Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T here is something different about home.

The floorboards creak beneath my steps as always, the fires crackle as usual against the September chill, and the bones of the house—all sturdy dark-papered walls and gleaming wood bannisters—feel the same to my fingertips. I walk through the parlor where Mamma hosts her teas, the dining room with its fine pictures and my grandfather’s prized brass elephant, and Papa’s library, which still smells of his pipe and incense even after all these years. My room is just how I left it, hung with deep plum silks and strewn with old love letters and dead roses.

But I sense an otherness, a surreality that has never touched the house before. And after the first few days of our return to London, I begin to realize it is not our home that is different.

It is me.

I feel better than ever. I eat well, walk with Mina twice a day, and sleep soundly behind a locked door. But from time to time, I have a fit of unquenchable thirst that no amount of water can satisfy, followed by rage and the urge to rip a chair apart with my bare hands. I wake at night with my heart racing, thinking I have heard the beating of dark wings upon my window. I get a terrible headache daily from the buzzing in my ears, and I hear conversations that should not be humanly possible for me to hear: the servants gossiping in the attic, two full floors above us; carriage drivers chatting outside; or an old woman scolding a child on the next street.

Since our last day in Whitby, I have taken care to conceal this odd new ability from Mina, though she is too distracted to notice. Ever since I told her about Jonathan, it is as though she has gone into a room inside her mind and shut the door. True to her word, she has not asked me any more questions about it, though sometimes I catch her studying me thoughtfully.

After tea one day, I excuse myself with another splitting headache, and I hear from behind the closed door of my room—a full floor above the main level—our housekeeper, Agatha, saying, “Why, good day to you, Count.”

I sit bolt upright in bed. In the mirror across the room, I see that my face has drained of all color. Vlad is here. He has found me, and in a moment, the housekeeper will invite him in.

My head throbbing, I leap off the bed and hurry across the room. My hand is on the doorknob when I hear Mina’s light footsteps downstairs, followed by her clear sweet voice. “What a pleasant surprise to see you in London, Count. I’m afraid Mrs. Westenra and Lucy are both resting at the moment. Perhaps you might call another time, if that is convenient?” Her tone is as proper and polite as ever, but I detect the degree of strain within it.

“Ah! I am sorry to be a bother, Miss Murray.” Vlad’s voice is so warm, so familiar, that for a moment I have to brace myself against the door to keep from falling to my knees. I know every cadence, every vowel, and even the rhythm of his breath. “I only wished to say hello now that I am settling into my new home outside London. Forgive me. I will leave you to your quiet.”

Moonlight on water. The ocean breeze in my hair. My hand in his, and his lips on mine.

I close my eyes against the powerful longing for him, despising myself for it.

“Please wait a moment,” I hear Mina call. “I know it is not me you have come to see, but I would like to hear more about your new home. Shall we sit in the garden? May I offer you tea?”

I hear Vlad’s coat rustle as he looks up at the sky. “I believe it will rain.”

“Perhaps, but it has looked that way all morning. And it isn’t as chilly today, I think.” There is a note of steely determination in Mina’s courteous voice. “All I ask is a few minutes of your time. I know you came to see Lucy, but I would like to speak to you, sir.”

“With pleasure,” he says with an unmistakable smile in his voice. “No tea, thank you.”

I hear clattering as Mina collects an umbrella from the stand by the door. And instead of taking him through the house to the garden, she leads him around the side. I sink onto the chair in front of my dressing table, deeply grateful that she has taken my warning seriously. My heart is drumming so loudly that I am afraid I will miss even a second of their conversation.

But Mina’s voice comes as clear as a bell. “How do you like your new house, Count? You say it is outside of London. Where, exactly?”

The iron chairs scrape gently against the terrace as they sit down.

“I have purchased a lovely property in Purfleet. Not far from you here in Hillingham. The house has a small library, a parlor, and a garden. Even a conservatory.” Vlad says the last word with such playful meaning that I am absolutely sure he knows I am up here listening. A little joke, a secret between friends. An involuntary thrill of pleasure runs through me.

