Our bucket of rusted bolts, the taillight we never fixed, the upholstery we tried duct-taping into place until even that seemed pointless. But this belonged to us, our Buick. Now we have to abandon it, just one more thing these men have stripped away from us.

Our hands wrapped together, Bee and I disappear into the canopied hills where the overgrowth is thick as shadows. Briars cut into our bare legs, but we don’t stop, and we don’t let go of each other.

Distant laughter ricochets through the trees. The girls are still tracking us, the wild foxes in their hunt, but Bee and I keep climbing, through heavy brush and past towering pines.

Together, we reach the top of a sharp ridge and look down at the other side of the hill. The Pacific Ocean shimmers diamond-bright below us, San Francisco glinting like a daydream just beyond it, but it’s still miles away. It’s the shortest night of the year, and we’ve got nowhere left to go.

“I really don’t want to die again.” Bee stares down at her arms, at that thing slithering inside her skin. “I was entirely gone, you know, when it pulled me back. But even when I was dead, I could feel it from far away. Crawling inside me, filling up my body like a limp balloon.”

This is the first time she’s ever talked about this.

I peer at her in the dark. “How many times for you? Dying, I mean?”

“Only once. From the fire.”

That fire, the moment that changed everything. All of Rochester’s power was in Thornfield Hall. In that land, in that attic. When Bee scorched it to cinders, he lost it all. His chance to bestow immortality on whomever he chose. Now he’s got to settle for the next best thing. He’s conjured Dracula to do the job for him. When this is over, Rochester will have a houseful of wives and a party that never ends.

At least that’s his plan. I wonder what Dracula will have to say about that.

“How about you?” Bee asks. “How many times have you died?”

I shake my head. “I don’t remember anymore.”

“That many?”

“Yeah.”

Bee gazes across the water at the glittering skyline. “So I guess this is it,” she says. “We’ve got nobody left, Lucy.”

I hesitate. “That’s not entirely true.”

Bee turns sharply, studying my face in the gloom. “Is Michael even around?”

I nod, my throat going dry. “I saw him at Golden Gate Park tonight,” I say. “While I was waiting on you and Jane.”

Bee winces at that name, as if I spat fire at her.

A long moment, the locusts bleating in our ears, a coyote howl in the distance, before she asks it, the question that’s haunting her.