Page 34 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

34

London, October 5, 2024

Iris

Water sluicing off me, I stand and slowly turn to the window. “No, Mom. You’re dead. I made sure of it.”

Crouched on the ledge isn’t my mother, red eyes glowing as she scrapes the glass with the blade I left in her heart.

It’s a crow. It drags its beak down the window once more.

“Pervert.” I cover my chest. You never know when it comes to animals. “Seriously, get a life.”

Without drapes to close, bath time is officially ruined. I tug out the stopper and let the water drain away. I’ve long kept a catalog of trustworthy versus untrustworthy animals, but it’s hard to be one hundred percent sure of most of them. Cats are the only species fully on the trustworthy side, mostly because they’d never follow a command they didn’t want to. And pugs, because pugs are too stupid and adorable to be evil.

Good animals versus bad animals is one of those things I could never talk about. How do you explain that you’re convinced your mother used various creatures to spy on you? That she was so insidiously controlling, so mind-bogglingly rich, even the natural world bent to her will?

Answer: You don’t. At least not if you don’t want to be involuntarily committed. The most dangerous thing I ever did was tell the truth.

Despite my earlier resolution to keep Elle out of all this, I take more time than usual getting ready. I brush my hair out so it will fall in loose black curls like a curtain around my face, then line my eyes and apply mascara. Finally, I add a healthy coat of tinted lip balm, just in case she finds my lips as potentially kissable as I find hers.

If nothing else, I feel human again. I love feeling human. Feeling human is the best. I pull on black jeans and a buttery soft, oversized gas station sweatshirt I’ve had since the first time I ran away. A chill clings to the house, and I don’t want to feel cold. I’m already on edge enough without that fear tugging on me.

Downstairs, the sitting room is filled with all the paintings in the house. Their ghosts still hang on the sun-bleached wall in vivid wallpaper squares. Elle handles the paintings like vinyl in a record store, her fingers dancing over the frame tops as she flips through them one by one to give me a brief glimpse.

“Shite,” she says, and I’m so shocked I laugh. She keeps going. “Shite, shite, shite that might be worth something because of the artist’s relationship with someone who was actually talented, shite. Whoever decorated this house had both bad taste and bad investment sense. None of these artists are worth anything.”

My heart sinks. “Oh. Okay.”

Elle holds up a finger. “But! These frames are quite nice, so we should be able to sell them for at least a couple hundred pounds each.”

“Oh! Okay!” My heart floats back up. There are easily twenty paintings here. That’s a few thousand in my pocket. She lets the paintings rest against the wall again. I gesture at the nearest one, a bowl of the saddest, most repulsive fruit I’ve ever seen, complete with a kitten painted by someone who had evidently never seen a cat in their life. Its eyes gaze in both directions simultaneously from its eternal oil prison. “What is this one? Still Life with Despair ?”

Elle nods somberly. “A stunning example of the Talentless movement, in which people with no talent were encouraged to create as much as possible to balance out the true masters. Their motto was ‘Merit in Mediocrity.’?”

I snort. “Wish I’d known that motto in school. I would have embroidered it on my jackets.”

Elle points at another painting. “My favorite, though, is Landscape with Absolutely Nothing Lovely .”

“I can feel myself becoming duller,” I say. “A hallmark of the celebrated Ennui movement, which believed art had a moral responsibility to be so boring, people were forced to be industrious rather than creatively inspired. Heavily funded by the Fraternity of Factory Owners.”

Elle laughs. “Are you sure you didn’t get a degree in art history?”

“No, I went for the one even less useful in real-world job searches.”

I want to keep at our game, and I suspect she does, too. But then she sighs and moves on. Unlike me, she has a real-world job, and probably can’t devote too many days to this side project. I should be more anxious to get through everything anyway.

“Now, to the furnishings.” Elle gestures around us. She’s moved a few extra pieces of furniture into this room. “They weren’t properly covered for long-term storage and aren’t in the best shape. You’ll need to have them restored by someone who knows what they’re doing, which I’m guessing you aren’t interested in.”

I shake my head, glum.

