s your cold dead heart still technically beating?”
He lifts an eyebrow at me, then closes the leather folio containing the rights to everything I am or will be. “That’s an inappropriately personal question, Miss Goldaming.”
“Please don’t call HR on me. I missed the form detailing the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy regarding vampirism.”
“Iris,” my mother says as a warning from the doorway. She doesn’t even have to raise her voice. She’s got all the leverage she’ll ever need. I saw the video footage of Lucy in their lab, chained to a chair. As long as I behave, she’ll be transported back to England and then released. I wish I could talk to her, tell her why I’m doing this, but it would break me. I’ll write her a letter that she can open when she gets there.
Part of me wants to doubt my mother’s word. But if Lucy dies, so does Goldaming Life’s leverage over me. That alone will keep Lucy safe forever. And my betrayal will keep Lucy away from me. She’ll probably be glad to be free.
I close my eyes. It’s early afternoon. Surely I can be done for the day and go back to bed. Preferably in a different bedroom.
Instead, a flurry of Goldaming Life drones come in. They’re too flushed and excited to be vampires, but they’ve got that look. Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect nails. A veneer of unreality about them, walking advertisements for wholesome, aspirational lives.
Under my mother’s guidance, they spackle concealer and foundation and highlights onto my face, airbrushing over the damage done by Dracula. My lips are painted just-bitten red, my newly false-lashed eyelids lined with liquid gold. When they get near my eyebrows with tweezers, I give them a death glare so intense they immediately alter course and brush them into place with gel.
Face done, they buff and trim and paint my nails pearly pink even though I request black. My mother watches over everything, directing them when necessary.
“At least you finally got rid of that horrendous dye job,” she says, eyeing my loose, wild curls as the women paste and pin them into submission.
“Yeah, I was trying to seduce Dracula.” I give her my most placid, Goldaming Life–approved expression. “Worked, too. I can give you some pointers if you want to bone him. Or I guess bite him? I don’t know what you’re into anymore.”
Her own expression flattens with menace. She snaps her fingers and the drones scurry from the room. “You represent the whole company now. Don’t forget. We can do worse things to Lucy than kill her, believe me.”
I believe her. Even the careful makeup work can’t cover the ghastly pallor of my face as I fight my sick dread. “Sorry.”
“Don’t ever mention Dracula again. He’s not your concern. And never, ever speak of the particulars of my condition, or the condition of anyone within Goldaming Life who has gone through the Celestial Gate.”
“I’ll do better.”
“I know you will.” Her hand comes down on my shoulder and squeezes tightly enough to be painful without leaving marks. “I know you hate me. I’m fine with that. My own mother failed me by hating what we are and trying to get out of it. I won’t make the same mistake. I’ve made myself invaluable, and you’ll do the same whether you like it or not. Now go get changed.”
“For bed? Thanks for noticing how drained I am.” I wait a beat. She doesn’t so much as smile. “But seriously, can I rest for a while? Please?” Asking permission to sleep. This is going to be the rest of my life. Part of me wants to ask more about her mother—my grandma died before I was born, and Mom never talks about her—but I don’t actually want to have a conversation with her right now. Or ever.
“No, for the gala.”
“The what?”
“The dress is in your room.” She glides down the echoingly empty halls of home sweet home. It looks like a museum—arched pillars, marble floors, and blisteringly white light. It’s a hollow house, a structure of bleached bones. The only thing that can be said for it is that it’s not cold. I laugh dryly to myself, thinking of my stupid trick. Thinking of my stupid self, imagining I was hastening my mother’s death and my own freedom. As if something as simple as dying could ever stop her. The silver dagger she carelessly left in my bedroom is proof enough of that.
We take the stairs to the second level. I’m so much slower than her right now that by the time I get to my bedroom, she’s already holding my dress.
It’s ghastly. White and shimmering and poofy, complete with a bow over my boobs to wrap me up like the world’s weirdest wedding gift. “Mom,” I say, because honestly.
She rolls her eyes. “I knew you’d reject that one, because it was my favorite. Here.” She sets it down and picks up another from the window seat between the closets. I’ve never once sat in that seat, never gotten closer to that side of the room than the end of my bed.
Shocked at her concession, I take the new dress. It’s still too clingy and feminine for my tastes, but at least it’s cooler. Metallic gold with a structured bustier that can actually contain me. The same metallic material is shredded in strips over a pitch-black underskirt slit to my thigh.
“Can I wear boots?” I ask, daring to hope.
“Absolutely not.”
I wait for her to leave. She doesn’t, so I turn around and change as fast as I can. Credit where credit is due, it fits. “What exactly is the gala? What do I need to do?” If I’m giving a speech or something, I’ll need time to practice without grimacing. Maybe that’s why my mother has such a flat, affected mannerism. It makes it easier to lie.
“It’s to honor my transformation and acknowledge your new role as figurehead.” She pauses, and there’s a flicker of uncertainty on her face, like a cloud passing the sun. Or a bat flickering across the face of the moon, in her case. Then a smile slides into place, the smile that launched millions of memberships, that inspired so many sad, lonely, hopeful people to join her multilevel marketing vampire cult.
“You’re finally ready to go through the Celestial Gate,” she says. “But first, you’ll meet the divine wellspring. And then you can read the story, and understand.”
“We can talk honestly when it’s the two of us, can’t we? Just because I’m going to be in charge of your cult doesn’t mean I have to believe in any of its nonsense.”
“Oh, Iris,” she says, in a tone like a pat on the head. “You’re not in charge. You’ll never be in charge.”
“Right. Because you still are.” I’m the puppet.
My mother’s eye twitches, but her smile stays in place. “I was never in charge, either.” She turns away from me and walks to the closet alcove. My chest tightens. I can’t get enough air. Not those doors. Never those doors.
“Mom, what are you doing? What are you doing? Don’t open those. Don’t—”
But she doesn’t open them. She does something far worse. She knocks on one.
The door swings outward. A scent of rich, newly turned earth floods my bedroom. The scent of my nightmares, the scent of my deepest childhood fears. A figure in white crawls free, then stands, pristine and radiant, framed by the red window. A window designed to make a perfect halo for a head at that exact height. No no no, I think or moan or pray, but I’m frozen in place. I can’t move. I’m a little girl again, trying to sleep in this room, knowing without knowing that those doors hid absolute evil. I was right. I was always right, about so many things.
The figure moves across the room with dizzying grace and speed, stopping before me.
“I know you,” I whisper. Then I stagger back and collapse, falling onto the nightstand before slumping to the floor.