“I didn’t.” She clasps her hands together in front of her, a girly flourish, and for a moment, she looks every bit as young as she was when she died. No more than a child, no more than twenty. “I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for you.”

Her eyes are on Bee now, and they watch each other, their stares naked, the years taut between them. Once again I fidget, feeling like an invader.

I must not be the only one who doesn’t want to be here, because there’s a creak of the floor and a tiny giggle, and when I look behind me, the other girls are gone. So is the urn.

I roll my eyes. “Of course.” I say, and I’m back down the stairs in an instant, my head still woozy, the hunger drilling deeper into me.

Downstairs, Michael’s waiting in the living room, right next to the spot where I died. Daisy’s sidled up beside him, her hand on his arm, trying to coax him into letting her read his palm.

“They say I’m really good.” She’s smiling up at him, sweet as spun sugar, and even though he doesn’t seem to notice her, a pang of jealousy sears through me anyhow.

I try to shake it off. “Where did those girls go?”

“Out the back,” Daisy says, motioning brightly. I dart through a beaded curtain into the kitchen, past a Formica table with a hot plate nobody bothered to turn off and a sardine can for an ashtray.

“Lucy, wait,” Michael says, and they’re all following me now. Him and Daisy. Bee and Jane, too.

“Please,” Jane keeps pleading. “Let me explain.”

They keep in step with me, and all I can think is how this is ridiculous. I should be alone. Tracking down Dracula’s remains shouldn’t be a spectator sport.

Across a scraggly lawn, we cut down an alley behind a long row of narrow houses, Daisy pointing out every shortcut, until we finally emerge on the main drag.

Haight Street in all its scrappy glory.

Screen-printed posters are plastered in every storefront window, colorful graffiti sprucing up the crumbling white facades. At the corner of an old building, we pass a green bumper sticker that says BE A PUBLIC NUISANCE in big block letters. Next to us, there’s a pay phone that’s got a different kind of message. DON’T SAY ANYTHING ON THIS PHONE THAT YOU WOULDN’T SAY TO A COP.

I see the girls up ahead, and I want to break into a sprint, I want to run with everything left in me. But that’s the problem: there’s not much left besides my hunger. I’m still famished from yesterday, from when I returned like a phoenix from the ash. My head spinning, Michael does his best to help me along, Daisy right next to him.