We climb out of the Buick, the two of us arguing all the way up the front steps and through the front door, Daisy dragging her feet behind us, like a child caught in the middle. We’re still arguing when we reach the living room, silent and dim. Along the wall, Daisy fumbles for the light switch, and a single bulb flickers on, its naked shape painting our faces jaundice yellow.

“She’s headed back to him,” Bee keeps saying. “It’s the only place she’ll go.”

I shake my head, ready to tell her I don’t want to fight anymore, when I notice something different in the room. There in the corner, the oak rocking chair is in a haphazard heap, broken into serrated pieces. I gape at it, the truth settling over me, too slowly to matter.

A bit of dust in my eyes, and it happens in an instant. Renfield, emerging from the shadows, a splintered piece of wood gripped tight between his battered fingers.

“My apologies, Miss Lucy,” he says, and buries the stake in my heart.

eight

Dying is always the worst. I hate it almost as much as being alive.

My head spins, and the sound drops out first, as if someone’s turned down the volume on the whole world. Time slows to nothing, just like I told Michael, and as Renfield stumbles back a step, grinning, my body starts to retreat into itself, my skin sizzling, my guts going soft.

It feels like hell on earth, and it must look like that too, because Daisy collapses in the corner, her hands over her eyes, her mouth gaping. She must be screaming, but I can’t hear her. I can’t hear Bee either, even as she growls something at Renfield and then charges at him, her hands gnarled, her eyes flashing. All the rage in her is unfurling at him, her hatred of Rochester, her heartbreak over Jane. Between me and Renfield, I’m not sure which of us has it worse. I might be dying, but she just scratched out his eye, a thick, pale ooze dripping from the cavernous orifice where Renfield used to peer through the darkness, scrying into the beyond, searching for Dracula. Searching for me.

A twinge in my heart, and part of me feels sorry for him. Part of me wants to help finish him too. I certainly don’t want to leave Bee to do this alone, to clean up the mess I’ve accidentally made, but I don’t get a choice.

Daisy’s screams must be louder than I thought, because others are staggering down the stairs, roused from their heavy dreams. They peer into the living room, and their faces twist at the sight of me. I wonder what they see.