His head still heavy, Michael’s desperately trying to get to his feet, trying to argue with us, but he doesn’t get a say in this. This is between Bee and me. After everything, this has got to be between us.

She edges toward me, the tears already starting to come. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I say, and close my eyes.

A bottomless moment, and I’m sure she won’t do it, that she’ll back out after all. Then the floor creaks before me, and with an agonizing cry, she buries the stake in my heart.

It hurts more than I expect.

For an instant, I open what’s left of my eyes, and see them there. Bee, weeping, covering her face with both hands. Jane wrapping her arms around her, neither of them looking, neither of them wanting to see what’s become of me. Michael, on the other hand, can’t stop staring. He crawls across the floor to me, reaching out, even though there’s nothing left of me to hold.

“It’s okay,” I try to say, but the words dissolve on my lips, as I dissolve too, the whole world melting away like a thousand cigarette burns on a movie screen.

The last thing I hear is Bee calling my name.

AND NOW HERE I am again, in the afterlife. In this drab waiting room, like I’m some would-be ingenue on a casting call, wide-eyed and eager, my heart full of the very hope I learned long ago never makes a damn bit of difference.

My vision returns to me, slowly at first, until at last, I see this place clearly. It isn’t the same as I left it. The room is darker than before, the ceiling sagging, the plaster chipping away. Everything’s decaying, the same way it decays in the spots Dracula and I touch.

But one thing hasn’t changed. Mina’s still here, looking the way I remember her. The girl I grew up with all those years ago.

Smiling, she steps toward me, but I shake my head.

“I can’t stay this time,” I whisper.

She nods. “I know.”

Mina must have heard us making our meager plan, our voices seeping through from the attic.

Other voices seep through as well, more urgent than before. A thousand voices, murmuring just beyond the twisting plaster. I gaze at the crawling walls, and I swear they’re gazing back at me.

“Are you all right here?” I ask.

She swallows hard, as a hand emerges, grasping for her. “I’m not sure.”

A chill settles over me. “Are they getting worse?”

“Maybe not worse,” she says. “Just more restless.”

That’s one way of putting it. All around us, the walls are liquid, the ghosts hungrier than before, the whole room looking ready to collapse, as if it’s no more than a cheap set. Something not built to last.