Page 31 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

31

London, October 5, 2024

Iris

I follow Elle back to the kitchen, breathing in the intoxicating steam from my drink. “You know what my mom always used to say about coffee?”

Elle puts her tote down by the stove and leans against the antique beast. “Do tell.”

I pitch my voice colder and higher, tilt my chin up so even though we’re the same height, I give the impression of looking down on Elle. “Caffeine is the refuge of the undisciplined.” I soften my posture and my expression, slipping back into myself. “I worked as a barista to put myself through college. I loved that job. Plus, I always smelled like coffee, from my hair down to my bra. It drove her crazy when she’d show up and demand lunch together.”

Which wasn’t often, because I’d deliberately picked a school on the northeastern seaboard, with its frigid temperatures. Hastening my own decline, maybe, but definitely a barrier in the face of her imminent one.

Elle laughs. “What did you do after college?”

I take a sip of coffee to delay. It still hurts my pride to admit that, at twenty-five, I don’t have the degree I deserved. The degree I was earning for myself, by myself, despite my mother and Goldaming Life. They took that from me, too. “Well, I was studying literature with an emphasis on poetry, so I continued to work as a barista.”

This earns me another bright burst of laughter. I love making Elle laugh. I wish making her laugh could be my lifelong pursuit. I would throw myself into study for that degree, become the world’s foremost authority. Her changeable face is maybe my favorite when she’s laughing: a flash of deep dimples and her eyes nearly shut.

“Are you a poet then?” She pulls several neat lengths of firewood out of her tote bag and opens the stove.

“Oh god, no. I can’t write.” I think of Lucy and her shockingly incisive turns of phrases, her delightful descriptions, and wonder if she ever wrote poetry. I would read it. “Modern music was always off-limits in my house. I had to sneak it where I could. But my mother couldn’t see how poetry might be dangerous. Little did she realize, poetry is just music someone whispers straight to your soul. It gave me such an escape. The way Louise Glück can write about a garden and gently unearth my own grubby dreams and delicate despair, or the way Gwendolyn Brooks gifts me a glimpse of someone else’s life in a few perfect lines, or the way Amanda Gorman turns simple phrases into anthems of hope and power. Poetry makes the world bigger and smaller at the same time. Captures the unknowable and holds it in a form I can understand, even if it’s only for a few precious seconds. Poetry helped me escape when I needed it most, and it still makes me feel less insane.”

Elle pauses, looking back at me. “That’s a strange way of putting it. Do you feel insane often?”

I give her a shrug of a grin, trying not to think of how my teen years ended with involuntary hospitalization. My junior year at university, too, which was also the end of my college attempt. I was a slow learner, but I have learned: There are some things I can’t talk about, not ever, not to anyone.

I join her in front of the stove. “What are we doing here?”

“The present I promised! Even though this house was posh in its day, they hadn’t yet adopted a gas stove range. This is a woodburning stove, which means we can heat water for you to take a bath. I’m your very own hot water heater.”

I glance over at her perfect point of a chin, delicate swooping nose, and smooth forehead turned into a heart by a widow’s peak hairline. “Elle, you’ve got to stop saving me. I don’t like being in debt. Not even to my little butter chicken.”

She laughs and nudges me with her shoulder and I want to wrap my arms around her. “There are some cleaning supplies in my tote,” she says. “I’m assuming you’ll want to scrub out the bath before you get in. There’s also a smaller copper tub down here. They used to bring those into the kitchen to bathe in front of the stove in the winter.” She points at the cupboards beneath the sink. I open the doors to find a narrow metal tub in there, barely big enough to fit in.

“I didn’t even look through these cupboards yet.”

“I looked yesterday, while you three were eating. It’s mostly old dishes. We can take them out and evaluate them this afternoon. Nothing silver, though. Some porcelain that might be promising, but that’s a trickier sell if it isn’t from a specific line or artist.”

“Is this worth anything?” I hold the tub up. It’s dusty enough that my fingers are already coated. If I didn’t need a bath before, I definitely do now.

