powerful than fear. In the late nineteenth century, the creature resided as Countess Constance at Count Vlad’s castle in Transylvania. There, it murders Jonathan, an English journalist — only to resurrect him as Nina, with an appearance of Lucy, his own secret fancy, and make her the vampire’s loving companion and moral guide. Through Nina, Constance encounters something unforeseen: conscience. In the present day, New York journalist Daisy Brimhall sets out to uncover who Constance truly is. Her investigation leads her to a woman known for doing good — a woman whose moral sense appears to have been shaped by Nina. But Constance seems identical to Julia Atkinson, the woman who stunned the world by doing the impossible: disappearing from a space shuttle in orbit. Just Say Lucy is a genre-defying novel that blends gothic horror, speculative science fiction, and theological reflection. It is a story about desire, transformation, and the quiet, unsettling possibility that morality is learned — even by monsters.