It’s almost sunrise when I get back to Daisy’s house in the Haight. I burst through the front door, past the sign telling me to keep out. In the living room, the lights are off, and nobody’s downstairs.

“Bee?” I edge farther inside. “Are you here?”

A creak of the ceiling above me. A distant giggle.

The whole house lurches around me as I climb the stairs, headed toward the bedroom at the end of the hall. Toward the only noise in the house.

I see his shadow before I see him. Dracula. He’s turning over the yellowed mattresses, yanking out every box of useless trinkets from the dressers, searching for the last urn. Searching for himself.

His eyes fogged over with rage, he turns toward me in the doorway. “Lucy.” He practically purrs. “I didn’t think you’d be home so soon.”

He’s not alone. Those same five girls from the Fillmore are here, the ones who’d protected him, who’d been desperate to meet him. I feel so sorry that they got their wish. They’re lined up against the wall now, one after another, their eyes vacant, their bodies rigid as automatons.

The thrall, poisoning them from the inside out.

“What did you expect?” A voice behind the door. “We had to replace the ones you scared off.”

Rochester, stepping out of the shadows. These girls are for him. His collection, his Wunderkammer of women.

Meanwhile, Dracula doesn’t care about any of them. His eyes are on me. “So,” he says, “what did you do with the rest of me?”

My entire body goes rigid as I stare back at him. “What did you do with Bee?”

Rochester grunts. “She’s exactly where she belongs,” he says, just as a muffled voice leaks into the room.

“Lucy.”

“Bee?” I search the walls, my hands pressed into the plaster, as if I’ll find her there. “Where are you?”

“Here,” she says, and my gaze rises to the ceiling, the realization sinking slowly into me.

She’s in the attic. Rochester locked her in the attic.

“I figured we’d celebrate like old times,” he says, that vile smirk on his face.

Fury blooms like cancer inside me, and I lunge at him, but there are too many of them. The girls, bewitched to their marrow, surge forward, peeling me off him. My teeth clenched, I could fight them off, I could shatter these girls into bits, but none of this is their fault. They didn’t ask for any of this, not really, so I just back away from them instead, desperate to get to the door. Desperate to get to the attic.

Dracula’s heavy footfalls behind me. “Wait for me, love.”

The stairwell to the third floor is cramped and mildewed. I rush to the top, shadows dancing in the gap beneath the door.

“Lucy, is that you?” Bee on the other side.