She inspects my face for a long moment. “How old did you say you are?”

I tilt my head and smile. “Almost a hundred.”

Daisy lets out a throaty laugh. “Aren’t we all?” she says, passing me her crocheted bag. “Put that bottle thing in here. That should muffle it enough that nobody bothers you about it.”

I seize up, the urn in one hand, the bag in the other, thinking how that’s not a terrible idea. Daisy’s a clever one, I’ll give her that.

I drop the urn in the crocheted bag, slinging it over my shoulder. “Why are you doing this?” I ask her. “Why are you helping us?”

She hesitates, as if it never occurred to her not to. “You helped me,” she says finally. “Plus, that’s what we do here. We help each other.”

And with that, she wanders back into the party, her frame so slight that she looks again like a lamb headed to the slaughter. Those bright eyes, that eager face, the way she never stops smiling. The world’s going to eat her up alive. The same way it did to me.

Another hour, and the night’s lazing into a nervous slumber. Most everyone’s gone by now, and the ones left behind are curled up on the hardwood floor or slouched in a heap on the piss-yellow couch, passing around the last joint. None of them are any help anyhow. We’ve already asked them. They don’t know Jane Eyre.

We head to the door, Bee with that familiar faraway look on her face.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” I say, even though we shouldn’t. It isn’t safe for us in this city. Dracula’s ashes must be even closer now. He could be anywhere. So could Renfield.

We’re almost to the front step, when that same guy in buckskin and fringe puts his hand on Bee’s shoulder. She recoils from him, and on instinct, I feel my teeth sharpen.

“I was just thinking,” he says in a slow drawl. “There was a girl once.”

“A Jane?” Bee asks, hope rising in her voice.

“Maybe,” he says, “I don’t remember. All I know is she lived across the bay in an odd little house. A house like a dream.” He whistles, as if remembering something. “They had some wild parties there.”

Daisy hesitates. “You mean that place up in the Marin Headlands?” She looks at us now, all the color leeching from her face. “You don’t want to go there.”

Bee stares back at her. “Why not?”

“Bad vibes,” Daisy murmurs, something frantic in her eyes, but Bee won’t listen. If Jane’s there, that’s all that matters.

It takes us twenty minutes up Route 101, across the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz in the distance. Daisy passes me a dollar to pay the toll, and we keep going, past the county line, the darkness creeping closer.