Page 110 of What Happens at Nightfall

Just as she’d seen only what she’d expected to see when she’d looked at her mother. All these years. Thinking her mother had never wanted her.

“It was Ben he was after,” said Adam blankly. “Never Melinda. It’s Ben he has to get rid of to be free.”

The parrot squawked and tugged at Jess’s mother’s hair with his beak. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jess’s mother, yanking her hair free, “but it doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not,” said Jess. She looked at Adam, seeing her own fear mirrored and multiplied in his eyes. “If we’re right . . . Belfagor has Ben.”

Chapter Thirty

“Who’s Belfagor?” asked Jess’s mother.

“What’s my name? What’s my name?” blared from one of the sound systems, its potency diluted by having to compete with madrigals, mariachi, and silent film background music.

Adan whirled, trying to see past the shifting crowds of laughing, talking people, a nightmare kaleidoscope of merriment. “He’s here. He’s definitely here. Where?”

The parrot rose from Jess’s mother’s shoulder in an agitated flutter. “Avast!”

“The parrot,” said Jess. “I think it wants us to follow it.”

“It’s a parrot,” said Adam distractedly. “What if we follow it and it just leads us back to its nest in the main gate?”

Belfagor and Ben. Where had Allison said he’d been today? Leading people into the Valley Water. Was Belfagor trying to get Ben to drown himself? Adam’s mouth went dry. For all he knew, Ben was at the bottom of the lake. Every parent’s nightmare.

“Adam!” Adam jumped out of his skin as Cal slapped him on the shoulder. “I was looking for you.”

“Not now, Cal,” Adam said preemptively. “Unless you’ve seen Ben?”

“Why? Should I have seen Ben?” Cal didn’t wait for an answer. “I’d thought you told me you weren’t going to open the Vanderwilt mausoleum.”

“I didn’t.” Were they really wasting time on this? He had to get to the Valley Water. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to—”

“Really? There’s a whole crowd over there and some sort of performance. If you didn’t authorize it—”

“Adam.” Jess grabbed his arm. “Adam, that’s it.”

He stared at her, dazed. Again. So obvious. “The mausoleum.”

“We’re idiots,” she said. “What’s the quickest way there?”

There was no quick way, not with the main avenues all clogged with dawdling spectators. But if they cut across Bayside to the Bay-Grove Path and from there to the Rue Path, they could cut left on the Berry Path, which would spit them out a short sprint from Sycamore.

“This way,” he said, pushing past a group admiring the stylings of the a cappella group the Skeletones, only to bump right into the crowd milling around the port-a-potties, the ones Ben had so inconveniently moved. One of the plastic cabins had a large “Out of Order” sign on it.

Adam swore under his breath, a particularly appropriate word under the circumstances.

“Hey! Wait your turn!” protested a partygoer who had clearly been hitting the local craft ales hard.

And that was when the toilet exploded.

The blast blew open the sides of the port-a-potty. Muffled noises of distress could be heard from the neighboring potties as the explosion made them rock on their bases. People screamed and ducked and then cheered as fireworks blasted into the sky, the colored lights forming a giant letter B before it dissolved in a shower of sparks.

Cries of “Wow!” and “Gross!” could be heard, depending on the varying temperaments and levels of drunkenness of the participants.

“. . . a damning critique of modern society,” someone was saying. “The explosion of a portable toilet signifies . . .”

“It’s a distraction,” Adam said. “We have to get to the mausoleum.”

If the blockage had been bad before, now it was impossible. Spectators were crowding in around the port-a-potties, examining the wreckage, extracting the stories of the survivors in the neighboring stalls.