Page 55 of What Happens at Nightfall

It all came back to that. “You mean the bit where I caught them money laundering and they accused me of embezzling?”

“Yes, that.” Kimmy smoothed out a page that had bent when the book fell, carefully readjusting the position of her Shakespeare & Co bookmark. “You’ve always been on a schedule as long as I’ve known you. Even on summer vacation, you couldn’t just lie around like everyone else. You’d have our day planned out in ten-minute increments, with assigned times for leisure.”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

“Yes, you were. Your lists had lists.” The amusement in Kimmy’s face faded. “But recently . . . It’s like you’re lost. You have no plan. You have no schedule.”

“I tried,” Jess said hoarsely. Her throat hurt desperately. “In the beginning.”

When it had all cracked open and she’d been sure she’d be hailed as a heroine. She’d gone to the gym; she’d applied to jobs; she’d been fueled by adrenaline and righteousness.

And then had come the articles. And the lawsuits. Fortunately, the CEO of Rent the Gallery hadn’t been very good at cooking the books; he’d left paper trails all over. The evidence he’d belatedly tried to plant that would point to Jess had been flimsy at best. The District Attorney’s Office was investigating; Jess’s former employer was on the verge of being prosecuted for multiple crimes. Jess’s lawyer assured her that she had a strong shot at all suits—and there were three by now, suits and countersuits, all couched in legalese that made her brain hurt—being resolved in her favor.

But the damage had been done. Old colleagues were suddenly too busy to meet. Headhunters stopped answering her calls.

At first Jess had been indignant, and then enraged, and then, finally, exhausted. Kimmy was right. She’d been treading water for months, just waiting for her energy to give out and the waves to close over her.

“And now this demon thing . . . Jess, I’m worried about you.”

Jess’s eyes stung. “I’m worried about me too.” She heard voices that weren’t there and she was seriously contemplating the possibility of supernatural entities. She didn’t trust her own judgment. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Kimmy. When I do the right thing everything goes wrong.”

“Maybe if you do the wrong thing, everything will go right,” suggested Kimmy, with splendid Kimmy logic. “Oh, sweetie. Here. Have a tissue.”

It looked slightly used, probably by Davy, who had a vicious pollen allergy, but Jess took it anyway.

“I love you,” said Jess, noisily blowing her nose.

“I know,” said Kimmy. “Jess, what are we going to do about you?”

“Set up an alpaca farm in a remote village with no wi-fi?” Jess made an agonized face. “I kissed the hot arborist.”

“You did?” Kimmy was inordinately thrilled by the news. Possibly because it didn’t involve demons. Or Jess’s job prospects. “That’s great!”

Jess shook her head. “Except that he’s a widower and his son walked in on us and looked at me like he wanted to strike me dead on the spot.”

Kimmy tilted her head. “When you say walked in on . . .”

“It was just a kiss!”

It hadn’t felt like just a kiss. She’d dated Josh for nearly two years and it had never felt like that. She’d been aware, at the time, that there was something missing, but she’d decided it was just that they were both so busy. He worked all hours. She worked all hours. It wasn’t until the pandemic had pushed them into moving in together—a very short-lived experiment in cohabitation—that she’d been forced to face the fact that it wasn’t time; it was them. Or maybe it was just her. Maybe there was something missing in her. A flint that didn’t spark, like the gas stove clicking but not lighting.

Whereas with Adam—that flint had sparked. More than sparked. Blazed. But it wasn’t just the physical pyrotechnics. There’d been that crazy sense of connection, the easiness of it all, sitting in his kitchen, using his charger. Somehow, using his charger felt like an erotic metaphor. When she thought of Adam, everything felt like an erotic metaphor.

And then nothing. No text. No call.

“Don’t look so excited,” Jess told her best friend, who had met her husband at twenty-two and been married in a tasteful whirl of antique lace and carefully chosen canapés at twenty-five. “I’m pretty sure that’s that. His wife died a while ago—I can’t remember if he said how—and the way the kid looked at me made me feel like I’d killed her myself.”

Kimmy thought for a moment. “If anything happened to me, I would expect my kids to hate my potential replacement. I’d be a little offended if they didn’t.”

“But I’m not a potential replacement! It’s not even like we’re dating or anything. We’re just . . .”

“Just?”

Jess dropped her head in her hands. “We’re just fighting a demon together.”

Kimmy looked at her and then pointed at the floor. “Sit.”

“Can we talk here?”