Page 60 of What Happens at Nightfall

“It’s a Yale thing,” said Kameka airily.

Adam felt like he’d just come up from deep water, completely disoriented, ears clouded. “Do I know you?”

Kameka flapped a hand. “It’s okay. You don’t need to pretend to remember me. I was three years behind you. You were dating that stuck-up girl from Davenport.”

Davenport had been Kate’s residential college. “Kate. My wife.”

Kameka clapped a hand over her mouth. “Never mind. Forget I said that. My roommate had a crush on you, so I got a biased account.”

“Who was your roommate?” Adam felt like there were two Adams. One was standing there having a perfectly normal conversation with another Yale alum, while another was hissing at him to get out, get out, get out.

“Erin Riley. Red hair. Big voice.”

Long-forgotten memories, of a girl in a white flounced dress, trilling about taking heart, no danger lowers. Adam had to fight to hold on to the thought. “She played Mabel in Pirates?”

“To your Frederic. I had to listen to you singing ‘Oh Is There Not One Maiden Breast’ three nights running, thank you very much. Although I did appreciate the floofy shirts you guys wore. Open to the waist,” she added, as an aside to Jess. “It was a better look for some than for others.”

“I won’t ask which I was,” said Adam slowly. He felt like he was communicating from very far away. “Are you really here to look at my documents?”

Kameka grinned at him. “Well, when you put it that way . . . yes, actually. My specialty is the post–Civil War period so Cornelia Vanderwilt is right up my alley. Jess was telling me about Cornelia and her demon—”

“Her supposed demon,” Jess said quickly.

Adam grimaced as the noise in his ears rose to an impossible pitch. He was really going to have to see an audiologist.

Kimmy misinterpreted his expression. “Whatever. I had no idea you were Adam from Yale. I love how the world only has three people in it.” Her mouth was moving and moving, but Adam was having trouble making out the words. “. . . basis for a micro-history . . . tensions of post–Civil War society . . . Are you okay?”

The pressure in his head was unbearable, like the worst headache he’d ever had multiplied by a factor of twenty. Liar. Liar. Trouble. Trouble. Jess’s features wavered in front of him; her eyes seemed to go as flat and hard as mother-of-pearl, glowing with the eerie light that had poured from the parasol; her hair writhed with the serpents that had been in the grass. Adam would have screamed, but his mouth wouldn’t move, none of him would move. His head felt like it was about to burst.

Jess moved abruptly toward him. “Adam—your nose is bleeding.”

She brandished something at him and he flinched sharply away.

“Fine. Don’t take my used tissue,” she said, and he saw, in surprise, that it was a tissue, only a tissue, crumpled and slightly stained. “But your nose is starting to drip on your shirt.”

“Here.” Kameka held out another tissue.

Adam took it without looking at her, his eyes glued to Jess. Her hair was hair again, her eyes their usual misty blue.

“Why can’t I google you?” he blurted. “When I plug in your name, nothing comes up.”

“That’s probably because you’re looking under the wrong name,” said Kameka matter-of-factly. “Did you try Jacinta?”

“Jacinta.” The howling rose in his ears like a building storm. Rage—and fear. “Jacinta?”

“Didn’t Jess tell you? Her real name is Jacinta. It’s part of why we bonded in kindergarten—we were the girls with the weird names. Like Cher and Dionne in Clueless. Except without the fancy cars.”

Jess took a step forward, her face very pale. “Why were you trying to google me?”

“You showed up in my life and all hell broke loose!” Trouble, trouble, shouted the voice. Hair of snake and eyes of pearl . . . The statues in their niches moving; fire and destruction. Psychedelics—she and Ingrid, they’d slipped him psychedelics, it had to be, what else could it be? “How do I know you’re not causing all of this?”

“Whoa.” Kameka stepped between the two of them, putting a protective hand on her friend’s arm. “Jess was only at Green-Wood because I made her come on that ridiculous tour with me. I was the one who found the tour, not Jess.”

“How do I know that? How do I know you’re even Kameka Olsen?” Adam wasn’t even sure what he was saying; the words poured out without his conscious volition. “You could be making it up. You could be making it all up.”

“You really don’t look well,” said the woman who claimed to know him from Yale.

Of course Adam didn’t look well. He hadn’t slept properly in weeks, stalked by evil Cookie Monster and the woman in front of him wearing only a witch’s hat, and if that wasn’t enough to confuse anyone, he didn’t know what was.