Elle shrugs. “Maybe if it’s real copper for the raw material. I’m not an expert in metals. I do want to get moving on the artwork, though. I’ll sort through it while you’re bathing.”

I briefly debate trying to seduce Elle by bathing in the kitchen. But the copper tub is so small, I’d look more like a frog being prepared for boiling, all knees and elbows and awkward limbs. Plus, the level of scrubbing I need isn’t sexy. Hard to be seductive when you’re actually trying to get clean.

I leave the copper tub there and trek upstairs. How hard would it be to haul the clawfoot tub out of here? Surely anyone wanting to buy it could transport it, though. I mentally add it to my list of potential sales as I carefully rehome a few spiders out the window.

Fortunately, whoever left this house left it clean. The bath only has dust buildup, not mildew or mold. I scrub and scrub. By the time Elle hauls in a pot of water, everything’s ready. In a minor miracle, the plug still works, and we add scalding water to cold.

After the flight, the stress of getting here, the fox and the photo, the mess and the dust and the sleeping on the floor and the not-sleeping the rest of the night? That steam curling up is the most alluring thing I’ve ever seen.

Second most alluring. First will probably always be Elle, on the doorstep, holding coffee.

“Have I mentioned you’re the actual best person I know?” I ask.

“You must not know many people.”

“Or I know a lot of genuinely horrendous people.” I smile like I always do when I’m telling the truth, a crooked smile that implies I’m lying. It lets people off the hook, lets them dismiss what I’m saying as a joke. No one ever looks past it.

Elle hesitates, though. Like she believes my words, not my smile. She nods. “Me, too. Is it all right if I get to work without you?” She’s so sincere, like she actually wants my permission to continue to do dull, dusty work for free. She’s too good for this world. Definitely too good for my world.

“Knock yourself out. But not literally, because we have almost no cell reception here, so it’d be a whole hassle to call 911.”

“999,” she says, “which you didn’t know, so I’ll be extra careful not to get injured.”

“Good idea. Don’t forget to look right—that’s my number one safety tip. Can’t remember where I learned that one, though.”

She laughs and leaves me to it, closing the door behind herself. I start stripping the second the latch clicks. The water’s not quite as hot as I like it—if I don’t leave a shower lobster red and parboiled, it’s not even worth it—but after the last two days, it’s a luxury. I use my tiny travel bottles of body wash and shampoo to scrub away the dust and sweat and bad memories.

Did Lucy use this tub? Did she come in here to escape her mother, to soak and dream? I have a nagging need to find out more about her life, her thoughts, her love. It’s like being in the middle of a good book, only instead it’s being in the middle of a good brain. A good life.

I hope she avoids those annoying men and defies her mother by marrying her secret paramour. I hope they lived to a ripe old age in this very house. No, that can’t be right, given the dates. The last people to live here weren’t long after Lucy’s journal years.

I hope she and her darling ran away together. Explored Europe arm in arm. Kissed in front of the Eiffel Tower, unbothered by the cliché of it. Found an old villa in Italy and painstakingly restored it. Worshipped the sunset over the Aegean Sea, arm in arm.

But I’m not picturing Lucy and her mysterious lover anymore. I’m picturing Elle and me, in love, escaping into Europe. Which is impossible. Both because Europe isn’t far away or remote enough to truly disappear into, and because I could never bring someone like Elle into my life. It would be cruel. To her, and to me, too. I know better.

Focus, Iris. At the end of two weeks, I’m gone, no matter what. That’s my deadline, so I’d better have some cash by then. Today I’ll go to a café to recharge my phone and portable battery and find some shops that might buy this house’s crap.

My phone makes me think of Dad, though. I should call and check on him, after yesterday. I sink lower into the bath, resenting him, resenting having to run away when I’d love to stay and get to know Elle better, resenting my whole fucking life.

I freeze as claws slowly scrape down the window above my head. Dad was right. I left him alone, and I failed him, and I failed myself, too, by believing I could escape. He’s probably dead already, and my desperate gamble for freedom is over before it ever started.

Because Mom’s found me.