Another sharp turn, and the girls in the back whoop like this is the ride of their lives. And maybe it is. Maybe they’ve never felt so alive. Pity that feeling won’t last.

“So you’re taking them back to him,” I say, as the Golden Gate Bridge materializes out of the fog. “Back to your new best friend.”

At this, Dracula’s eyes go darker than sin. “Don’t call him that.”

“But that’s what he is,” I say. “It took you centuries, but you finally met somebody as depraved as you.”

Another smirk. “You mean, when I met you?”

The Buick rockets across the bridge, as the kids chatter in the back, my prediction of their impending doom already a distant memory. Cars smear past us in the other lane, and I study the narrow concrete sidewalk next to us. It’s late, and there aren’t many people out strolling across the water tonight. Only a single figure up ahead that seems to be watching us. A strange bundle of a man, more shadow than human.

As we pass him, my stomach corkscrews. “Was that—” I start to ask, but Dracula rolls his eyes.

“Yes,” he says, cutting me off. “He’s been following me all over the city.”

I stare at him, incredulous. “Of course he has,” I say. “That’s what you’ve always expected of him.”

“And he’s done his job now,” Dracula says, waving one hand in the air, as if that’s that.

Poor Renfield. He gave his life, gave his afterlife too, and now everybody wants to forget he even exists.

I watch him disappear in the rearview mirror, his body growing smaller and smaller in the dark until he’s nothing at all.

“I don’t know why you’re so worried about him,” Dracula says. “He did kill you, after all.”

“Only because you told him to.”

“That’s true,” he says with a boyish smirk, like murdering me was no more than a silly prank. “How was it over there by the way? In that waiting room from hell?”

I hesitate, peering at him in the dark. “You’ve been there?”

“Of course,” he says. “Only for a little while, though. You and I don’t get to stay.”

“I know,” I say, a wave of gray melancholy washing over me. I think again of Mina, who isn’t like us. She’s trapped in that place, and I don’t know how to get her out. I don’t know how to help the dead. I don’t know how to help myself.

We head north, up through the Marin Headlands, along winding roads and past hills that seem to close in around us. Set back from the highway, it waits for us. Dahlia Hall, lingering in the shadows, a few stray cars pockmarking the driveway, music leaking out into the night.