Re: London, Murray House, Mina & Vanessa
Vanessa never forgot.
There were things beyond the touch of memory, yes, but they were not so much gone as locked and bolted. Some things were not worth holding up to the light again. The memories that were clear to her were faded from such examination.
Real or not, she prepared as if there would indeed be a guest shortly at the door. She had already dressed in somber palette. The ivory of her youth had been banished for some time now. Since she exited the clinic into the world of the living again, all was dark in her wardrobe, with flashes of fashionable color. Today there was no color at all, only black lace over the shoulders, black silk that fell to her ankles.
In her bedroom there was a chest of letters, sealed and unsent. If she could, she would have brought that chest down the steps with her when the new girl informed her that Miss Murray had arrived. Miss Murray and Miss Ives - neither the dreamt-of wives that girls by the seaside had imagined. How many nights had gone since then?
At the top of the steps, Vanessa paused. The foyer did not reek of evil, and nothing sent even the faintest tingle tripping down her spine. It was as dead and as quiet here as always, and sun streamed still through the windows.
Surely it was a dream, this. She had watched Mina die, felt her warm breath on her bare neck, seen the beast behind her eyes, and thought, this was never yours. She had watched the men cover her coffin with earth, and imagined her like the bodies of martyrs on the continent, lying immaculate and untouched by rot for centuries.
Vanessa stepped into the doorway of the parlor, with its books and warm, dark woods, its long couch and the table at which she'd laid her cards. Mina wore white, and looked the more like a spirit for it. Her demon had come to her in many guises, and she had not forgotten how sweet her friend had seemed in the theater, how she had run to her without reservation, how imagined words had melted in her presence. How she had paid for her openness. Between them, there was no fidelity, now. Love, still, but without trust.
The apparition in the parlor gave not the faintest sign of corruption. Even the rosary, carved from bog oak and tucked into one of the folds of her skirt, failed to tremble. She took pride in relishing the strange, but this was not that. This was the blighted as the living again, and she had not forgotten the promise of her letters yet. Beside the rosary, a silver knife lay smooth and weighty against her thigh. There was no possible explanation for a miraculous recovery, not only from the creature that had taken her, but from death itself.
And yet, again, the sight of her face nearly washed care and suspicion away. She wanted to believe in a world where Mina could be alive and well, even if she didn't, quite.
Despite being told who would be inside when she opened the door, some of this showed. Worry, wistful pleasure, and stark caution that held all else back. "Mina." Once, she would have run to her, forgotten everything in her joy at seeing her alive. Not now.