“So long as you’re away from him,” Bee says, leaning over the couch, entwining her hand with Jane’s. They gaze at each other for a long moment, the air buzzing with possibility, their secrets leaving no room for anything else.

With the Victrola still bleating out old love songs, I leave them alone, propping the broom next to the statue of Venus and slipping out the door.

On Santa Monica Boulevard, I fill up the Buick at the Union 76 station, using my last five-dollar bill. The gas tank’s almost rusted shut, my decay slowly settling in every crevice of the car. Soon we’ll be lucky if the engine starts at all.

At the next intersection, I seize up, trying to decide where to go. I could head alone to the drive-in. Michael’s waiting for me, lingering behind the counter, his heart twisted with longing, twisted from what I’ve done to him. This thrall, a silvery tether between us, thinner than a spiderweb, tougher than titanium.

Even from afar, I can sense him. He buzzes in my blood, his scent like pine, his skin warm, and I suddenly can’t help myself.

“I’m right here,” I whisper, but my voice dissolves on the restless wind, as the Cadillac behind me blares its horn. With a rueful sigh, I head the other way. Toward the other man in my life.

The Hollywood sign shimmers in the moonlight, and I kneel beneath it, my hem soaked in earth. It only takes a few fistfuls of dirt until I find it.

The urn, only inches beneath the ground now.

“You’ve been busy,” I say. In just two days, Dracula nearly dug his way out. If I hadn’t come back, he might have been free by tomorrow.

The city gleaming below me, I nestle down in the overgrown grass, watching the moon shift in the sky. I can’t go home, not yet. I’m not welcome there, not so long as we have company.

Here’s what I know about Jane Eyre: She’s quiet. She’s loyal. Sanctimonious, even. She was an orphan, then a governess, and finally a wife. That’s the CliffsNotes version, of course, but here’s the thing: Bee never told me any of that. I learned most of those details from the movie, the one with a purse-lipped Joan Fontaine and a bellowing Orson Welles.

(I wanted to read the book, but Bee forbids it in the house. “Bad luck,” she always said, and I couldn’t blame her for that. We don’t keep a copy of that other book either.)

In fact, Bee never mentioned Jane at all. “That awful story,” she’d always call it, like she couldn’t even say her name. Until today at the front door, I wasn’t even sure they’d ever met.