I huddle next to her, the two of us watching every flicker of movement. It doesn’t feel like I’ve gotten very far. From the attic to here, from one confined space to another. But at least I’m with Mina. At least this feels familiar.

Mina. The friend who never forgot me, the one who ended up trapped in this purgatory. Ever since she died, she must have been stuck in between. A girl who was bitten, who was earmarked as Dracula’s property. A girl who didn’t die from it. That’s why she’s inside the room and not beyond it. She doesn’t belong with the living, but she doesn’t belong with the dead, either.

At my feet, the makeshift stake that brought me here rolls back and forth, making a hollow sound across the floor.

“Why am I not here with you? Why don’t I stay dead?” I seize up, half choking on my next question. “Is it because I’m like him?”

Mina hesitates. “That’s not how I’d describe it.”

But it’s true. Dracula was right. He and I are the same.

The hands reach out all around us, fingers writhing, arms coiling like snakes.

I drift forward. “Are they all from him? From what he’s done?”

Mina shakes her head. “There are others, too. Voices calling out different names.”

Dread churns in me. “Rochester?”

“Sometimes,” she says. “But there are so many of them. From Dracula. From Rochester. From men we’ve never met.”

A knot of melancholy twists inside me. This place where the forgotten are left behind.

I don’t want to leave Mina here, I don’t want her to be forgotten too, but I have no other choice. Already my body’s dissolving like a sugar cube in boiling water.

And there’s something else. I told Bee I’d come back. Even if I want to stay with Mina—even if I want to stay dead—it can’t be this time.

Mina knows that. She can see the resolve on my face. “It’s all right,” she says, and flashes me that small smile of hers, the one that could crack a heart in two.

I reach out and try to take her hand, but my fingers slip right through her. The other hands, though, are stronger than mine. They jut out of the walls, farther than before, and they latch on to her, wrenching her toward them. She rasps out a scream before pulling away and cowering in the center of the room. The only place they can’t touch her.

The shadows grow a little longer, the room contracting and expanding like a beating heart. I want to stop all of this, but my skin goes translucent, and it’s almost time.

“I’ll come back for you,” I whisper.

Mina brightens for a moment. “Promise?”