“Let’s not go back.” He gazes out at the skyline, glinting like shrapnel in the moonlight. “We could run away together.”

He means it too, the poor fool. I could take him anywhere tonight. Drive him to the ends of the earth or down some dusty lovers’ lane. Tear off his clothes, tear out his throat. Drain every last drop of his blood and welcome him into me, holding him in my veins where he’ll always be mine, where we’ll always be together.

The urn quivers on the floor at my feet, encouraging me. Dracula wants me to do this. And he wants to watch.

But I won’t give him the satisfaction. I take Michael home instead, to a little shotgun house behind the drive-in. I shift the car into neutral, stopping right beside Walter’s rusted Ford pickup, the robin’s-egg blue paint job flecking off into the grass. I wonder what he’d do if he knew what I wanted from his grandson. Bring out a Winchester and put a fistful of lead through my heart? As though that would do any good. It would have to be silver, and even then, I wouldn’t stay dead, not for long.

Next to me, Michael smiles, his hand still wrapped around mine. “I had fun tonight,” he says, the glimmer of the thrall dancing behind his eyes.

Shame blisters through me. “Listen,” I say. “You need to stay away from me.”

Michael’s face contorts, as if in pain. “Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll probably kill you.”

This should be enough to scare him off, to scare anyone off. He only shrugs. “You wouldn’t be the first person to try.”

This knocks me off-balance. I hadn’t thought of that.

“But can’t you feel it?” I stare at him, at that golden boy face of his. “Can’t you tell I’ve done something to you?”

“Sure you have.” He grins. “That’s why I’m falling for you.”

I roll my eyes, ready to bite him on principle. “No, you’re not,” I say. “You don’t even know me. You don’t even have a choice in it.”

He lets out a strident laugh. “Choice,” he says, rolling the word around on his tongue, grimacing like he’d rather spit it out. “Since when do any of us have a choice?”

His question sits in my belly like buckshot.

“Get out of the car.” I reach across his lap and flick open his door. “Now.”

He does as I tell him—of course he does, that’s the problem—but at the last moment, as he closes the passenger door, he looks back. “Can I see you again tomorrow night?”

The Buick peels out of the lot. Even without glancing in the rearview mirror, I know Michael’s watching me, waving goodbye, as though this was an ordinary date instead of a failed crime scene.