This isn’t what I want, to be tethered to Dracula for eternity. I wish I could cast his remains out into the Pacific or seal him in concrete, leaving him behind, leaving him in the past, but that wouldn’t be enough to hold him. He’d escape in a day if I did.

It has to be these urns. They’re the only thing stopping him.

When we first moved in, Bee asked me if I wanted to leave the urns outside. Buried in the garden, maybe, or left in the bottom of the empty pool.

“We don’t have to invite him in,” she said, and even though I knew she was right, I brought him inside anyway. I might exile an urn for a little while, but it isn’t safe for all of him to be too far away for too long. Day or night, I need to keep him close. I need to watch him. That way, I can always be sure at least a part of him isn’t free. Some days, that’s the only comfort I have, knowing that I’ve prevented a monster from being unleashed on the world.

I retreat upstairs, back to the living room, and Bee looks up at me from the sofa.

“How was it?”

“The same,” I say, which is the best we can hope for.

A heavy breeze cuts through the air, and Bee’s face twists, as if in pain.

“Could you?” she asks, and motions to the other side of the room.

One of the windows has blown shut.

I hurry to it and fling it open again, moonlight pouring in. This is another of our rituals. We leave all the windows open, even in the dead of winter, even during the worst thunderstorms. Rainwater leaks down the sills, seeping into the plaster, the yellowed paint cracking and bubbling, but that doesn’t matter. Bee doesn’t like to feel closed in. A decade locked in an attic will do that to you.

“Thanks,” she says, calm settling over her as she leans back on the withering Queen Anne sofa.

“No problem,” I say. I’ll do anything I can for her. She’ll do the same for me. Bee, my best friend, my only friend, the two of us sisters not by blood but by circumstance. We’ve been unlikely roommates for decades, ever since we stumbled upon each other outside London, no money in our pockets and no pulse in our veins.