Page 29 of What Happens at Nightfall

Adam couldn’t do this anymore. He’d never been any good at subterfuge.

He turned to Jess. “Is this yours?” he asked abruptly. “Is this your apartment?”

“Is this my—” Adam had never actually seen anyone’s jaw drop before but apparently it was a thing. Jess’s mouth gaped. “Is this—you thought this was mine?”

“Well,” said Adam, trying to remember why this had seemed like such a sensible theory. “I only had those pictures that you sent me. For all I knew . . .”

“I did this myself? This?”

Adam shifted awkwardly, the crushed petals under his feet sending up a sharp scent. “I have only your word that there was a tour—or a guide—”

“Here.” Jess thrust her phone at him. “Call Kimmy. You can find her in Contacts under Kimmy.”

“No, that’s okay.” Adam could feel himself blushing.

Jess placed her hands on her hips, staring at him like he’d just crawled out of a storm drain. “Did you really think I arranged all this just to get your attention? If I wanted a date, I’d let Kimmy set me up with someone!”

“No.” Maybe. “Not like that. I thought you might be a crazy stalker—not stalking me! Stalking Melinda.”

“I never saw your daughter until last night,” said Jess shortly. “I went on this ridiculous tour because Kimmy asked me and I had nothing better to do. It’s not my fault your son decided to go breaking into crypts. I have no idea why there are pictures of your daughter on this wall. I’m sorry I got involved. I’m sorry I called you. I will very happily get out of your life and leave you to deal with your own damned mess.”

“No—wait. I’m sorry.” Adam reached out for her as she turned away in a swirl of damp linen. She froze as his hand touched her arm and he hastily stepped back. “All this—I didn’t know what to think. I really am grateful.”

“I don’t need you to be grateful.” She looked fiercely at him, and Adam felt like whatever illusion had blurred her image had fallen away. Everything seemed crisper, more distinct, the gray-blue of her eyes, the fine lines around her mouth. “I was just trying to do something right.”

The anguish in her voice resonated through the room. Adam would have reached out, tried to comfort her, but her stance forbade any such gestures. “I’m sorry I accused you of being a psycho stalker.”

Jess pressed her eyes closed. “Why am I surprised? It’s entirely in line with the rest of this year. Even my damn creamer went sour before the sell-by date.”

Adam wasn’t entirely sure what her creamer had to do with anything, but he got the general gist. “I’m not sure what kind of crazy this is, but I’m sorry I got you into it.”

Jess let out a long, uneven breath, like someone trying not to cry. “You didn’t get me into it. Kimmy got me into it.”

“It’s my daughter on this wall,” Adam reminded her. “What in the heck is all this?”

Jess examined the wall with exaggerated concentration. Adam could practically see her bottling her feelings back up. “I was looking at the pictures on my phone while I was waiting for you, trying to make sense of it. It’s like a timeline. If you look over there, you’ve got woodcuts of hell, and then the center section is all about your crypt, and the far right ends in your daughter.”

“That’s . . . crazy.” Yes, his children sometimes felt like demon spawn, particularly around bedtime or when they were avoiding their homework, but he had never taken it literally.

“You know what they say about crazy. There’s always an internal logic.” Frowning, Jess stepped back to get a better view of the web of pictures. “Someone put a lot of time and thought into this.”

Adam couldn’t bear to look at the pictures of Melinda, juxtaposed with scenes of the damned, so he turned and picked up one of the books scattered around the floor. “Interesting reading material she has here. Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght, and of Strange Noyses, Cracks and Sundry Forewarnynges.”

Facsimile editions of Renaissance works jostled up against glossy coffee table books about mansions of the Gilded Age and cracked paperbacks from the seventies, with titles like Witchcraft Today! Everything You Need to Know About Charms and Hexes.

Jess squinted at a paper on the wall. “Listen to this. ‘When the sun is in a warm and dry sign, it is good to conjure infernal spirits; when in a warm and wet sign, aerial spirits; in a cold and humid sign, aquatic spirits; and in a cold and dry sign, earthly spirits.’ Adam—she’s got a note about this week’s weather on it. Warm and dry, it says.”

Adam couldn’t wrap his head around any of this. One minute he was living a normal life, caring for four hundred plus acres of plants, polishing the gravestones in his front yard, sending his kids off to school, and the next it was pictures of his daughter and infernal spirits.

“Do you think your tour guide’s trying to raise infernal spirits?” he asked incredulously.

“I’m not sure if she’s trying to raise the dead or a demon, but she’s definitely trying to raise something. There are notes all over.” Jess plucked one from a picture of the Vanderwilt crypt and handed it to Adam. In loopy, eccentric writing, it read, AUTUMN EQUINOX???

“Autumn equinox,” said Adam dumbly. “That’s—September twenty-first? That’s Sunday.”

Jess looked blankly at the wall. “This is crazy.”

“It’s all crazy,” Adam agreed fervently. The pictures danced in front of his eyes, demons at the gates of hell; black-and-white photographs of a Gilded Age ball; Melinda. “That doesn’t mean that this woman doesn’t believe—whatever it is. It’s like Kermit and ‘Rainbow Connection.’ Somebody thought of it and someone believed it.”