“Stay away,” I whisper, and hope he hears me.

At home, I stagger past the statue of Venus, the night heavy in my bones. I’m ready to head to bed, but Bee’s waiting up alone in the parlor.

“Where have you been?” she asks brightly.

“With him.” I hold up the urn, still dirt-caked around the rim. “Where’s Jane?”

“Asleep upstairs,” Bee says, as I check on the urn in the cabinet. It’s quiet as usual. No movement, no cracks.

I light a candle, and Bee follows me into the kitchen. With the urn from the Hollywood sign under my arm, I reach into the wall behind the icebox. In the darkness, Dracula shivers softly against me.

I recoil from him. Then I turn to Bee, a question boiling inside me. “Why is Jane here?”

Bee hesitates, as if she’s been waiting for me to ask. “Where else could she go?”

“Maybe anywhere?” I start toward the cellar. “At the very least, she shouldn’t expect her husband’s first wife to provide room and board.”

Downstairs, Bee and I huddle over the last urn of Dracula, his rage burning into the stone floor.

I grip the candle tight. “I don’t understand why you’d even want her here.”

A look of certainty flashes across her face. “Because,” Bee says finally, “I love her.”

In an instant, it falls into place. The abiding loneliness in Bee. All those faraway looks. I always figured she was thinking of Rochester. But he wasn’t the one who broke her heart. It was Jane. All this time, Bee was thinking of her.

“She and I talked about running away together,” Bee says as we trudge up the cellar stairs, the heat of Dracula wafting after us. “But she was still in love with him then.”

My gaze shifts to her. “What makes you think she isn’t still in love with him?”

“She left him, didn’t she?”

Together, we reach the hallway, and Bee watches me, the flame burning down faster.

“Lucy, can you please give Jane the benefit of the doubt? For me?”

A gleaming, hopeful look in her eyes. This is it, her chance to reclaim the life Rochester stole. A chance I won’t spoil for her.

“Of course,” I say, and mean it.

The next morning, my decay is draped like an ancient wedding veil over the house. Bee’s helping me clean off all the records and the shelves when Jane tiptoes into the parlor.

“Can I help?” she asks, and on instinct I scowl, wanting to send her away. Then I remember my promise to Bee.

“Sure,” I say, and pass Jane a broom. “Just clear out any cobwebs you find.”

“That shouldn’t be hard,” she says cheerfully, and off she goes, deeper into the serpentine halls of the house.

Bee beams at me from the Victrola. “Thank you, Lucy.”