The kids clamber ahead of us across the lawn, eager as schoolchildren on a field trip, but Dracula lags behind so he can walk beside me.

“Don’t pretend to be a gentleman,” I say, but he only grins.

“Who says I’m pretending?”

The untrimmed grass crunches beneath our feet like brittle bone, and he moves closer to me, close enough that he starts to reach out, maybe to hold my hand, maybe to break it. I want to scream, to tear at his throat, but I don’t have a chance. Up ahead, the kids have stopped dead in the walkway, their eyes wide, their mouths gaping. I follow their hollow gazes until I see them.

A line of wolves standing all around the house.

There are a dozen of them, probably more, their pelts smelling of blood, their muzzles digging in the dirt. As we draw closer, they glance up, snuffing, but they don’t bother to look at me. They’re looking at Dracula.

“Good evening,” he whispers to the wolves, a beatific smile on his face, as though he’s a benevolent overlord, a merciful god. Like he even knows what mercy is.

The wolves must believe him, though, because they start to run in circles, letting out small yips at first, followed by lonesome howls, sharp and sweet and strange, their melodies ricocheting off the night sky.

The three kids still haven’t moved, not unless you count the way they’re shaking a little.

“What kind of dogs are those?” one of the girls asks, but the slight quiver in her voice makes it clear she already knows they’re no dogs at all.

“It’s all right,” Dracula says, and nudges the kids on. They do as they’re told, edging toward the house, carefully, quietly, the wolves sniffing at them, twining around their legs. At last, the kids reach the front step and dart inside the party.

Dracula follows behind them, waiting in the doorway, waiting for me, but I don’t move. I linger out in the night, watching the wolves. They glance right past me, as if I’m a specter. I should have expected this. They helped warn me back in L.A. and even in Golden Gate Park, my own private harbingers, but I’m only the runner-up, the one they answered to when there was nobody else.

“Turncoats,” I mutter, and they all look away at once, gazing off to the sky, to the stars, to anywhere that’s better than here.

“Don’t take it personally,” Dracula says, as I shove past him into the house.