Bee and I back away, the two of us slumped against the wood paneling, gazing through the glass walls. Dracula’s coming now. I can feel him shivering through my body, the rest of his freed ashes rushing across the darkness toward us. Drawing nearer to himself, nearer to being whole again. I want to flee, to cry out, to go as numb as the dead, but then my rage bubbles up in me, and because I just can’t help myself, I turn toward the others.

“He’s going to murder all of you,” I say, “and he’s going to enjoy it.”

At this, the girls chortle, their throaty laughter like knives against my skin, but Rochester doesn’t join in. He won’t even look at me, something strange flickering across his face. Regret perhaps, a crawling realization that I might be right, that he might have made a terrible miscalculation.

Only it’s too late. Dracula’s here, the shadow of him draping over the front wall, obliterating the moonlight, as complete and unforgiving as an eclipse. He leaks into the room through the open door, one fistful of dust after another, and he does it slowly, like he knows he can take his time. After all, I can’t stop him now. Nobody can.

Rowan looks directly at him, at the place where his face ought to be. “What is that?” she asks, as he swirls across the ceiling, his silhouette broader than before.

“That’s what I promised you,” Rochester says, and grips her hand, tight as a vise, pretending it’s to comfort her, even though it’s just to keep her from running away.

I wish I could run too. Instead, I stagger forward, desperate to stop this, but the dust from the last urn rises up higher, eager and ready. Above us, the two parts of Dracula join together, like ink blots bleeding across a crisp white page, and there it is, his body emerging, bit by bit. His cruel arms, his muscular thighs, his bare feet landing on the stone floor. And that face. That handsome and hideous face, watching me the way he always has.

“Hello, Lucy,” he says, his voice like a most glorious requiem, and everything falls apart.

ten

I want to close my eyes. I want to scream. I certainly don’t want to look right at him, looming there at the front door like a maelstrom, blocking our way out.

But even as I turn toward the wall, I can’t escape. There’s a strange gravity he brings with him, tugging you closer, the shadows growing longer, as though his very presence conjures its own atmosphere.

The girls are gathered around him, their voices growing to a fever pitch.

“What can we do?”

“What do you need from us?”

“What can you tell us about where you’ve been, what you’ve seen?”