Page 101 of What Happens at Nightfall

Kimmy looked at Jess. “Shouldn’t you get that?”

Jess got up. “It’s probably Chinese food for next door. The idiot can never get his own address right.”

“All your eggrolls are belong to us,” called Kimmy.

Jess turned the two bolts and wrenched open the door. “If this is for next door—”

She stopped abruptly when she saw who was standing there.

“Jess?” Behind her, she could hear Kimmy scootching off the couch, concerned.

In front of Jess stood a woman. Not a delivery person. Not a ghost.

One sun-spotted hand clutched the handle of an ancient hard-sided wheelie suitcase, the other held a straw beach bag. An ancient pashmina trailed behind her, the fringes snarled into knots. Her dress, too summery for the late-October weather, was hand-embroidered with impossible flowers and opinionated parrots.

Jess knew it was hand-embroidered; she’d watched her make it.

“Mom?” she said.

“Surprise!” cried Cindy Waters.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The parrots were agitated.

They squawked overhead as Adam crossed the street from Baked in Brooklyn, the bakery bag awkwardly balanced on top of a pizza box. It was an hour before Nightfall opened, but ticket holders were already lined up around the block, waiting to be let in.

Adam reversed course, heading for the Prospect Park West Entrance. He crossed back to the far side to avoid the lineup, passing the old Weir Greenhouse, once a Victorian hothouse that supplied flowers to Green-Wood, then a picturesque ruin, and now an expensively refurbished visitor center for Green-Wood. There was something about the old iron letters reading “WEIR,” rising above the recently restored copper cupola, that was inherently creepy.

Adam wasn’t sure if the Victorians did creepy on purpose, or if it was just something in the air they breathed, like arsenic in their wallpaper. Cal would undoubtedly have opinions. Adam decided not to ask him.

“Ticket holders to the main gate,” said the guard at the Prospect Park West Entrance.

“Hey, it’s me.” Adam lowered the pizza box so the guard could see him over the bakery bag.

“Sorry, I thought you were a gate-crasher. They’ve been trying to sneak their way in here all evening.” The guard jerked a thumb at the pizza box. “That for me?”

“That’s for the kids. I feel bad they’re missing out on Nightfall.”

He’d gotten a large pizza and a six-pack of cupcakes. Extra cheese for extra guilt.

Adam hadn’t told Ben yet that Jess would be joining him for Nightfall. As his date. He hadn’t told Melinda either, but the only reason he hadn’t told Melinda was so Melinda couldn’t tell Ben.

At some point, if he was serious about Jess, he was going to have to man up and tell his eleven-year-old.

Later. When they’d dealt with the demon. He could only contemplate one crisis at a time.

Adam cut down Border Avenue, figuring sticking to the farthest path was the safest way to avoid the Nightfall performers. To keep it manageable, the designated paths ran from the main gate, branching off in carefully considered circles, rambling enough to give the feeling of wandering, but not enough that they’d have stragglers scattered throughout the cemetery. There were musical performances ranging from medieval to techno, film screenings and commedia dell’arte, mimes and mummers, refreshment tents and port-a-potties.

Most of the activities were concentrated in the central portion, around the statue of DeWitt Clinton and the fire memorial and other well-known monuments, mercifully far from his house at the Fort Hamilton entrance. But the plants were restless. Adam could hear it in the rustling of the leaves that quivered above the distant sound of the musicians tuning their instruments and practicing their scales; he could feel the tremor in the ground, as if the plants were digging in their roots, bracing for trouble.

Tilly—short for Tilia cordata, the littleleaf linden tree—was shaking as if in a high wind. Except there was no wind.

“Hang in there,” Adam told the agitated linden. “It’s just one night and I’ll be keeping an eye out.”

He hadn’t meant to tell Jess he talked to trees. The only other person he’d ever told was Kate. But Kate hadn’t believed him, not really. It had become a joke, Adam and the Ents. She’d thought he was exaggerating or meant it metaphorically, and he’d never pushed the point. Kate was a rationalist.

Jess was a rationalist, too, thought Adam, but she was a rationalist with experience of the irrational.