Page 114 of What Happens at Nightfall

But she was all they’d got.

Taking a deep breath, Jess placed her hand in Adam’s.

“Begone!” she shouted. Her voice sounded small and tinny, bouncing off Belfagor’s invisible barrier. “Leave the boy. None of this was his fault. He didn’t bind you.”

“I’m only giving him what he wants. Can you say the same?” The demon swished his tail, curling it around Ben in a grotesque perversion of a hug. “I listen to you, boy. I hear your wishes.”

“How can you think he cares for you?” burst out Adam. “He doesn’t even know your name!”

“Ben—I know you don’t like me, but please,” Jess called desperately. “Listen to me. He’s not trying to help you. He’s trying to trick you into killing yourself. One of your ancestors made a stupid deal with a demon—this demon. He wanted money and power and—” Things she couldn’t tell Ben. “Stuff. But he bound the demon to his heirs. That’s you.”

“He?” demanded Ingrid.

“I’ll tell you later. Please, Ben. Listen. He needs you to kill yourself so he can be free. He’s not going to let up until you kill yourself. Look! He’s got you holding the knife.”

Ben clutched the handle of the knife. “It’s only a few drops of blood for the spell, that’s all. I’m not an idiot.”

“What happens when the knife slips? What happens when you hit an artery you didn’t mean to hit? He can make that happen, you know. He can’t wield the blade himself but he can trick you into doing it for him.”

“Jacinta, Jacinta.” The demon turned the full force of his attention to Jess. “You see, I remember your name.”

On the other side of the barrier, the candles crackled. Flames. Screaming. And suddenly, Jess understood. This was the garland. Not just her and her mother. The other Jacintas were with her, the other women who had stood against Belfagor.

Please, Jacinta Piatti, she begged. Please, Grandma Jan. You’ve done this before. Tell me what to do.

Chimes. She could have sworn she heard chimes, high and sweet, like a garden on a summer day. Sunlight streaming through a stained glass window. Music and light and the scent of flowers. And behind it, a faint rustle of wings.

Belfagor let out a low growl.

“You’re doing it, Jess,” whispered Adam. “You’re . . . glowing.”

Ben flung up an arm to shade his eyes, the light glinting off the blade in his hand.

“Jacinta . . .” The demon’s voice throbbed in Jess’s head, like a migraine. “Leave the boy to me. He’s just a boy. There are millions of them in the world. What’s one boy?”

“He’s not just one boy. He’s Ben,” said Jess fiercely. “He matters. He’s loved.”

The pressure in her head made her feel like her ears were about to pop. She wanted to let go of her mother’s and Adam’s hands and press them against her temples but she knew that would be a mistake.

“Love,” repeated Belfagor delicately, as though she’d accidently dropped something foul on the floor. “Jacinta. Why waste your sympathies on a mere crumb of mortality? Think what I could offer you . . .”

His voice slid through her brain like an oil spill, fouling everything it touched. She could feel him picking through her thoughts, her memories, and she had no way to stop him.

“Don’t you feel the bond between us, Jacinta? You’ve never known who your father is, have you, Jacinta? But I can tell you.”

“No,” said Jess tightly, even though everything in her wanted to shout yes. The one thing she’d always wanted more than anything else. To know who she was. But this was Belfagor, who twisted people’s desires and turned their wishes against them. “No. I don’t want to know.”

“We both know that’s not true,” said the demon in a chiding tone.

He spun around in a circle, the harem pants disappearing, the horns receding. He looked like James Spader in Pretty in Pink, an eighties preppy bad boy, except for the wisps of smoke that continued to circle around him and the fact that he was floating a foot off the ground.

“Jacinta, I am your father.”

Jess’s mother made a choking sound. “That is not your father.”

Smoky James Spader drifted up to Jess, to the very limits of the barrier he’d created. “Why do you think your mother never spoke to you of your father? Why do you think she never wanted you to know?”

Jess could feel her mother’s long skirt brush her ankles as her mother turned urgently toward her. “I swear, Jess. I had my reasons, but they’re not that.”