“Purfleet?” Mina asks. “The Westenras have a friend who lives and works there. His name is Dr. Jack Seward, and he runs a very respected hospital.”

“Ah! What a coincidence, for the young doctor happens to be my neighbor. His mental institution is adjacent to my land. In fact, I can see it from my windows.”

I tense in my chair. First, Jonathan Harker helped Vlad purchase his home, and now, the property is next door to none other than Jack Seward. These are far too many coincidences for my comfort. Something tickles the back of my neck, like the sensation of eyes watching.

“You say Dr. Seward is a family friend?” Vlad asks. “Of the late Mr. Westenra, perhaps?”

It does not take supernatural ability for me to know that Mina’s cheeks are coloring. “Dr. Seward was a student of Mr. Westenra’s personal physician,” she says carefully. “And he and Mr. Westenra were friendly, but the doctor is more closely acquainted with Lucy, I believe.”

“Ah, with Lucy . I see.”

I, too, cannot help blushing at Vlad’s tone of knowing amusement.

Mina clears her throat. “What is the name of your new property?”

“Oh, I have already forgotten,” he says carelessly. “Something neither sentimental nor poetic, and my heart did not thrill to it. I have given it a new name, which has a bit more significance to me. I am calling it Carfax. It means—”

“Crossroads.”

There is a moment of surprised silence. “Yes, Miss Murray, that is correct.”

“From the Latin quadrifurcus . The place where four roads meet. I have developed a taste for folklore, as Lucy has always enjoyed reading it.”

“Excellent,” Vlad says, pleased. “As you know, legend has it that they bury murderers at a crossroads to keep evil ghosts from finding their way home. Other stories say the dead who lie there come back not as ghosts, but as something else entirely. So it is good to confuse them, no?”

Something else entirely. I know what he means, for I have read the tales and seen the illustrations in Papa’s books: pale, creeping, blood-drinking monsters. Vampires.

Down in the garden, Vlad laughs, as though he has heard me thinking the word.

“Indeed.” Mina sounds unsettled and quickly changes the subject. “How did you learn the property was for sale? All the way from your home in the Mountains of Deep Winter?”

My heart seizes within me. Vlad never confirmed living in that specific region of Austria-Hungary to Mina, and I know at once that she has put two and two together. Her logical brain has been ruminating on my words since we left Whitby. She has deduced that Jonathan is connected to Vlad because he helped him purchase Carfax, and now she wants to hear it from Vlad himself.

“And why England, of all places?” Mina adds, when he takes a beat too long to respond.

I cannot help smiling, despite my worry about her being alone with him. There is no one more dogged or persistent than Mina when she wants an answer, that much I know.

“I have always longed to see its shores and experience the excitement of London,” Vlad says patiently. “I even hoped to catch a glimpse of Her Majesty the Queen! This must seem silly to you. I am but a sentimental foreigner.” I know very well how his voice can take on that charming gallantry with a touch of self-deprecation. It has worked on me many times.

But for some reason, it does not work on Mina. “How did you proceed with purchasing your home?” she persists. “Did you write letters to a lawyer, perhaps?”

The buzzing returns to my left ear, and I hear the front door open as the post is delivered. Impatiently, I turn my focus back to the conversation in the garden.

“I wrote to a number of offices located around London, asking for their opinions on such a purchase and requesting the names of properties for sale,” Vlad is explaining.

“And several of these lawyers must have mentioned Carfax?”

“Only one did.”

I hear Mina’s dress rustle as she leans forward. “Which one?” she asks, her voice low and intense. “Which lawyer mentioned that it was for sale?”

Even though Vlad is silent, I can sense his admiration of her. He approved of her modesty before, and now her quick mind and forthright manner have impressed him further.

But before he can answer, I hear footsteps hurry out onto the terrace. “I beg your pardon,” Harriet says excitedly. “But an urgent telegram has just arrived for you, miss, from Mr. Harker.”

