Only this time, it’s different. This time, we’re using the films for us, for a distraction, and it’s working. Rochester and Dracula can’t take their eyes off the screens. Like Narcissus gazing at his own reflection, they see themselves, the way the world fancies them.

Rochester, so brooding, so Byronic, a villain in hero’s clothing.

Nosferatu, so brooding too, but not quite so dashing, not with those pointed ears and that bald head pale as the moon.

A sly grin on his face, Rochester glances back and forth between the screens, sizing up the actors, realizing he got the better deal. He turns to Dracula, elbowing him like an old chum.

“Better luck next time,” he says, and for an instant, I’m sure Dracula’s going to break him into pieces and save us the trouble. He searches the lot for me instead, glaring into the dark, as if to say this is my fault. That I’m to blame for him meeting Rochester.

“Nobody made you come back from the dead,” I mutter, as Bee and I dash to the edge of the lot and behind the crumbling ticket booth.

The overgrown weeds biting at our ankles, Bee searches the desolate landscape. Out on the road, there isn’t a single car in sight.

“Should we try for the highway?” she asks. “Should we lead them farther away from here?”

I look back at the house. “What if they go after them instead?”

That’s the one thing neither of us wants. We need to keep them safe.

A rustling outside the ticket booth, and a blot of a man emerges among the shadows. I’m ready to scream, until his twisted face stares back at us in the moonlight.

Renfield. He’s followed us, all the way down the coast, all the way to Dracula. Maybe to help him. Maybe to help us.

Bee snarls at him. “What are you doing here?” she asks, her hands curling into claws, ready to scratch out his other eye.

“Wait,” I say. “Give him a chance. Back in San Francisco, he rescued me.”

Bee gapes at me. “Was that before or after he killed you?”

“After,” Renfield and I say at the same time.

The girls are calling out all around us, their voices ricocheting like bird shot. They’re getting closer.

I put one hand on Renfield’s ancient arm, his skin crackling at my touch. “You could help us now,” I whisper. “Can you do that?”

He purses his lips, his head down, resolve settling over him. “What do you need, Miss Lucy?”

“You can hear him, right? The things in his head?” I lean in close, and I taste Renfield’s breath, pungent as garlic, heavy as heartache. “What’s he thinking right now?”