Page 27 of What Happens at Nightfall

A teenage boy, sure. Adam wouldn’t like it—he’d throw a fit about it—but that would at least make sense. Not that he wanted anyone to think of his daughter that way. As far as he was concerned, she was still five and wearing Paw Patrol T-shirts. But he could admit, objectively, that his daughter had grown into an attractive woman and he both wanted her male peers to appreciate that—in a respectful and distant sort of way—and wanted to stick her in a nunnery for the rest of her life.

Parenting was hard.

Melinda and male attention was something he had always known he was going to have to face sooner or later. He knew he was going to have to stand there gritting his teeth and pretending to smile as some boy brought Melinda home. Every now and then he ran through excerpts of his future father-of-the-bride speech.

But he hadn’t expected this. Pictures of his daughter pinned to a stranger’s wall.

Of course, he only had Jess’s word that this was what that was. She had appeared at his door out of the blue last night, claiming to have been on a tour. But the only thing he knew of that tour was what she’d told him. The only things he knew of her were what she’d told him. She could be a psycho.

She could be the stalker.

Crazy theories ran riot through Adam’s head as the D train lurched toward Manhattan. He tried googling “Jessica Waters” but they were too far underground. Unable to refresh, said his phone.

Say Jess was the stalker. She could have taken advantage of finding Ben under the tree to finally get her entrée to the house. Or what if it hadn’t been chance? What if she’d engineered the whole thing? It wasn’t hard to plant ideas in an adolescent boy’s brain—unless they were ideas like making your bed or going to bed at bedtime.

But other messages—those were easy. All it would take would be a few seemingly casual “ads” for Ouija boards sent to his school email, or even a paper flyer dropped in his path. Do you want to talk to someone in the beyond? Adam winced, hastily rewriting that in his head. That was terrible copy. He could do better. Maybe someone had done better. Plant the idea in Ben’s head, let him take the key, create some sort of disturbance while the boys were in there—she could have planted the parasol then, too, to create the illusion of this mythical tour guide.

Domiciles of the Damned. What kind of tour company was named Domiciles of the Damned?

The train rose briefly aboveground. Adam usually savored that moment of darkness into light, but today he ignored the view and scrambled for his phone, using the moment of renewed connectivity to type Domiciles of the Damned into the search bar. A website popped up—but that didn’t mean anything. Anyone could make a website these days.

He tried typing her name in again. There was a law professor—huh, he bet his mom knew her—an actress, and a yoga instructor.

None looked the least bit like the Jessica Waters he had met last night.

Who was to say that was even her name?

It was a good thing he’d gone into gardening instead of setting out his shingle at 221B Baker Street, Adam thought with disgust. Sherlock Holmes he was not. Basically, all he knew about this woman was that she was petite—that couldn’t be faked, surely?—and . . . and nothing. Hair color could be changed. Eye color could be changed. Voices could be altered. All he really knew was that she was short.

He’d invited her into his home without hesitation.

Maybe it was because she seemed so unthreatening. But then, so was the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and looked what happened to knights who thought he was cute and fluffy. Rabbit chow.

Adam bounded up into the sunlight, buffeted by confused tourists. The bakery Jess had picked was on the south side of Rockefeller Plaza. In honor of the good weather, square tables had been placed outside, protected from foot traffic by a waist-high hedge. There was only one woman alone, a woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a light dress for the summer weather, frowning at her phone.

“Hi,” Adam said warily.

Jess stood so abruptly the table rocked, her phone clutched in one hand, coffee in the other. “Adam? Thanks for coming.” Her eyes were the blue of a clouded sky. “I can show you the way to the apartment—so you can see for yourself.”

Adam pulled out one of the chairs, which scraped unpleasantly against sidewalk. “Why don’t you finish your coffee first.”

“Would you like—?” She made an abortive gesture toward the storefront.

“No, I’m off coffee.”

“You’re one of those.” Jess clutched her coffee protectively. “How do you do that?”

“I used decaf as a placebo and I had a few days of headaches, but it was really worth it.”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it.” They stared at each other, small talk exhausted, both aware that they had to bring up the subject neither knew how to talk about.

“Those pictures—” Adam began, as Jess said, “The reason I called you—”

“Start at the beginning,” suggested Adam.

“The world was without form and void. Sorry. My best friend tells me I get sarcastic when I’m anxious.”

“This is the best friend you said arranged the tour?” This might be something he could check up on.