Another howl, closer this time, and with their claret eyes flashing in the dark, the wolves are here. So is that pale Volkswagen, lumbering across the gravel lot past all the abandoned speakers, the muffler rattling like a warning shot.

We could race back inside. We could shriek to the sky, alerting the others. We could do a lot of things. But we just sit right here, the radio crackling. No more than ten yards away, the Volkswagen’s engine cuts out, and the rusted door slides open, a dozen faces materializing in the dark like apparitions.

The girls creep out first, the ones without heartbeats, their limbs long and loose as insects. Then the girls with heartbeats, weak as they are, their throats blotched red. Dracula must have been busy in that back seat.

Bee watches them for a moment before turning back to me. “He’s lying, you know.”

A choir of hideous giggles lilts through the air like a rancid lullaby, but I won’t listen to them. I just look at Bee, only seeing her. Only seeing my best friend. “Lying about what?”

“You’re nothing like him, Lucy,” she says, and her words ache inside me. She doesn’t know what Mina told me, about why I keep coming back.

I exhale a ragged sigh, as the last two figures emerge from the bus. Rochester and Dracula, side by side, towering as tall as nightmares.

“And what if you’re wrong?” I say to Bee. “What if I am like him?”

A sea of shadows dances across our faces, but Bee smiles, not missing a beat. “Then use it against them,” she says, and with a final laugh, they surround us.

seventeen

The girls without heartbeats are blocking our headlights now, their bodies like a noonday eclipse. Bellflower and Vervain are at the front, smiles on their faces, barbed wire in their veins.

They’ve each got a small wooden stake tucked up their sleeve. I wonder if they know yet what an occupational hazard those things can be. Right now, all they care about is getting close enough to me to use them.

The Buick’s already on, the engine rattling softly beneath us. The necklace and the letter opener slide on the seat next to me, and I’ve got one hand on the wheel, the other never letting go of the urn.

“Ready?” I whisper, and Bee nods back at me.

“Ready,” she says, and I throw the Buick into gear, the tires spinning for a moment before we lurch forward, dirt and stone kicking up around us.

We rocket across the lot, away from the little shotgun house and straight toward one of the movie screens. Rochester and Dracula step aside, because they know they don’t need to follow us. The girls do it for them, leaping at the car, clinging to the sides, their arms flailing wildly, the wooden stakes aimed at my heart.