I’m at the side door, the one that leads to the bedroom, the last place in this house that I saw something built of wood. But at the last moment, Rochester calls after me.

“That first night you came here with Bertha,” he says, “you had Dracula with you then, didn’t you? One of his urns in your bag?”

I seize up, not answering him. He already knows he’s right.

“I should have expected it,” he says. “I should have taken him from you then.”

I turn back, my jaw clenched. “Who says I would have just given him to you?”

Rochester lets out a rueful chuckle. “So possessive,” he says. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in love with him.”

“It’s a good thing you do know better,” I say, and disappear inside the house.

The bedroom is fading, the same as the rest of the property. The violet curtains frayed on the window, the vaulted ceiling flaking off. I scan the floor, but the door they tore from the hinges yesterday is gone. I wonder if they kept the pieces. Are there wooden stakes stashed about the house, in crawl spaces and dusty drawers?

I’m ready to search for them, however useless it might be, when I hear it. Heartbeats, so faint they’re no more than a whisper, even weaker than the ones on the patio.

And they’re somewhere in this room.

A stirring in the oversized bed, and there they are. Bellflower, Vervain, and Rowan, twisted up together, a veil of sweat shimmering on their skin, a thin sheet halfway over them like cadavers on a gurney. Dracula must have been feeding on them since last night, gorging himself, never letting them rest, not until there was nothing left. He took too much, more than he ever used to. We come back from the dead hungry, but never this hungry. He did this just because he could. Just to prove his power. That’s why the decay is taking over here, everything disintegrating in an evening. He’s inviting it in.

I kneel next to the bed, and Rowan blinks up at me. “Did you come to finish us?” she asks.

My guts tighten. “No,” I say.

Next to her, Bellflower shifts onto her side, shivering. “Then why are you here?”

I hesitate. “I don’t know.”

I told myself it was to protect those kids in the car, to stop Dracula at any cost. But maybe it’s something else. Something worse. Maybe I’m here because I want to be close to him. Because after all these years, I don’t know anything other than him.

“What’s wrong with them?” One of the girls from the back seat is standing behind me.

Rowan reaches out, and I take her hand. “They’re dying,” I say.