The rot is thick today, the thickest we’ve ever seen, and we’re both squashing splotches of black mold on the antique rug when Jane wanders in from the kitchen.

“Where does this thing go?” she asks, and my whole body goes numb.

She’s holding an urn of ashes.

“Don’t move,” I whisper, starting toward her, but Dracula’s too quick for me.

In her hands, he shivers, and I can almost hear him laugh as Jane’s eyes go wide. She lets out a small, strangled gasp, and I don’t even have time to scream before the urn slips away from her.

With a dull thud, it shatters on the parlor floor.

four

He’s everywhere, the remnants of him like stardust in the air. A cloud of him emerges from the bits of broken urn, sluggish at first and then swirling faster, until he’s a dizzying sight to behold.

Bee wheezes next to me. “What do we do?” she asks, but I don’t know. This has never happened before.

The curtains flicker in the breeze, and I know that’s where he’s headed. An escape, a way out of this house. I lunge for the nearest window, yanking it closed. He goes for the next one and the next one after that, and I have to keep stumbling across the floor, locking each window before he can sneak out into the morning.

It doesn’t help that every time I shove aside the curtains, sunlight slices into the room, knocking us both back, the memories of what we were seeping into us. In my mind, I see him, the way his hands used to move over my body. Around my waist, caressing my cheek, pressed into my throat until I couldn’t even rasp out a scream. I see Mina, too, how he went after her when he was done with me. Her face is faded, crescent moons the color of thunderstorms beneath both eyes, her lips parted but making no sound.

I wonder what Dracula sees. What are the things that haunt a monster?

The ashes slither across the ceiling and into the hallway, and I’m running now, desperate to keep up. Bee lags behind me, the closed windows in the parlor suffocating the air from the room, making it feel like a tomb. Like the attic that imprisoned her.

Meanwhile, Jane’s no help. She’s standing there in the doorway, utterly dazed, her mouth slack, and I want to shake her, to tell her to move, to do something to fix this, but I just push past her instead.

Dracula slips into the kitchen next, looking for the nearest way out. My feet in a knot beneath me, I stagger in front of him and close up the room. He swirls overhead, and I sneer at him.