Seventy years, and not one iota of him, not a single piece of ash, ever escaped. Not until the moment Jane Eyre arrived.

Dizzy with rage, I gather up the urns from around the house and retreat to my bedroom. I hate it when they’re all together, but right now, they’re safer here than anywhere Jane might find them.

I’m separating them in the room—one in my closet, another in the vanity, the third under my pillow like a morbid keepsake—when Bee’s suddenly in the doorway behind me.

“Jane didn’t mean to.”

“Of course not,” I say, rage coursing through me.

“It was an accident,” Bee insists, falling back a step, lingering in the hallway. “She’s been through a lot, Lucy.”

I whirl around to face her. “And we haven’t?”

Bee only sighs. “You could have told her about the urns. Warned her.”

“I didn’t want to tell her,” I say, “because I don’t trust her. And maybe you shouldn’t either.”

We stare at each other through the doorway, not moving, not saying a word, and I sense it. A stalemate. Bee’s not going to change her mind, and neither am I. She finally shakes her head and turns away, disappearing down the unlit hall. With my heart in my throat, I shut the door, sealing out Bee, sealing out everyone.

All day I stay locked in my room, the urns murmuring around me. I tell myself at least we’re together. At least they can’t get far.

It’s late afternoon when someone else finds me. The echo of Renfield.

Where are you, Miss Lucy? he calls, his voice warbling from afar, but before I can scream or sneer or even hide my face, he drifts away, as though he’s been plucked from the ether.

“Stay gone,” I say, as I curl up in bed and close my eyes, letting the hours pass me by. Night comes and goes and then comes back around, Saturday slipping into Sunday, the hours evaporating around me. When I look again, the shadows press closer, and everything’s changed. The decay’s no longer a thin shroud of dust and cobwebs. It’s a sarcophagus, thick as a cocoon, clinging to every wall. There’s too much death in this place, all the urns in one room, me alongside them. That’s why the decay is getting worse.

“Go away,” I seethe, and a tiny blot of mold inches away from me.

I watch it go, something building in me, the same thing I felt beneath the Hollywood sign with the wolves. Something strange, something primordial.

With my skin humming, I reach out into the darkness. “Come back,” I say, and the spot of mold obeys.

It’s never done this before, never listened to my whims, never cared about me at all.

The rot is getting more powerful. But maybe so am I.