“Don’t worry. This was a fussy, pretentious house, so some of the pieces are worth money regardless of condition. A few of them are branded by the original makers, which is always a good sign.” She lifts a chair covered in faded striped material to show me the bottom of the seat. Sure enough, there’s a stamp. It means nothing to me, but she gestures excitedly at it. “I’ll have to follow up with some contacts, but Hardy and Sons were local artisan woodworkers. There’s almost certainly a market for Hardy originals.”

“Oh good!” I want to stay in here and work alongside Elle. Unfortunately, it’s not efficient. I can’t really help her with any of this. Plus if I stay in here, I’ll start asking her questions. I want to know about her life. How she ended up working for a museum. What her favorite movie is. Whether her family is populated by vicious predators. But I don’t want to answer any questions about my own history, so I keep that door closed. “Okay, I’ll be in the study, cataloging the books. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will.” She tips another chair. “Oh, I meant to ask,” she says, searching for a stamp or signature. “Did you find anything in the bedrooms upstairs or the locked room? Have you looked in all the drawers and nightstands? You’d be surprised what’s worth something. Receipts, old recipes, that sort of thing.”

The diary. I should tell her about the diary.

“No,” I say. “I’ll keep an eye out, though. Mostly I was hoping for jewelry, but there wasn’t any.”

Elle gives a thumbs-up, focused on the joints of the chair. I leave her to it and get to work on my own project. It takes less time than I thought to finish. Without internet access, all I can really do is write down the titles, authors, and publication dates.

Leaning against the entry to the sitting room, I watch as Elle examines the chandelier. She’s standing on her tiptoes on one of the kitchen chairs, and I’m trying not to stare at the way her shirtdress is pulling up and exposing more of her legs. “It’s good craftsmanship,” she explains, “but I can’t find a brand. I don’t know if it’s worth pulling down and selling.”

“The bath upstairs also seems nice, if there’s a market for old clawfoot tubs. I should take photos of both. Hey, I’m headed to a café. I need Wi-Fi to find out if any of these books are valuable. Plus my phone’s almost dead and I can’t charge it here. You want to come?”

“I’d rather keep going, if that’s all right.” Elle strains to reach the bottom of the chandelier, carefully turning it. The crystal decorations tinkle in delicate reproach over being moved after so long. Sensing my disappointment at being rebuffed, Elle flashes me a smile more brilliant than any chandelier could ever hope to compete with. “I get a little obsessive. Sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize. You’re doing me such a favor.” Besides, it’s a better use of our time to work separately. It’s just much less flirty.

“You want me to look at the bedroom furniture pieces when I finish in here? Or I could tackle the attic. Have you been up there yet?”

“No, I’ve been dreading it.”

Elle steps down from the chair, wiping her hands on her dress. “Oh, let me! I adore attics.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. The posh accent throws me.”

“Absolutely sincere! Attics hold the things we don’t want to see but don’t want to get rid of, either. They’re dreadfully sad. All those items that were once beautiful or beloved or useful, shoved up there and forgotten.”

“I’ll tell you what. You saved my life, gave me coffee and food and a hot bath, and offered expert evaluation of all this junk. In return, I’ll let you explore a dusty old attic. Totally seems fair.” I interrupt her laugh by holding up a hand and making my expression very serious. “But if you find a portrait of an evil, decrepit old gentleman, please wait until I get back. We’ll stab it together and see if it was a whole Dorian Gray scenario.”

“I promise, no portrait stabbing without you.” She ties her shimmering hair back. It’s the only vibrant thing in this weary space.

“Can I bring you anything from the café? Or pick up lunch?”

Elle gestures toward the kitchen, where she’d left her enormous tote. “Brought my own. Oh, but since we have the stove working, if you could pick up a kettle? That way we can make tea, and I’ll never need to leave again.”

If only keeping her forever were that simple. “Deal.” I grab my purse from the den, then retrieve the journals from the safe. On alert for crows, foxes, and stray wolves, I head out for my coffee date with research and Lucy.

As soon as I leave the neighborhood, my phone blows up with notifications. A pit forms in my stomach as I see a missed call from my dad’s assisted living center. And then an entire series of texted photos taken outside the house, plus an emailed invitation to join a brand-new Goldaming Life seminar in London.

The pit turns into a roiling maelstrom of dread and anger. They’re here, and they want to make sure I know it.