Page 51 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Oh, trust me, they do.” Jess put one hand reflexively to her chin. “We just tweeze before you see it.”

Adam watched as she fumbled with the power button. “Would you like to stay here tonight? You could stay in Melinda’s room. She wouldn’t mind.” Mostly.

“Uh-huh. I’ll be fine once I’m in an Uber. I think I can stay awake between here and Manhattan. Finally.” Her home screen sprang into view, almost entirely obscured by a series of green notification flags, popping up one on top of the other. “Oh no.”

“Hey. What’s wrong?”

Jess was staring at the phone screen, her face a mask of tragedy. “Tonight was my goddaughter’s birthday dinner. I was supposed to be there.”

A tinny voice rose from the screen. “Where are you? Petunia is devasted—”

“I can’t believe I forgot. How did I forget?”

“If you had any consideration for anyone but yourself . . .”

Unable to bear the look on Jess’s face, Adam reached out and clicked the side button, cutting off the angry message. “It’s my fault. I dragged you over here.”

She lifted her face toward his, her expression dazed. “I knew today was Sunday. I knew Petunia’s birthday was Sunday. How did I not put these things together?”

“Hey.” Adam’s hands closed over hers. “It’s been weird. These past few days—it’s like we’ve been living in an alternate universe. Like Scooby-Doo and the Gang in a haunted house. Only without the Mystery Machine. It’s been hard to think of anything but what’s been going on. I tried to get Ben up and out the door to school this morning before I remembered it was Sunday.”

Jess shook her head wordlessly. “Kimmy—she and her kids are the only people— All I had to do was remember one thing—”

Her voice cracked painfully. She squinched up her face as hard as she could, but the tears were leaking out anyway.

“Don’t cry.” Adam tried to brush the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “I know it’s bad, but once you explain—”

Jess lifted an anguished face to his. “How can I explain about demons?”

Adam smoothed tear-dampened hair off her cheek, tucking it behind her ear for her. “I’ll write you a note. Melinda can build her a personalized robot. It’s our fault. We’ll help you make it right.”

Jess’s lips twisted. “It’s not your fault. I screwed this up all on my own.”

“Jess. You didn’t screw anything up.” He couldn’t bear to see her look like this. Adam framed her face with his hands, looking deeply into her eyes, those eyes were neither gray nor blue, but somewhere in between. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He didn’t mean to kiss her. Kissing wasn’t any part of his plan. It just sort of happened, the way sunset happened, or the changing of the tides, inevitable and irresistible. One minute, he was wiping away her tears; the next, his lips were glued to hers, her arms were around his neck, and any thought that was happening wasn’t really in his brain; it was more of a happy hum of “oh yeah” from various organs that hadn’t been used much recently.

Adam wouldn’t claim he heard violins precisely, but there was certainly a very impassioned guitar riff going on.

Until it was broken by the discordant crash of someone saying, “Dad?”

Adam’s lips parted from Jess’s with a pop that could have been heard in Park Slope. Ben was standing at the foot of the back stairs, staring like he’d just seen someone desecrating his mother’s grave.

“Um—” Adam’s brain wasn’t working properly. All his blood was currently elsewhere. He was vaguely aware that his arms were still around Jess; that they were, in fact, twined together in a fashion commonly seen on the covers of the romance novels his middle sister thought she’d successfully hidden under her mattress. “Ben.”

With a word that Adam hadn’t thought his son knew, Ben turned and pounded up the stairs.

Jess pulled away, shoving her hair back from her face. “I—I should go.”

At least, thought Adam, her face wasn’t death pale anymore. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips swollen.

Any blood that had returned to his brain promptly rerouted south. He shook his head to try to clear it. “Jess—”

Upstairs, Ben’s door slammed, hard enough to make the light fixture over the kitchen table shake.

Adam swore. “Hold on. I’ll be right back. I just need to talk to Ben.”

He took the steps two at a time. Ben’s door was closed but Adam could hear Ben’s angry voice through it, followed by a thump as something hit the door. Tentatively, Adam pushed the door in. It caught on something blue and fuzzy.