I gape at her, trying to fathom why I’m sitting naked in front of dozens of strangers. “What is this?”

“They’ve been here all day,” Bee says, impatience edging into her voice. “Apparently, they have a lot of questions for you.”

I tug the blanket tighter around me. “About what?”

“About everything,” Daisy says brightly. “Life. Death. What’s in between.”

The yellowish light flickers above us, and I sit here, dumbfounded. They think I can explain this. Who I am, what’s happened to me. There must be fifty of them, maybe more, and they won’t stop watching me, their eyes so eager. They saw my body turn to dust, and then they witnessed me slowly put myself back together. They must think I know everything, even though I know nothing at all.

My stomach convulses with hunger, and I gaze back at all these hopeful faces. This would be so easy. I could pluck any of them from the crowd, and they’d follow me. Upstairs to the bedroom with the dirty mattresses or outside into the darkest alley I can find. And I’d give them the answer to eternal life all right, just not the way they want to learn it.

There’s someone else who could teach them the same thing. His familiar scent like roses still wafts around me, the echo of him lingering in the air. My heart twists in my chest, and I suddenly remember the urn upstairs. The one we left unattended last night. The one I haven’t checked on since.

I drag myself to my feet, still clutching the quilt. Bee tries to help me, so do Daisy and all the others, but I pull away from them and stumble up the steps and into the bathroom where I peer inside the wall. My stomach seizes. The old furnace vent is empty now. Renfield must have gotten this one too. That leaves the urn in the trunk of the Buick, and that’s it. And what if that one isn’t there either?

On the bathroom floor, someone left behind a dress. Maybe for me, maybe not, but I slip into it anyhow. It’s even shorter than the last one, sheerer too, more like a nightshirt than a proper gown, but I can’t complain. I was just naked in front of fifty people. This is certainly an improvement.

I retreat into the hall, past the narrow stairwell leading up to the attic. Apparently, not everyone has gathered in the living room. There are girls giggling behind a closed bedroom door, the melody of their heartbeats leaking through. I drift closer, imagining how sweet they’d taste if I could get hold of them. How they’d revive me in an instant. How at last I could take the very thing Dracula has always said is mine.

“Lucy?” Bee’s voice floats up the steps, incriminating me without even meaning to.