How long would it take me to murder everyone on the dance floor? A minute? An hour? Some of them would surely get away first, fleeing through front doors and back doors, any doors that will have them. But at least a few of them would stay, huddling behind one another, frozen like our statue of Venus, unable to move, unable to scream. The same way I was when Dracula came for me.

How many people has he murdered at once? A whole kingdom’s worth, or is it far fewer than that? And even if he only seduces a single victim at a time, does that make him any better? Or does it just make him more methodical?

I snap to attention, afraid I’ve lost the girls, but there they are, threading through the crowd, passing the urn between them like it’s a game. I keep moving after them, past kids who stare back at me like they know me, their gazes sliding over my face. Sometimes they whisper, and sometimes I hear them.

“That’s her. The one they’re talking about.”

“The one who doesn’t die.”

“At least not for long.”

My cheeks burn. I’m a walking freak show, an urban legend in the flesh. Something that has no right to exist.

A few of them start to follow me, desperate to be faithful disciples.

“What do you need from us?” they ask, nipping at my heels, impatient as puppies, and I cringe, since that’s the same thing those girls asked Dracula last night.

What do they expect me to tell them? How they can be immortal too? Or how the afterlife is a real drag, like a bad trip that never ends?

But I envy them a little, because I remember what it was like to be them. To want something better. I’d given up on that years ago. I’d given up on everything because of Dracula.

I manage to break away, pushing between bodies, everyone twisted together. At last I stumble upon the girls, and they look startled to see me. That gives me an opening, my chance.

I put both hands on the urn. “He’s mine,” I say, and something surges inside me, something dangerous. Something like him.

The girls must sense it in me, because all at once, their grasp on the urn goes slack, and they start to back away.

“He warned us about you,” one of them says. “You’re not as nice as you pretend to be, are you, Lucy?”

My hands quivering, I press the urn to my chest. “I never said I was.”

I should run now, but I don’t even make it two steps before my head goes dizzy, and I wilt in the middle of the dance floor, still clutching the urn. Instantly, a crowd gathers around me.