The urn tucked under my arm, I wander across the lot and back to the Buick, gazing between the big screens, a pair of blank canvases. Michael will start the films soon. The last two pictures ever to be projected at this drive-in.

Of course, I shouldn’t be loitering out here, waiting for the show to start. I know what I’m supposed to be doing right now, all the elaborate preparations I should be making. After all, I’ve seen the movies enough times. If I were Van Helsing or Jonathan Harker or even Peter Cushing, I’d be melting down silver in some arcane apparatus, forming one perfect bullet with Dracula’s name on it, a third-act promise the audience knows I’ll keep.

Or I’d be whittling oak and elm into the sharpest stakes you’ve ever seen, practicing how to hit the heart on the very first try. (A little to the right and straight on till morning.)

Or at the very least, I’d be stringing up bulbs of garlic like garish Christmas lights all around the house until the place is foul with it and even we don’t want to stick around.

But I’m not those men, and I won’t do any of that. Instead, I settle down behind the wheel of the Buick, holding the urn in my lap as I rifle through the glove box, pulling out the necklace and the letter opener. The last souvenirs of the life I tried and failed to build.

The sun’s vanished on the horizon, and they’ll be here soon, their arrival as inexorable as the tides.

I don’t know what comes next. Even if I can get him back into this urn, then what? Another seventy years of standing sentry over his ashes? Is this all I’ll ever be, the girl who guards Dracula?

“I figured you’d be awake by now.” Bee’s standing next to the Buick. The night air’s getting colder, and she’s wearing a used khaki jacket, borrowed from Walter, no doubt. She slides into the passenger seat, and we sit together quietly. The silver letter opener burns a mark into the palm of my hand, but I hardly notice.

“We could still run,” she says. “We could hock that necklace at some pawnshop and leave tonight.”

I glance at her. “Would we take Jane?”

She looks back at me. “Would we take Michael?”

There’s a howl in the distance, echoing up through the canyons, and neither of us says anything for a long time.

“Do you really want to run?” I ask at last.

“No,” she says, her face hard as granite. “Do you?”

I shake my head. “We’ve been hiding for years. I’m tired now.”

“Me too.”