I wince, my ears pained by the sudden sharp screech of Mina’s chair as she stands.

“Mr. Harker? Are you certain?” she asks, already sounding near tears. “Count, I am sorry, but I must read this. It is the first communication I’ve had since—”

“Say no more, Miss Murray. I will leave you. Thank you for a pleasant conversation, and please let Lucy know I called. And Mrs. Westenra, of course,” Vlad adds, his voice full of his slow smile. I hear his coat rustle as he bows and then his shoes walking back out to the street.

I go to the window to watch him leave and find him standing at our gate, looking right up at the window of my room. He lifts his hat to me when our gazes meet, his expression quietly wistful. It is the first time I have seen him look sad, and in his eyes, I see the ocean and the cliffs and our bench beneath the willow. But now I also see blood splattered on my ball dress, Mina crying, Mamma bent over me with grief, and Arthur kneeling heartbroken by my bed.

I turn away when my bedroom door flies open and Mina throws herself into my arms, shaking and weeping violently without making a sound. “What is it? What’s wrong?” I ask, panicked that the telegram has brought her evil news.

But when she pulls away, she is smiling through her tears. She hands me the message. “Jonathan is alive! He wants me to go to him as soon as may be.”

I close my eyes and sag with relief. Vlad kept his word. Quickly, I read the telegram aloud. “Ill, but out of danger. Hospital of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary, Budapest. Come at once. All my love. Jonathan.” I hug Mina again, overjoyed. “Thank God, my darling. I am so happy for you. Go to him at once. Take the train out tonight.”

“I hate to leave you at a time like this—”

“A time like what? I am perfectly well, and he needs you.” I look into her beloved face, unable to keep my lips from trembling. “I have loved you well, my Mina, more than you can ever know or I can ever say. But it’s time for me to let you go.”

She touches my face. “Why are you saying this?” she asks desperately. “Why are you talking as though we will never see each other again?”

I laugh to take the edge off my pain. Our pain, for I see in her eyes what she will never admit even to herself. I wipe away her tears gently. “Of course we will see each other again. But the Mina I put on the train and the Mina who comes back will be different women. You will marry Jonathan in Budapest, I know. You could not travel back to London, alone together, otherwise. And I will have to give you up to him entirely.”

“Not entirely,” she whispers. “Never entirely. You claim a piece of my heart forever.”

“But you were never mine, and you never will be.” I lean my forehead against hers. “Oh, Mina, how much we have to lose as women. It seems only the other day we were girls, and now we must take our separate paths. It is like dying in a way, the impossibility of going back.”

Mina takes my face in her hands. “Don’t say that, Lucy,” she tells me fiercely. “We will live, you and I. We will live .”

She kisses me full on the lips, as she did that day on the beach, years ago. Her mouth is soft and tentative and delicious, but I feel a farewell in it, the closing of a chapter in our lives that will never come again. And as always, she is the first to pull away. She moves to the window and gazes out, and Vlad must be gone, for she looks down at the street with no expression.

“I am all aflutter,” she breathes. “I hardly know what to do with myself. Jonathan is alive, and that is all I can think about. Not such unromantic details as train tickets and sensible shoes.”

Her mind and heart are once again all Jonathan’s. Our moment is gone, and I will have to make my peace with that. I press my hand over my lips, imprinting her kiss there, and stride over to the bell to ring for my maid. “Then let me take care of those details,” I say as cheerfully as I can. “I will help you pack while Harriet runs to the station to secure you a ticket, and—”

“Wait,” Mina interrupts. “Before you ring for her, I want to talk about the count.”

My hand freezes in midair.

“He came again just now. He is living in Purfleet, near Dr. Seward’s property. Aside from being much too interested in you, he seems charming and gentlemanly. And yet—”

I find that I am holding my breath. “And yet?”

