Page 39 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

39

August 7, 1890

Journal of Lucy Westenra

Mina nearly caught me hiding my journal the other night. I had just tucked it away beneath the window seat when she sat up. I pretended to be sleepwalking, and let her lead me back to bed. She sat next to me and petted my hair like she used to. I could have died, I was so happy.

But then she went to her own bed, and in the morning told my mother I’d begun sleepwalking. Which led Mother to fretting. My father used to wander in his sleep. He would leave the house and disappear for hours at a time. Until the night he never came back.

When I was younger, I believed that story. I believed that he would dream himself upright, dream himself dressed, dream himself unlocking the door and setting out on a regular errand. As though his sleeping body was merely pantomiming his waking one.

But that wasn’t true. Awake or asleep—and I don’t believe he was asleep—he was trying to escape. Was it desire that drove him out? Or was he simply eager to get as far away from Mother and me as he could?

It will be desire that drives me out. My soul itches, crawling with ants as I try to lie still with Mina so close. I want to go to her. Take her in my arms. Kiss her not like the kisses we shared when I was younger, but something deeper, hungrier, full of need and want and

I must get out of this house before I do something I cannot take back.

Arthur came to visit today. It was agony, pretending to be happy to see him, pretending to care about anything he had to say, pretending I was not counting down the seconds until he left once more. Mina excused herself to give us time alone. If she has nothing to say to him and is allowed to leave, why am I not?

I did see them speaking in the hallway right before he left, when I was supposed to be changing for a walk. They were standing close, their conversation hushed and intense. When I asked Mina about it, she laughed and said she was certain now that he loves me as well as I deserve to be loved. He had been asking about all my favorite things so that once we are wed he can make me happy.

Mina. Mina is my only favorite thing.

Now Arthur’s gone again, but all Mina wants to do is talk about my wedding. She says I should wed as soon as possible, so that we can be married ladies together and plan our homes. Though she noted that my own future home prospects are much brighter than hers. She and Jonathan will be quite poor as he slowly takes on more of the duties of his employer.

I told her she can live with me and have anything of mine, hoping she would say yes. Hoping she would understand that when I say she can have anything of mine she wants, I mean me. She can have me. But she laughed and said the time for me to buy her lovely gifts has passed, as she is now my friend, not my governess. And then—

And then she said our time of being together like this is nearly at an end. She sighed and smiled and seemed perfectly content.

It was a knife to the heart. I recognized her tone and expression. Because it’s the same way I feel about Mother dying. Mina’s not upset by our impending separation. It will be a relief to her. She does not love me, not the way I love her. She never has, and she never will.

I panicked.

“Live with me,” I insisted. “We’ll keep house together. You can buy anything you need, anything you want. We don’t have to get married! We can stay as we are forever.” I grasped her hand, but she did not answer by squeezing my fingers back.

“You don’t understand anything about me.” Her voice was so cold I dropped her hand and wrapped my arms around myself. “I have no desire to stay as I am. You have no idea what it is to be poor. I don’t want my comfort to depend on your affection for me. To be forever kept by you, subject to your whims, with no legal rights to anything. Can you not see how cruel that is, Lucy? How unfair? I’m going to make my own way. To make certain I’m never dependent on anyone. My fortune will be my own, and it will be a fortune I make for myself.”

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, doing my best not to cry, because then she would chide me for trying to manipulate her, as she always did when I cried over little things. “I was teasing, of course. Can you imagine such a thing, us keeping house together? I would drive you mad, always leaving my little paintings lying around, half finished. I suspect you would murder me.”

Mina laughed. “I could never murder you, silly creature.” Then she relaxed and held my hand once more as we walked.

I didn’t say that she is going to be kept by Jonathan, subject to his whims, dependent forever on him. His whims have far less money behind them than mine do, and his odds of delivering her a fortune are minimal, while mine are guaranteed. I didn’t say anything else on the subject, and I didn’t cry, or beg, or confess my love.

But I can’t stay in this room with her sleeping so nearby. I want to tear out my hair, to fling myself onto her bed, into her arms, to beg her to make new secrets with me between the press of our lips. I want to devour her, and I want her to look at me and want me, and I want her to see that she has never really seen me at all, and I want her to want to see me. All of me. I want and I want and I want and none of it matters. None of it changes anything.

I’ll walk in the dark to the ocean, and maybe it—the ocean or the darkness, it matters not—will fill me.