Page 41 of What Happens at Nightfall

The sky was golden with ginkgos. They circled in a great wave, twisting around the thing in the sky, and when they fell—suddenly, all at once, as ginkgo leaves do—there was nothing in the sky but one lone parrot, spreading its wings against the gloaming.

The parrot alighted, briefly, on the top of Cornelia Vanderwilt’s head. “Avast!” it squawked, and then flew off again.

Adam blinked at the bust of Cornelia Vanderwilt. He’d seen it fall. He could have sworn he’d seen it fall. He could have sworn that the tomb had crumbled, the pillars fallen, but there were no chunks of masonry, just the guide sprawled in her robe, staring open-mouthed at the sky. Behind them, the Vanderwilt tomb stood as it always had. Cornelia Vanderwilt gazed down smug and unchipped from her place at the top of the roof. A glorious red, purple, and gold sunset filled the sky with light.

“What in the hell,” said Adam, enunciating very carefully, “was that?”

“You tell me.” Jess sat up painfully, drawing up her legs and pressing her head against her knees.

“I told you not to break the circle, you idiot!” The guide pushed herself up, clutching her container of salt to her chest. “I almost had him!”

“You,” said Adam to the guide, “don’t go anywhere.” He hunkered down next to Jess, whose face was alarmingly gray. He plucked a ginkgo leaf out of her hair. “Are you okay? How’s your hand?”

Jess turned her hand over, palm up, in a strangely detached way, as though the limb belonged to someone else. “It’s fine. I think.”

Her burns were still there but they had healed: not just scabbed over, but turned to shiny scar tissue, as though the injury had happened not moments but months ago, possibly even years ago. The overlapping lines looked strangely like a flower.

Jess closed her hand into a fist, burying it in her lap. “The leaves—what was that?”

“Ginkgos,” said Adam. “They always drop their leaves all at once.”

Drop being the operative term. Usually not until the first frost. But maybe they were early this year. Maybe it had been that wind. Maybe the wind had just been wind.

Adam looked at her, trying to reconcile the woman curled up on the stone with the woman holding that parasol, sending milky light shining out against the creature in the sky. The parasol lay on the grass, just a parasol, the silver slightly tarnished. It looked like someone had flung it with great force. One of the spokes had broken, making the purple silk stick out at a strange angle. Jet beads littered the ground around it.

Just a parasol. Just the wind. Just an old scar on Jess’s hand.

Adam scrambled to his feet, peering behind the statues in their niches, craning his head to look in the dark corners under the portico.

“What are you doing?”

“Projectors. There have to be projectors.”

The light from the parasol—his kids had made him buy enough overpriced light sabers at zoo gift shops for Adam to know how easily that effect was achieved. Maybe it was activated by pressure; maybe it had short-lived batteries that had burned out.

As for that crazy voice . . . Adam bounded over to the statue of the reclining woman, now back in her original position, mere stone again. “There has to be a mic somewhere—a speaker. Maybe some dry ice. She had all day to set this up.”

Jess lifted her head from her knees. “Adam, the statues moved.”

“We thought the statues moved.” They were standing the right way around now, the woman leaning on her pillar, the knight’s sword hidden in his draperies. An illusion, it had to have been an illusion. “Remember that movie Young Sherlock Holmes? They were given hallucinogens. Watson thought cream puffs were pursuing him.”

If he remembered correctly, there had even been a stained glass figure who jumped from a window. Adam felt relief like a cool drink on a hot day. Of course, that was what it was. She had drugged them somehow.

The guide was bent over the parasol, murmuring in distress over the broken spoke.

“How did you do it?” Adam demanded. “How did you drug us?”

“I didn’t do anything to you.” The guide straightened, clutching the parasol protectively to the purple-and-black folds of her robe. “But you—you just ruined everything! Do you realize the harm you’ve done?”

Now that the illusion was broken, Adam recognized her arcane attire as doctoral robes. He should know. His father was on the faculty at UChicago Law School. He’d certainly seen enough academic regalia to identify the species, if not the specific school.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I?” The guide drew herself up proudly. “I am a grad student.”

“Is this for a film?” Adam looked around for a hidden camera. “Performance art?”

Ignoring that, the guide said fiercely, “I’m the only one who knows—the only one who even suspected! I’ve been tracking him for two years now! I would have had him if you hadn’t broken the circle!”