Sally, happily in the passenger seat, leaned against Lavinia as she drove the old camper through the pre-dawn city streets. In a few hours they might have an answer to one of many unexplained mysteries.

In the back of the camper, three vampires slept in their happy “home” trance. The vampires on the streets, menacing and forlorn, had never been invited into a home and still looked like pallid Draculas but Sally could now catch glimpses, like through a thick forest, of the individuals they had been. They scurried for cover suddenly; the sun must have just risen.

The Golden Gate Bridge was empty of undead or living. The purple water was breathless against the shadowy East Bay hills where the last streetlights were going out. As they reached the Marin County side, other cars appeared; those people must have pulled out of their driveways the instant their mobile apps told them it was dawn.

For the moment Sally and Lavinia were not talking about the demo yesterday, the moan of horror which Lavinia had not heard or the fury in Jeremy’s face. They were just talking: one of the wide-ranging “Four Dick” dialogs which Sally treasured so much.

“Tenderness is tendresse in French,” Lavinia was saying. “You were still a baby when women’s music was big,” and her eyes slid sideways to make sure Sally grinned instead of bristling, “but there was this dame, Lucie Blue Trembley, she was such a sweetheart, she had an album with that title. ‘Tendresse.’ She was French Canadian, I think. Well, she did a concert and she joked, made us laugh, that someone told her the album shoulda been called ‘T’undress or not t’undress, that’s the question.’”

Sally laughed, then said, “I read about the women’s music movement but it’s such ancient history. Please tell me about those long-ago times.” She snuggled against Lavinia and stroked her, fawning exaggeratedly.

She sometimes missed being Lavinia’s love slave, never daring anything that Lavinia did not command or permit, and they still played that way at times, but she herself had set the new tone. When they had sex, she could now feel sunlight which Lavinia had gathered pour into her, soothing away the knot of tension in her belly.

The freeway plunged through twin tunnels with rainbows painted on them and then rolled down a steep hill. As they exited and wound into the coastal hills Sally, who seldom got carsick, stayed against Lavinia, slender arms wrapped around her waist. Lavinia took a hand off the wheel to stroke her hair.

Charla Thorpe was Lavinia’s age, Sally remembered, with renewed tightening inside. She found her mind cycling through another round of fretting about that exasperating person.

Charla had gained worldwide notoriety for telling the vampires, “You’re invading my home with your noise.” Her viral video had changed the lives of everyone and she found herself considered a vampire expert. She loved that role. When she saw Sally and Lavinia’s first TV interview, she contacted them and told them she was flying in from Indiana to work with them.

Sally had been nervous when they knocked on Charla’s hotel room door and was daunted by her flat snare-drum face, hard wide-set eyes and helmet hair. Her quiet husband Tomás was a pleasant nonentity, all too much like Sally’s mother.

The trouble started when Lavinia met a gummy barrier as she made to follow Sally in. Sally called casually, “C’mon, babe, you know you’re welcome wherever I am,” and Lavinia walked right in. Tomás stepped back nervously and Charla made a move to shield him. Sally knew she should have waited for Charla to invite Lavinia in.

Then she found herself pouring out the tale of saving Lavinia. She’d gotten spoiled by the praise Jesse lavished on her but Charla just nodded, “Mmmph,” refusing to be impressed by anything she hadn’t done herself.

Even worse, her nose wrinkled when Sally held Lavinia’s hand. The homophobia hurt worse from someone Sally admired, but when she clutched Lavinia’s hand and looked at Charla defiantly, Charla widened her eyes and flared her nose as if to ask, “What’re you on about?”

From then on Charla seemed angry at anything Sally did (but not at things Lavinia did). She wanted to just tell Charla to fuck off, but Charla had given them a boost they needed. She’d posted their videos on her website and set Lavinia up with a page of her own where people could ask questions (which Lavinia answered with sardonic flair).

Sally couldn’t bear this well-worn grove of thoughts any longer. Lavinia was intoning solemnly, “Ah, you seek to know about ancient history, Asshopper?” when Sally burst in, “What is that woman’s problem?”

Lavinia knew she wasn’t talking about the French Canadian. “You’re kidding me, right? I thought you got it from day one.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Seen enough repressed dykes in my time,” Lavinia said, grinning. “Hell, it used to give me a kick to bring ‘em out. Man, did I used to fuck with their heads, making them do stuff…” She shook her head, looking thoroughly unrepentant. “Now I just feel sorry for ‘em.”

Sally studied Lavinia’s face. “Come on, baby. Every strong woman isn’t a dyke.”

“Nope, but this one is. I stake my formidable reputation on it.”

Sally remembered from yesterday her flash of – had it been jealousy? – when Charla took the place beside Lavinia that Sally felt was hers by right. Lavinia concentrated on navigating the twisty road down a wet green valley.

“You’re saying,” Sally said, “what, that she wants you, even though she knows you’re with –”

“No, you dewy-eyed dope, she wants you. You’re the young gorgeous one.” Lavinia darted a glance down at Sally and winked.

Sally blushed. “You’re crazy. I only seem to piss her off.” But her voice had no strength; she was starting to see it.

“Face it, tiger. You’re the first young gorgeous babe she’s seen in that hick town of hers that she knows is a lesbian, she wants you. Course, she don’t know she wants you, so she glares whenever we’re making out, she watches you with a hypercritical eye, she wants you to shine, she winces when you don’t. And since she don’t know any of this shit, she picks at you like a sore spot.”

Weakly, Sally said, “And you, you aren’t mad at her?”

Without answering, Lavinia stopped at a pull-off where the road elbowed deeply into a fold of hill and took both of Sally’s hands. “I got no reason to be. Not one in the world. Mmm?”

“You’re my mate. I don’t want anyone else.” She said it with simple honesty though she couldn’t help being aware of how good she sounded. Then it hit her: she’s taken it in. I’m here to stay and she trusts that now. She gets me! She was so happy that tears came and Lavinia squeezed her hands.

When they drove on, passing an old-fashioned inn and a horse ranch and continuing straight at an L turn onto what the signs called Frank Valley Road, a blissful Sally rolled down both windows. From Lavinia’s side drifted scents of honey, berries and rain from a wooded stream. From Sally’s side the smells of salt, herbs, dried flowers and dust drifted down a grey-green hillside.

They pulled into the Muir Woods parking lot. Amazingly, there were already seven cars, tourists who must have left their hotels exactly at sunrise. As always when they turned off the noisy motor, Sally was amazed at how the silence rang.

“Well,” she said happily, “let’s go hug a few trees!”

They had come to this grove of ancient redwoods to try and identify the power Lavinia sensed in living wood. Sally still remembered Lavinia hugging the redwood in Jesse and Walter’s yard and saying if she were pierced with it, she would die of ecstasy. She looked forward to seeing Lavinia be superhuman in yet another way. Lavinia looked like she was about to open a birthday present.

The sun cleared the hills and a ray fell on Lavinia’s face. She stopped and closed her eyes. “Man, that still feels fuckin’ good.”

And I might join her in that soon, Sally thought, exultant. At the moment, it seemed that nothing could possibly go wrong.