I back away from the door, my cheeks burning with shame. “Be right there.”

Downstairs, the others are flocking around the foyer, waiting for me. “Can’t you help us?” they ask, their desperation marrow-deep. “Can’t you tell us what you’ve seen?”

They watch me, innocence in their eyes, hope in their hearts. This is why they’re here, why they ended up in this city, living together in spartan rooms with strangers. They’re looking for something, and they think I can help them find it.

“I’m sorry,” I say, slipping between them and out into the night.

The Buick waits solemnly on the street. I rush to it and put both hands on the locked trunk. Relief washes over me. The last urn’s still there, the heat of him seeping through, his rage so potent it burns straight down to my bones.

He’s not free yet, not completely.

Bee’s standing with me now. “We should go,” she whispers, “before Renfield comes back.”

I peer at her. “What about Jane? And Rochester?”

She shakes her head. “We’ve tried,” she says, defeat cutting sharp lines in her face.

I start to argue with her, to tell her it’s not too late, when a crush of bodies pushes past us. At first, I think it’s the kids from inside the house, but no, they haven’t followed us. These are all people we’ve never seen before, moving down the white line in the center of the road, not worried about traffic, not worried about anything.

“They’re headed to Golden Gate Park,” Daisy says, appearing next to us like a specter. “Today’s the Summer Solstice Festival.”

The summer solstice. The longest day of the year. And the shortest night. That doesn’t give us much time.

Bee instinctively knows this. The car key in her hand, she slides into the driver’s seat, the look in her eye as grim as a funeral. “Come on, Lucy,” she says.

I trudge toward the passenger door, my hunger pressing into me, slowing my every step. Daisy follows close behind.

“Take me with you?”

I turn back to her, my jaw slack. “Why?”

She gives me a sheepish grin. “Because you two are the most exciting thing to happen here since Leary.”

More people keep moving by, an endless exodus, but Daisy just stands there in the street, that smile of hers never fading. She’s the same as her friends. She thinks we can help save her from herself. That Bee and I have some arcane insight into the universe. That just because we’re dead that must mean we’re wise.

I climb into the Buick, and though the top is still down, I lock my door anyhow. Daisy catches my hand, turning my palm upward.

“Look,” she whispers. “Your lifeline.”