They’re not wrong. The night starts to snake away, the horizon glowing gold, and in the gathering light, Daisy inspects our faces, still smeared with smoke.

“What happened to you two?” she asks.

“House fire,” I say, not looking at her.

She sucks air through her teeth. “Far out,” she says, and sounds almost impressed.

Part of me wants to tell her about us, what we really are. She can already hear Dracula, so why not? We might as well give her our side of things. I start to say something, to try to explain, but Daisy leans forward again.

“There it is,” she says, and the city materializes through the fog.

San Francisco. It’s like sailing into a dream. Even in person, it looks like a postcard, so bright, so toweringly perfect. Glittering buildings and highway spirals and a blood-red bridge that could take your breath away.

I want to keep looking, but the sun’s eager to catch a glimpse for itself. It rises up out of the clouds like an eternal curse, and I brace against the dashboard, because there’s nowhere to hide. The light spills across my body, and my vision flashes in and out, my muscles weakening to porridge. In my mind, Mina’s face surfaces again, and I want to reach out for her, to retrieve her from the ether, but she’s already long gone.

“Lucy?” Bee’s voice, tinged with panic. “Stay with me.”

Daisy peers over the seat, her soft eyes pitying me. “You’ve got some sort of condition?”

I heave up a thin chuckle. “You could say that.”

Bee turns the wheel hard and veers off the next exit. “We need to get her inside. Now.”

“That’s no problem,” Daisy says breezily, as though she’s met plenty of girls with an inexplicable allergy to sunlight. “I can take you somewhere.”

I part my lips to ask her where, but the street pinwheels around me, and all at once, I fade to nothing.

The next moment, I’m moving, my body weightless, the air hanging heavy around me. Bee and Daisy are on either side of me, helping me up steep concrete steps, my arms slung over their shoulders. I blink up at the bright building looming over us. It’s a skinny Victorian with a pointed spire like a witch’s hat, painted in shades of mauve and royal blue and baby pink. There are voices within, so many of them, and heartbeats by the score.

“Why are we here?” I wheeze.

“Because this is my house,” Daisy says. “And it can be yours too.”

She’s inviting me in, the poor little fool. She doesn’t know who I am, what I could do to her. I want to tell her, I want to warn her, but before I can argue, the front door swings open, and she and Bee carry me inside.