Page 55 of Lucy Undying (Dracula #1)

55

London, October 7, 2024

Iris

I wake up at twilight. I’m the good kind of sore, but I’m also alone. A note rests on the pillow next to me. Elle’s handwriting is elegant cursive. Unsurprising that someone who loves history would value a dead art like handwriting. My own handwriting looks like notes sent to the FBI by a serial killer trying to taunt them.

“Going to see someone about buying the rest of the paintings. Be back soon. Sorry there’s not much food in the kitchen, haven’t had time to go to the shops. Met this incredible girl and have been too busy using my old stove lighting skills to seduce her before helping her flee her family’s cult. Typical week around here. Chip place downstairs is nice if you’re hungry. X.”

I’m glad Elle’s not there to hear the happy sound I make as I hug her note to my chest. I don’t know if I’m “incredible,” but she makes me feel that way.

I don’t want to leave the flat. Not even for french fries. Opening a door to the outside world would puncture this bubble of happiness and safety. Temporary safety, sure, but I’ll take what I can get.

Until she comes back, though, I have nothing to occupy myself with. Besides snooping, and I don’t want to do that to Elle. That’s when I remember the other woman in my life, tucked away in my bag. I can check in on Lucy. I hope she gets lucky like I did. I don’t even mean it in a crude way. I genuinely feel lucky in the deepest sense of the word for what happened today with Elle. For having Elle in my life at all, however briefly.

I settle in with my last granola bar and Lucy’s floor journal, determined to finish today so I can get to the next journal. Lucy’s going on about plans for running away with her secret love. And then I sit up.

“Oh, shit!” I crow. Her secret crush is revealed to be none other than Mina.

It’s been her best friend and former governess the whole time! No wonder I felt both affinity for and a slight crush on Lucy. She’s confirmed sapphic, whether she has the vocabulary and context for it or not. My heart squeezes with tender affection, but also a foreshadowing of fear. Oh, Lucy. What’s going to happen to you?

It’s immediate heartbreak. Lucy’s ready to inform Mina that once her mother dies, Lucy has all the money they could ever want. But before she can suggest they run away to Whitby together—my images of her in the city change, now putting a woman at her side—Mina announces she’s engaged.

“Fucking Jonathan,” I mutter. Ruining everything. Though Mina sounds a little like a bitch. I understand Lucy’s crush-struck haze, but Mina’s so dismissive of her. Cruel, even.

Lucy was so much more than a beautiful heiress. Which is even more evident when I read the next entry. She’s keeping two journals—one as a fake record that she’s feeling and thinking and doing only what she should. My clever girl, tricking her snooping mother!

I glance at my messenger bag containing the other journal. It must be the fake version of herself she used to keep her heart protected. No wonder that one was in the safe with other documents, and her real diary was hidden in the floor.

I wish I could hug her words close and whisper reassurances. Tell Lucy it’s going to be all right. But the girl who wrote these things is long gone. I hate that she had to hide so much. And I understand why she did.

The next few entries are alternately sad, funny, and angry, as Lucy talks about how silly she was to imagine a life with Mina, mentions Arthur’s increasing visits and all his help sorting out their estate and her mother’s will, and writes a startlingly bleak detail about how her father died walking in his sleep.

I’m projecting again, but I hate Lucy’s father for leaving her alone with her manipulative mother, surrounded by these men who insist they know how to help her but never actually listen to her.

The next notable entry has all three men—Doctor Seward, whom I’m convinced is evil, the dim but kind American cowboy Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood—showing up on the same day within minutes of each other, each proposing to Lucy. Her details have me laughing so hard I’m tearing up. Oh, those poor idiots, thinking they had her figured out. Thinking she was a silly young thing they could own. She’s delicately vicious in her summaries, though in person she behaved and let the first two down easily.

My laughter stops as she finishes her account of Arthur’s proposal. Not just because Lucy accepts solely out of a desire to make Mina happy. But because of what she calls him. The future Lord Goldaming.

I don’t know much about British gentry customs or why he has two names, but this is the first time I’ve seen that one. Which means Arthur Holmwood is also Lord Goldaming. My ancestor. And Lucy, the girl I’ve been relating to and feeling so much affection for—even crushing on—is my ancestor, too.

Feeling vaguely incestuous but also sad for how her bright, vivid life is going to be gradually worn down by being trapped in the closet, I close the diary.

I can’t quite understand why the information that Lucy was a Goldaming is so disappointing. Obviously, I should have assumed she was related to me. But I hate my family and all their poisonous history so much. Knowing Lucy was part of it makes her feel tarnished. Tainted. Just like me.

I don’t hear the door, so I jump like I’ve been caught doing something shameful when Elle says, “Where did you get that?”