“I’m glad,” I say. “You two are cute together.”

He squints at me. “Don’t try to play matchmaker, Lucy,” he says, but I don’t have to do anything. This is practically etched in the stars. Some couples have identical wedding bands. The two of them have identical scars, a mark on their throats that won’t ever quite heal.

The moon shifts in the sky, and without a word, we both know it’s time.

“See you around, Lucy,” he says finally.

“Goodbye, Michael.”

He heads back down, but only makes it a few steps before glancing at me again. “Is what Dracula said true? Did four men really propose to you in one day?”

I exhale a thin laugh. “It was three.”

He nods again, his lips pursed. “Lucky guys,” he says, and starts to walk away.

But I can’t let him leave like this. Not with that ache inside him, the curse I planted in his heart.

I know how to fix it now. What Dracula did to Renfield at the drive-in, how he severed the thrall in an instant—I never realized it could be so easy. Or maybe I did, and I never admitted it to myself.

It was too late for Renfield, he was too far gone. But it’s not too late for Michael.

The wind whips around me again, the wolves edging closer, and it takes a long moment before I can bring myself to speak those three little words.

“I release you,” I whisper at last, and I feel it happen. A dull twinge in my chest, as the thrall snaps in two.

Michael feels it too. A hitch in his step, his back straightening, everything holding perfectly still for a moment.

He turns to me, one last time, and I’m expecting a blankness in his eyes, as if he’s gazing at a stranger. But he only smiles. “You could still come with us, you know.”

I shake my head. “Maybe I’ll catch up later.”

And with that, he disappears into the Santa Monica Mountains, headed back to Walter’s Ford pickup. Back to civilization, to the future. I close my eyes and listen for his heartbeat, so clear, so familiar. I keep listening until he’s too far away, and the melody inside his chest joins a thousand other hearts, all of them bleeding together in the autumn night.

Bee wanders back up the hillside, a sad look in her eyes. “You let him go?”

A lonesome ache settles inside me. “Of course I did.”

There are no Hollywood endings, not even in Hollywood, and that’s the way it should be.

The rest of the story’s unwritten. Our story’s unwritten, the one they tried so hard to steal from us.