I pace across the attic and back again, only a few steps, these claustrophobic walls closing in on us. It should be dawn by now, but we can’t see anything in this room. Nothing except a pale yellow light leaking through the gap beneath the door. I stare at it, a realization settling like a stone in my chest. That gap isn’t much, no more than an inch, but it could be enough. It could be a way out.

For me, anyhow.

I cross to a water-stained patch of the ceiling, and with a steady hand, break off a piece of the wooden rafter. Just a small one, its jagged edges digging into my palm.

“Bee,” I say, leaning down next to her, “there’s something I need you to do.”

I place the piece of splintered wood in her lap, and it takes her a long moment to understand what it is I want.

“No,” she says, and tosses the stake to the floor, as if it’s made of fire. “Lucy, that isn’t the way.”

“But it’ll work.” I sit next to her, motioning to the opening beneath the door. “It’s the only thing that will work.”

Michael glances between us, barely able to fathom what I’m suggesting.

“You can’t do this,” he says, and he’s almost right. Michael can’t do this. The thrall would make it impossible for me to ask him, to put this stake in his hands, and Jane’s so shaky, her whole body quivering with grief, that she’s liable to miss my heart altogether.

It has to be Bee. She’s the only one I trust.

“There has to be another way,” she says, but I shake my head.

“We can’t wait,” I whisper. “Daisy won’t make it. And if Dracula finds that last urn before we do—”

I don’t finish that sentence. I won’t push Bee into this. If she doesn’t want to do it, I won’t ask again. I won’t be another person in her life expecting impossible things from her.

The makeshift stake waits sullenly on the floor between us. She stares down at it, and without a word, she remembers everything. How we’ve spent years protecting those urns, giving up everything to hide them away. How we’ve spent years running from Rochester too, keeping him at bay. Now it’s nearly lost, slipped right through our fingers. More girls will die. Girls just like us.

Something shifts in her, her face still as stone, her gaze the color of iron.

“You’ll come back, right?”

I force a smile. “I always have before, haven’t I?”

“And what if you don’t this time?”

I don’t answer her. I just march to the door and stand against it. When it’s done, the ash of me will slip through that gap and out into the stairwell.