Mina hesitates. “You seemed afraid of him before we left Whitby, and I think you were right to be wary. There is indeed something odd about him. A sense of wrongness in the way he looks at one and speaks to one. I believe he has an improper interest in me as well. I think some men must enjoy the … challenge of a woman who is engaged to another.” She studies me. “The day you warned me about him, you told me Jonathan was still alive in almost the same breath. I know I promised not to question you. But there is no way you could have known, unless …”

My palm stings from the pressure of my fingernails digging into it.

“Unless it was that bond between us. That link I believe we share with our loved ones,” she says, and I let out a slow and quiet breath. “Perhaps your love for me and, in turn, my love for Jonathan, led you to sense that he was safe. But I have been turning it over and over in my mind, the way you seemed to imply a connection between him and the count.”

My throat is dry as bone, and I find that I cannot say a word.

“And I have been asking myself questions. Such as whether the count could be the client Jonathan was helping in the Mountains of Deep Winter. Or whether he could possibly have had anything to do with Jonathan’s delay.” Mina puts her hands on my shoulders and searches my eyes. “You had a feeling about Jonathan being alive. Did you somehow sense this, too?”

For one wild and reckless moment, as I look into the vivid blue of her eyes, I consider telling her everything. I consider baring all . The mist, the dreams, the secret encounters with Vlad. But then I would also have to confess to her what I have done—what I have asked for. And I am too much of a coward. We stare at each other for a long, charged moment before I hang my head. “No,” I mutter. “I was so ill, Mina. I must have been feverish. Confused.”

“You did not seem confused to me,” she says quietly.

I keep my eyes averted. “As you say, there is no way I could know these things. It is only intuition, perhaps. A feeling, to use your word.”

There is another silence, and then she squeezes my shoulders and forces a smile. “Yes, of course. This is all conjecture, and it may be unfair, casting suspicion on a man whose only fault may be liking women who are already spoken for,” she adds in a lighter tone, and I make myself smile back, even as my pulse quivers like a cornered animal. “Perhaps I am overthinking it, as I tend to do about everything. But you know that about me, Lucy. My Lucy who I love more than life itself.” She kisses me again, this time, a sisterly peck on the cheek. “I promise to be back in time for your wedding. Ring for Harriet, dear. Tonight, I shall be on the train to Jonathan.”

I lie in bed alone that evening, feeling desolate with Mina gone, tucked into a train compartment somewhere with her trunk above her dreaming head. Part of my heart went with her, and I wish all of it had, for the piece that remains insists upon aching. I stare into the shadows of my room, wondering what else she may have pieced together from what I did not voice about Vlad. I would ask her if she were here in bed with me, but she never will be again. When she returns, she will be the wife of Jonathan Harker. And my beloved friend, my confidante and my teacher, my sister and my love, will almost be dead to me.

I curl into a trembling ball and hug myself. I cannot go on losing people, for every time I do, a part of my own self is destroyed. And someday, there will be nothing left of me at all—nothing left of any of us but ashes and shadow. How short, how full of loss life is. How unerringly bookended by death. I bite down on my pillow, hard, to quiet my sobs.

But my mother must hear me all the same, for there is a quiet knock followed by her soft voice asking, “Lucy?” The key turns in the lock and my door opens, revealing her thin face. The moon falls full upon her features, sharpening her skeletal cheeks, hollow eyes, and skin as fragile as crumbling paper. The truth of her illness is even clearer in the darkness, and it hits my aching heart like a powerful blow. “I had a feeling you needed me.”

“Oh, Mamma,” I sob as she comes over and puts her arms around me, rocking me and murmuring soothing words into my hair. “Whatever would I do without you?”

“You would live on, my precious one. You would have a happy life with Arthur, loved and protected. I have no fears on that score, so I can go whenever I am called.”

I hug her so hard I can feel every one of her bones jutting out from her frame. “I won’t let you go,” I say fiercely. “You won’t be called. I cannot allow it.”

She laughs gently. “We talked about this when you were a little girl, remember? We cannot control death. It beckons and we can only obey, some of us earlier than others. I am glad, glad to the heart that I have had so many years with you.”

