The girls keep watching us, their faces blending together, anonymous as Jane Does. I don’t know their names or where they’re from or why they hitched up the interstate to the Haight, why they came to California at all. They’ll lose their lives at the hands of the same monster who murdered me, but that doesn’t make us intimates. We each die alone in the end. Men like them make sure of that.

Dracula drifts out onto the patio, his shirt still hanging open. My cheeks flush with shame at the sight of him, and I turn away. There’s movement again in the pool, and this time, I can’t stop myself. I gaze into the murky water and see them. Bellflower, Vervain, and Rowan, their limp bodies floating to the top like chum.

Rochester watches them, the rotting remains of the girls he recruited. Then he just shakes his head. “Look what’s become of this place.”

Dracula glances around, seemingly pleased with himself. “I’d call it an improvement.”

“I’d call it a blight on property values.” Rochester sneers, his shoulders broadening. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You were supposed to make things better.”

A small grin blooms on Dracula’s lips. “Why in the world would you expect a vampire to do that?”

Rochester’s face goes dark, and time stretches thin, nobody moving, nobody speaking.

“My mistake,” he says finally. “How about I fix that? How about we find that last urn and put you back in the dark where you belong?”

Dracula’s grin grows wider. “How delightful it would be to watch you try.”

The two of them edge nearer, their hands twitching into fists, and I think how much I’d like to witness them pummel each other into infinity. But this is our chance. With no one watching us, Bee and Daisy start to stumble forward, and I try to move with them, but at the mouth of the walkway, I hesitate, looking back at the other girls. I don’t want to leave them behind.

Maybe they don’t want us to leave either, because they’re beaming at us like they know something. That’s when I see it. In the pool, Bellflower’s eyes flick open, and she looks right at me.

And she’s not the only one. They’re all awakening now, macabre Sleeping Beauties, monsters these men have created. Along the crumbling border of the pool, a dead girl rises from her plastic lawn chair, her legs unsteady, her gaze set on us. Once she’s up, another one resurrects, and another after that, all their necks cracking as they lurch forward, their mouths gaping open like beached carp. They haven’t broken in their new bodies yet, and I cringe because I know what that feels like.