Page 113 of What Happens at Nightfall

Belfagor oozed around Ben. “Look, boy. He’s got the woman with him. If he really cared about you, why would he bring her with him? He doesn’t love you. He never loved you.”

“Ben—” Adam’s voice cracked. “I’ve loved you since we knew we were going to have you. I’ve loved you every moment of your life.”

A million memories unrolled in front of him: late-night feedings and infant fevers, Ben’s first steps, Sunday mornings watching Wild Kratts, Ben laughing so hard he got pancake up his nose.

“Not like your mother,” murmured Belfagor in Ben’s ear. “Your mother truly loved you. You want to see your mother, don’t you?”

Slowly, Ben nodded.

“She’s waiting for you.”

Adam flung himself against the invisible barrier. “Don’t say it! Whatever he wants you to say, don’t say it!”

Ben paused and looked straight at him. “I want to see Mom,” he said in a small voice.

He sounded the way he had when he was little and sick, wiped out with fever. A tired little boy who wanted his mother.

“Your heart’s blood, Ben,” murmured Belfagor. “That’s what’s needed to complete the summoning. You’d give your own heart’s blood for your mother, wouldn’t you?”

The candlelight glittered on the blade of the knife. One of Adam’s kitchen knives. So mundane, and yet so deadly.

A strong scent of roses swirled around them.

“The garland!” Cornelia Vanderwilt’s voice crackled over them. He could just see her against the stone. She flickered like a dying lightbulb. “Make yourself a garland!”

“Out of what?” Jess shouted back.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” growled Belfagor. The knife wavered in Ben’s hands. “No, not you. You need to say the words. Go back to saying the words.”

“Jacinta . . .” Cornelia’s voice was lost on the breeze as she winked out again.

“There’s the rose,” said Jess frantically. “The rose that always blooms.”

“Not the rose,” said Adam. It wasn’t the rose that they needed. “Jacinta. Hyacinth.”

Adam remembered light springing from Jess’s hands. The parasol had just been a tool. The real magic was in Jess. The Hyacinth Girl. The heart of light.

“It’s you, Jess. The Hyacinth Girl. You’re the garland.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“Whatever you did before,” said Adam urgently, “do it now. But more. Be the garland.”

Beneath the broken window, Ben held the knife aloft. His hood had fallen back, baring his curly hair, so like Adam’s. Jess wanted to reach out to him and wrap him up and keep him safe, but whatever power Adam thought she had, it wasn’t there; Jess couldn’t find it.

She held out her hands, but nothing came. No light. The parasol lay twisted and useless on the ground, a hunk of metal and jet. If it had ever been magic, it wasn’t anymore.

“I can’t be a garland!” blurted out Jess. “I’m just one person. You can’t have a garland of one!”

“If you’re a Hyacinth Girl, then I am too.” Jess’s mother took her hand, and Jess could feel the air around them change, brighten. “Can we be a garland of two?”

“Three,” said Ingrid, and took Jess’s mother’s hand. “My name doesn’t mean anything floral, but I am the only one of us who studied any spells.”

“Oh, what the heck,” said Cal, and took Ingrid’s hand. “I have no idea what we’re doing, but if it stops more windows breaking, I’m in.”

“Jess?” said Adam. He was holding out his hand. “I’m not a flower, but I do grow them.”

Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? They were all relying on her and Jess had no idea what she was doing. She was a financial analyst, not a wizard.