“How can you say that when we haven’t had nearly enough? Mamma, this is my fault. I should not have worried you so with my illness. I should not have—”

“Hush. I have been unwell for years now and I kept it from you.” My mother smiles, her face softening into the one I know and love so very much. “I was not certain for a long time. I only suspected, and I did not wish to think of it, not with my daughter not yet married and under a husband’s protection. But earlier this year, I began to accept it and to put my affairs in order. And recently, that marvel of a doctor Van Helsing put me at ease.”

“What did he say?” I whisper.

“I told him everything in Whitby,” she says. “He confirmed my illness, a malady of the heart, and assured me that I had prepared better than most. He praised me for seeing my lawyers early, organizing my papers, and ensuring that you would be cared for. And he gave me his word that you would always have his friendship. He holds such fatherly affection for you, my child.”

I cling to her, my throat raw with tears. “But you are my true parent, my last parent.”

“You are a woman now. In two weeks, you will be twenty and married. You passed out of my care some time ago without realizing it. It was why I pushed so for you to marry Arthur.” She tenderly wipes my face. “You will have Arthur to adore you, Mina to be a sister to you, and Dr. Van Helsing and many others to help and advise. We only fear death when we have not done what we should have or lived life to the fullest, and I have done both. My story is ending, but yours is just beginning. My one regret is not being able to see your children.”

I shudder. “I have no need of them when I still feel like one myself.”

“You will change your mind,” she predicts. “When Mina and Jonathan have their first baby, you will know that hunger for a child.”

“I? Hunger for a child? What nonsense.” I look pleadingly up at her. “Perhaps you and Dr. Van Helsing both will be wrong, and you will live to see a ripe old age.”

“Perhaps. But it’s better not to hope for something we have no power over.”

“Will you stay with me tonight, Mamma?” I ask. “I feel so lonely without Mina.”

We snuggle together in my bed, my mother’s arms around me as though I am her little girl again. She believes I will come to accept our situation. But as I listen to her breathing grow steady with the rhythm of deep sleep, I think of how I have never been the sort of woman to accept hard truths. And I will not be now, not in the face of losing so much.

Something we have no power over.

Mamma does not know that I do have power over death. I do have a choice, and if I am brave enough to make it, I can be with her and Arthur and Mina for as long as they live, watch over them for as long as they live. I could spend all the years of Mamma’s life nursing her back to full health as her devoted daughter, all the years of Mina’s life proudly watching her build a home and a family, and all the years of Arthur’s life being his wife and his true love. None of them would ever know the pain of losing me.

Two thoughts intrude upon my joyous fantasy.

The first: Would Mina, with her perception and her cleverness, sense a wrongness in me ?

The second: How would I ever convince Vlad to finish the job?

I clench my jaw. If only he had met my request with compassion, rather than hatred.

To him, women are disposable. We are toys to be discarded when we have lost our shine. We are belongings . That is what this little game of finding the “perfect woman” is all about. That is what he is ultimately after: to possess, to dominate, to own. He wants me to be his. He wants me to give everything, all that I have and all that I am, to him alone.

I think of that night at Diana Edgerton’s. The candlelit room, the urgent music of the harp, the feeling of plummeting down a hill as his hands learned the map of my body.

I have one card left to play. One part of myself I have not given to anyone.

I picture Arthur’s face, and guilt blooms in my chest at the thought of surrendering to another what I should save for him. But I did offer it to him, and he refused. And it is mine, and mine alone to decide whom to give it to , I think. Mine, and mine alone to decide what I want.

And what I want is an eternity of cheating death, of delaying the inevitable for good.

Many hundreds of years ago, Vlad made such a choice. And though he denies me the same right, I know that it is within my reach.

It is then that I notice my bedroom door standing slightly ajar. Mamma came in without locking it again, and indeed, the key is still dangling from a ribbon around her wrist.

I gaze from the open door to the key.

But I do not take it from Mamma.

I do not lock my bedroom door.