Bee’s eyes dart from the road to me and back again. “You think I should forgive her, don’t you?”

“No,” I say. “I think that’s for you to decide.”

“That’s the problem, though.” Bee gnaws her bottom lip. “I don’t even know who she is anymore. Maybe I never knew.”

Another mile, the highway stretching long and lonesome in front of us, before she adds, “Maybe it’s all too late.”

My chest constricts, her words aching inside me, but I won’t argue, because I’m wondering the same thing myself. That maybe everything’s too far gone to set right again.

I ask Bee if she wants me to drive, but she just shakes her head.

“I need something to steady me,” she says, her hands trembling on the wheel.

We stop off for gas, using a twenty Michael let me borrow back in the Haight. The whole time the attendant is filling the rusted-out tank, Bee and I keep watching the hills, waiting for the wolves to catch up with us. But for now, we’re safe. Or as safe as we can be in a car that’s disintegrating around us, the seats sinking, the ignition nearly too tired to turn over. All thanks to what Dracula’s done.

With the breeze in our hair, the top still down on the Buick, we head south along the 101, the road winding before us. An hour north of Hollywood, Daisy stirs in the back seat, her limbs in a tangle against the torn upholstery. I peer at her, like a concerned mother.

“How are you?” I say, and it seems like the silliest question in the world to ask a girl who was just a midnight snack for a vampire.

Daisy’s a good sport, though. She smiles and plays along. “Been better,” she whispers.

She falls back asleep, and I gaze up at the sky, the indigo clouds melting around us. It’ll be sunrise soon, only a couple hours left. Part of me is afraid we won’t make it back to L.A. before morning does. Then all at once, the hills snake away, and there it is.

The steel skyline. The rickety Hollywood sign peeling in the distance. Bee and I have never come home from the north before, and seeing the city this way feels inside out, like the whole world’s been turned backward.

“Are we heading to the drive-in now?” Bee asks.

I shake my head. “Let’s make a detour first,” I say, and Bee doesn’t even have to ask where. She takes the exit back to Wilshire.

Back to the pile of rubble we once called home.

Bright yellow police tape surrounds the debris, construction sawhorses blocking off the driveway. We pull around them, parking in the desiccated yard, the engine cutting out, as we stare at what’s left of the house.