Page 5 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

5

London, October 4, 2024

Iris

“American?” the angel asks, still clutching the strap she tore clean off while pulling me to safety. I’m turtled on the pavement, backpack keeping me off the ground but also making it impossible for me to get up. She holds out her free hand to help; her skin’s warm and her fingers fit just right. I manage to awkwardly stand.

My heartbeat is an ocean pounding in my ears. Everything seems heightened and bright and loud. I almost died. Holy shit, I almost died. If I’d brought luggage instead of my old running-away-backpack, I might have. “What gave me away?” I ask.

“You have to look right here.” She points down where, sure enough, “LOOK RIGHT” is painted directly on to the asphalt. “Also, sorry about this.” She waves the narrow length of nylon that used to be my backpack’s top strap.

“That’s fine. I’ll sew it on like a patch to commemorate the time I survived not looking right.” I take it and shove it into my pocket to give myself something to do with my shaking hands. It’s hard to tell how old my angel is, with her golden hair, flawless cream-colored skin, and small frame, though she carries herself with an assured confidence I can only describe as not a teenager. But she’s such a slip of a thing, it’s amazing she managed to yank me that hard. “I’m glad you’re stronger than you look.”

“Adrenaline.” Her smile’s nearly as brilliant as the sun. But this is London, so it’s not hard to rival the sun for brightness. Still, I feel myself starting to go stupid and fuzzy, the way I always do when meeting gorgeous women. Or maybe it’s just my body, still flooded with that same adrenaline.

“Right. Wow. Welcome to England, I guess.”

She laughs, and it’s like champagne flutes being chimed together. Fizzy and bright and crystalline all at once. If I’d known they had women this beautiful here, I’d have gone to Oxford instead of Salem State. Mom would have been thrilled to pull strings and get me in. Even happier to pay for it. After all, whatever she financed, she owned.

Stay dead, Mom. Let me enjoy a beautiful face in peace. All the other beautiful faces my mother got her claws into flash in my mind, and my throat aches with pent-up emotion. Maybe this time. Maybe with Mom dead, with Goldaming Life far away…

My angel bends down and retrieves a spilled to-go cup. Her drink splattered on the sidewalk so I wouldn’t be. Which gives me an opening.

“Can I buy you a new coffee—tea, I guess—to thank you for saving my life?” I gesture at the café that nearly got me killed.

“Surely your life is worth more than a cup of tea.” Her lips, rosebud pink and promisingly full, purse in a teasing smile. She knows I’m trying to pick her up. Am I that obvious?

I’m that obvious. I can’t stop staring at her. I give up on being coy and let myself smile as big and goofily as my body wants me to. “Depends on who you ask.”

That earns me another laugh. But then her head tilts and something closes off in her dark blue eyes. She’s still smiling, but I realize now what it is that makes it clear she’s not a teenager. It’s not confidence; it’s exhaustion. Beneath that perfect skin and beautiful face, she’s more worn down than most teenagers could ever understand being.

“Sorry, my little cabbage,” she says, and my soaring hopes plummet back to earth. “I’m afraid I’m very late.”

Right. She was coming from the train station, too. Clearly in transit, and here I am, trying to divert her. I shove my hands back in my pockets and shrug. “Another time, then.”

“Another time.” Her smile blooms from bud into a full rose, and I wish she would stay. Distract me from everything I have to do. “Until then…” She leans close enough that my heart picks up again—she’s flirting, too—and she whispers, “ Look right. ”

I laugh, half because it’s funny and half to release the tension of having her close enough to kiss. She glides down the sidewalk, weaving her way through the masses trying to interpret their phone map apps. When she reaches the corner, she glances over her shoulder at me. I will her to come back. To decide to be even later than she already is. I’ll be her little cabbage. I’ll be whatever she needs me to be for a few hours until I can’t pretend my life away anymore.

Instead, she disappears, swallowed by the crowd.

“Real smooth, Iris,” I mutter to myself. Just as well. It would be like painting a target on her back, and she doesn’t deserve that. The hairs on my neck prickle. I refuse to look over my shoulder to check if someone is watching me.

The sooner I get going, the sooner I can actually get going. I’m so close. A few more weeks and then I can leave my mother’s fucking cult behind forever. I’ll be where they expect me to be until the moment I never am again.

“Your precious blood,” someone says beside me.

I jump into the street without looking. I’m three blocks away before I stop running, gasping for breath. My lungs burn. So does my elbow, stinging and raw. It’s bleeding through my sleeve. I must have hurt it when I fell, but didn’t notice because I was so besotted with my angel. Whoever commented on my blood was pointing out that I was hurt. That was it, nothing else.

I tell myself that, but I don’t believe it. I know better by now. It’s always something else. Pressing a hand against the wound, I look left and right and behind myself, scurrying deeper into London as if a new city could ever hide me.