I bid Walter good night, maybe even goodbye, and I’m starting back to the car when a strange whisper ripples through the hazy night air. For a moment, I’m sure it’s Renfield, sniffing around again like a loyal retriever. Then I hear that familiar lilt in her voice.

Jane. She’s left Bee in the Buick, and she’s pacing small circles on the other side of the projection booth.

“I’m doing my best,” she keeps saying, and at first, I figure she’s talking to herself. Then a small smile curls on her lips. “I love you too, Edward.”

Rochester. She’s talking to Rochester.

A bolt of rage sears through me. “Even after what he’s done to Bee?”

The sound of my voice is sharp, like the unexpected slamming of a door, and Jane chokes out a quiet, surprised cry. Then she stares at me, a wave of shame melting over her.

“You don’t understand,” she whispers. “You don’t know what he’s like when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

An excuse. And a meager one at that. In this moment, I’d wish her dead if it wasn’t already too late for that.

I charge back toward the Buick, Jane desperate to keep up with me. The second film hasn’t even started yet, but I ask to go home.

“What’s wrong?” Bee asks, but my chest constricts, and I won’t tell her. I won’t be the one to break her heart.

Meanwhile, Jane doesn’t say anything at all. Not in the car, not when we get home, not when I sneer at her and head up the stairs, her pensive gaze tracking me, wondering what I’ll do.

I wonder what I’ll do too. I drift back and forth in my rot-draped bedroom, the urns still safely tucked away. Maybe Jane will do the decent thing and confess it herself. If not, I can’t keep this from Bee, not for long. No matter how much it will hurt her.

It’s a couple hours until midnight, and I’m still pacing the room when I hear them. Wolves in the distance. They’re everywhere, their howls like the strangest lullabies. Like a message I can’t quite decipher. I stare out the window, listening to them.

They sure seem to like you, Michael said to me at the Hollywood sign.

Something rises inside me, a startled realization. Dracula attracted wolves because he’s a vampire. But so am I.

What if they’re not his harbingers at all? What if they’re mine?

“What do you want?” I whisper to the night, and the floor creaks beneath me. There’s someone downstairs.

The parlor’s dark, and as I rush in, I’m expecting chaos, the house unraveling around us, but Bee’s alone, perched by an open window.

I light a candle on the mantel. “Where’s Jane?”