Chapter One
LUCY
Ileft Leeds at 6:51pm on the 26th of October, changing at Darlington and Middlesbrough. I should have arrived at Whitby at quarter past ten, but the last train was an hour late.
It’s riled me a little, I can’t lie. I’m the kind of person who’s always ten minutes early to everything, so rolling in an hour late is very off-brand for me. That’s the first thing that’s making me sweat, aside from the unseasonably mild weather and the giant bags I’m lugging around.
The second thing? The vampire.
Yes, you heard me right. The vampire.
I know, when I say it like that it makes me sound crazy. Honestly, as I’m standing here right now staring back at his dead eyes, I feel like maybe I am. The truth is that I wasn’t even meant to be here. My original plans for this weekend hadn’t included a whole lot more than a book, a bath and a bar of chocolate as big as a cocker spaniel. That’s my happy place.
They call me Fluff at theWhite Rose Gazette. That’s the local newspaper that I’ve worked at for the last four years. And no, I don’t love it as a nickname, but it’s an ongoing joke that if there’sa guinea pig fashion show or a primary school fun run within a hundred miles that needs a bit of media coverage, I’ll be the one clamouring to report on it, so I suppose it fits. What can I say? I’m a sucker for heartwarming tales and happy endings. There’s nothing in this world that I love more than that sense of pure, uncomplicated joy.
But right now, standing in the whip of cool sea mist rising from the North Yorkshire coastline, I’m not feeling any kind of joy. In fact, I’d say I’m in the exact opposite of my happy place. In just about twelve hours’ time, the streets of Whitby are going to be teeming with everything dark and gothic and spooky– just about as far from my general vibe as it’s possible to get. But people-pleasing is in my DNA, so when Jon Baker asked me to take this job at the last minute, I was always going to say yes.
Particularly because I’m in love with him.
I know, I know, it’s a real cliché to be in love with your boss, but here we are. I used to think I was imagining the way he looked at me sometimes, or the way he flirts, but then we all went out for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and he kissed me in the back of the taxi on our way home. It was like a revelation.He likes me too. Granted, I’m a hopeless romantic, but I’m ninety percent sure I’m not blowing it all out of proportion.
Ok, maybe eighty percent. Iama bit of a glass-half-full kind of person.
Anyway, that’s how I found myself here, in the dark, on the doorstep of Harker Cottage, screaming at the life-sized vampire which just leaped out of a bush and leered at me.
Ok, he’s a little smaller than life-sized, and now I’m looking properly I can see that he’s actually carved out of solid stone. Plus, I now realise he didn’t even leap out of the bush, I just somehow managed to brush away the branch covering his face as I walked past him. The panic, however, isveryreal, and it makes me fumble for my phone and dial Mina.
It’s automatic at times like these. Mina’s my best friend in the world. Myonlyfriend in the world if we’re being picky, but still definitely my first port in any storm, and despite the strangely calm weather, there’s one hell of an internal storm raging here. I can rely on Mina to calm me down, though. She always does.
She answers on the third ring, before I have the chance to remember that I shouldn’t be calling her at all.
‘Lucy Lou.’ Her voice is rough, and that’s the point at which I remember that she was forcibly parted from her appendix less than forty-eight hours ago.
‘Mina! I’m so sorry!’ My heart sinks. I hate the feeling of inconveniencing someone. Or, even worse, hurting them. I sigh, wiping away a wet leaf which has plastered itself to my cheek in the commotion. ‘You should be resting, and I shouldn’t be calling. I’ll let you go.’
‘Lou,’ she says softly. ‘Talking to you isn’t stopping me from resting, and all the drugs they’ve got me on keep me up half the night anyway.’
‘Fine,’ I relent. ‘But as soon as you feel even the slightest bit tired, you’ve got to sleep. I mean it. Don’t even say goodbye, just hang up on me, ok?’
Mina just ignores me. She’s as stubborn as an ox. ‘So, did you make it to the cottage?’
I step back, taking in the quaint brick building in front of me. Harker Cottage is short and squat, with stone beams over the windows and a front door painted such a bright shade of red I can see it even in the darkness. The loom of a hill rises up behind it, the ruins of the abbey only just visible in the moonlight.
A chill creeps down my spine, and I clench my free fist against it. ‘That’s kind of why I’m calling.’ I can see the vampire figure off to my left, partially concealed in the bushes. He still looks as if he’s staring at me. ‘Well, the main reason I called isbecause I just had an encounter with a vampire, and I panic-dialled you before I had time to think.’
She makes a strange sound. It’s not quite a huff, not quite a laugh. ‘A vampire?’
‘A stone vampire.’
Mina laughs properly then, before squeaking in pain, muttering something under her breath before she speaks again. ‘Is that damn thing still there? I’ve been trying to get them to get rid of it for years.’ She chuckles gently, like she’s trying not to hurt herself this time. ‘Fair warning, though, that willnotbe the last vampire you come across this weekend.’
There’s something about the way she says it that makes something sharp dart through me, but I force a smile, though I know she can’t see it. This job had been just right for her, but it feels completely alien to me. Mina, who works as one of my fellow reporters at theGazette, is five-foot-nothing with neon-blue hair and a horseshoe-shaped ring through her septum. She has a spiderweb tattoo that runs the length of one forearm, and she listens to music by bands that sound as though they’ve been made up especially for Halloween.
She loves all this stuff: the gruesome and the gory, the spooky and the scary. She once went out with a guy who’d legally changed his name to Nosferatu. When the assignment came in to do a feature on the Whitby Goth Weekend, it had been a no-brainer. Ithadto be Mina.
But then she’d been rushed into emergency surgery, and instead ithadto be me.
Lucy Partridge.