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“Kimmy was right,” said Jess breathlessly. “You do just get hotter and hotter.”

“Hey. You. Lover Boy.” Ingrid waved a hand in between their faces. Jess nearly got clocked on the nose with a memento mori ring. “Do you still have that key?”

“We were kind of in the middle of something here.” Adam regarded Ingrid with considerable annoyance. “What key?”

“You know, the key, as in use the key.” Ingrid did her best sepulchral imitation. “The one you were waving around earlier?”

“Can this wait?” demanded Adam.

“No,” said Ingrid, undeterred.

Adam looked down at Jess. “There’s no fighting them is there?”

“Probably not.” Jess squeezed his hand, her heart ridiculously full as she looked at their motley band. They had faced down a demon and survived. Together. “Your kid. My mother. Your historian. My historian.”

“You’re claiming Ingrid?”

“You know . . . I think I am.” Jess felt a strange sense of kinship with Ingrid. “Also, I don’t think we’re getting rid of her.”

“Still here,” said Ingrid, proving Jess’s point.

For a life that had felt empty a month ago, it now felt incredibly full. Also a little crowded. It would have been nice to go back to that whole “fine and private place, two hundred years per breast” thing. But later. There would be time for that later.

“Later,” said Adam, as though he could read her thoughts. And maybe he could. The man did talk to trees, after all. “Okay, what’s up?”

“Your friend over there found the keyhole.” Ingrid pointed at Cal, who was waiting for them next to the miraculously reconstituted window. “Look. See Cornelia? See how she’s pointing?”

“She’s pointing down,” said Jess. “At her tomb.”

“Actually,” said Cal, a little awkwardly, “I don’t think it is. A tomb, I mean. It’s the wrong size, for one. Take a look at this.”

They all crowded around as Cal pointed his phone flashlight at what Jess had thought was an ornamental garland above Cornelia’s name.

At the heart of the garland was a keyhole.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“It was all in there all along,” said Ingrid, for roughly the fiftieth time.

“I can’t believe you never told me about any of this,” said Cal, also for the fiftieth time.

It was well past midnight, but no one showed any sign of going home. Ingrid and Cal had spread the journals they’d extracted from Cornelia Vanderwilt’s sepulcher—a sepulcher that contained many journals but no Cornelia—across the coffee table. On the couch, Ben snuggled under Adam’s arm, the way he used to when he was a preschooler. Adam kept touching his head to make sure he was still there, alive.

Adam couldn’t wrap his head around how lucky he’d been, how lucky he was, that they were all here, together, alive, Ben on one side, Jess on the other, Mel in the kitchen getting snacks, Jess’s mother exuding gentle goodwill like human fabric softener, and two very overexcited historians fighting over the papers they’d lugged back from the crypt.

“I can’t believe we got it all wrong,” grumbled Ingrid.

“I can’t believe you had a demon and never told me,” said Cal.

“Would you have believed him?” asked Jess.

Cal took another slug of the craft cider Adam stocked for their guys’ nights. He was currently on his third can and his glasses were beginning to slip down his nose. “Yeah, no. No, I wouldn’t. You got any more impossible things to tell me?”

Adam decided now was not the time to tell him that Jess’s family was linked to Cal’s beloved missing Gottschalk angel. Then he’d really never leave and Adam did want everyone to go home eventually.

Except Jess. Jess could stay right here. Preferably forever.

“How did I get it so wrong? It wasn’t just that Cornelia didn’t call the demon. No one called the demon,” said Ingrid, sounding distinctly disgruntled. “It turns out Horace Vanderwilt met him in Paris, when Belfagor was Hell’s ambassador to France. He invited him back to New York and they struck a deal. It’s all in here. Cornelia wrote it all down.”