Page 30 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Look what it’s done so far,” Jess finished. “So we’re working on the assumption that this woman thinks she can raise either demons or the dead, her focus is your mausoleum, and it has something to do with your daughter.”

“There was that knife—on the breakfast bar.” Horn-handled. Ceremonial. Adam could feel the blood draining from his face. He felt sick. Dizzy. “You don’t think she wants Melinda—as a sacrifice?”

Chapter Nine

“Do you need to sit down? Here.”

Jess took Adam’s arm and guided him the two steps to the daybed. His calves hit the mattress, and he sat with a thump that raised a cloud of dust and made the springs make a very unhappy noise.

He immediately started to get up again. “I have to get back to Brooklyn. I have to tell Melinda—”

“Sit,” Jess ordered. “Where is she now?”

“School.” Adam fumbled for his phone. “I’ll call her—no, I’d better text her. She’s probably in class. What do I even tell her? I don’t want to scare her, but—”

Jess perched on the edge of the bed next to him. “But she needs to know.”

Adam looked up at her, wild-eyed. “I just can’t believe . . .”

“I know.” Jess couldn’t quite bring herself to say it either. Sacrifice. It was something out of B movies, not a Friday afternoon in Midtown. “Can you warn the school people that she has a stalker?”

“I’m not even sure who to tell. I’ve never dealt with anything like this before.” Adam shifted and the mattress shifted with him, tilting her toward him. “I can warn the guards at the gates—but how will they know who she is? Do you know this woman’s name?”

“Hold on.” Jess yanked out her own phone. She scrolled down to Kimmy’s forward of the tour confirmation. “There’s no name on here. It just says a guide with a purple parasol will meet you at the main gate.”

“And there’s the parasol,” said Adam flatly, indicating the parasol Jess had propped by the side of the bed.

“If this is her apartment, there has to be something to identify her in here.” In such a mess of paper, surely there would be something. “A bill, maybe?”

“Who pays their bills on paper these days?” Adam scrambled off the bed, dropping to his knees next to a pile of manila folders. “Exorcism rites”—he tossed that folder aside—“How to bind a demon—and ten different recipes for quiche.”

“Quiche?”

“This one doesn’t look bad.” He passed a printout of Belle and Chron’s spinach quiche back over his shoulder to Jess without turning. “Is there any sign of a computer in here?”

Jess noticed they’d abandoned any qualms about breaking and entering.

After ten minutes of rifling in desk drawers, sorting through drifts of papers, and crawling under the bed, the only thing she’d discovered was that there was no laptop anywhere to be seen and if the woman was a witch, her familiar was a dust bunny, hordes of which had adhered to Jess’s head.

Jess scootched herself back out from under the bed and made an ineffectual attempt to brush the dust off her person. “Nothing under there.”

“Nothing in here either.” Adam had been searching the closet, which was nothing more than a shallow depression in the wall with a tension bar sagging under the weight of three steampunk costumes, two ceremonial robes, and a bunch of business-casual dresses from Ann Taylor.

“No name tags in the clothes?”

Adam ran a hand through his hair, making the curls stick out any which way. “If I were Lord Peter Wimsey, I could figure out her tailor from the label and then trace her via the shop on Bond Street.”

“I was more of a Murder, She Wrote girl.” What would Jessica Fletcher do? A thought struck Jess. “Forget the label of her tailor. We have that website. If she’s running the company out of this apartment, that means she probably also rented that domain name and set up that website.”

“And then we can trace her through the website!” Adam’s weary face blazed with hope. “Um . . . Do you know how to do that?”

Jessica Fletcher didn’t have to deal with any technology more complicated than a typewriter. “No, do you?”

“No. But Melinda would.” Adam rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. “I’m going to have to tell her, aren’t I?”

He was looking at Jess with such appeal, as though her opinion actually mattered. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you are.”

“Look, I know it’s a lot to ask . . .” A dark lock of hair flopped over his eyes. “But would you come with me? You’re the one who’s actually seen this woman.”