Page 47 of What Happens at Nightfall

A muted flush heralded Ingrid’s return. “You have wards in your bathroom too,” she announced.

“I thought that was air freshener,” said Adam.

Jess’s lips twitched, and he grinned back at her.

“It’s not funny,” said Ingrid, plopping herself down at the kitchen table without being asked. “Someone who lived in this house before was aware that something dangerous was being contained here at Green-Wood.”

Adam opened his mouth and then closed it again. Instead, he said, “Does anyone want coffee? Tea? Seaweed snacks?”

“I’m fine,” said Jess. She rethought it. “Actually, no. I’m not fine. But I don’t think coffee will help.”

“Did you know that in the seventeenth century, Pope Clement VIII called coffee Satan’s drink?” said Ingrid, in her college lecturer voice. “Then he tried it and decided he liked it, so there you go.”

Jess had an insane vision of a man in a mitre spraying holy coffee instead of holy water. “Baptism by latte?”

“I think we’re straying from the point,” said Adam, pulling out the chair next to Jess. Just having him next to her was somehow calming. “What I want to know is—why were you following around my daughter?”

“I think your daughter is the next hereditary master of”—Ingrid looked furtively around the room, lowering her voice—“you know.”

“Okay. Let me get this straight. You think my daughter is the—” He gave his head a shake. “I can’t even say it. You think Melinda is the hereditary master of Bel—”

“Don’t say his name!”

“Can we just call him Voldemort?” Jess could feel herself veering into the sort of slaphappiness she remembered from late-night college study sessions.

“I think we’re not supposed to say his name either,” said Adam, stretching out his legs in front of him. His calf brushed against Jess’s. “Okay, why is my daughter the hereditary heir of he who cannot be named?”

If Ingrid heard the deep skepticism in his voice, she chose to ignore it. “It all started with Cornelia Vanderwilt. Well, I mean, really, it all started with the fall from heaven, and then there’s some stuff with the Templars, but we don’t need to go back that far. As far as you’re concerned,” said Ingrid magnanimously, “it all starts with Cornelia Vanderwilt.”

“Uh-huh,” said Adam. Jess had seen the way his face had changed when Ingrid mentioned the Templars. “I’m pretty sure I read this in a Dan Brown novel.”

“Dan Brown has no clue,” said Ingrid dismissively. She flicked open the pictures app on her phone, clicked on a thumbnail, and held the phone out toward Jess and Adam. “This is the famous Fagnani portrait of Cornelia Vanderwilt.”

“I know,” said Adam. To Jess, he added, “The copy is in my in-laws’ dining room. They donated the original to the Met for tax purposes.”

“Fancy,” said Jess.

“Cheap,” said Adam shortly. “They overstated the value dramatically. Fagnani wasn’t that big a deal and neither were they.”

Impertinence! came a voice from behind Adam.

The voice. Again.

But this time, there was more. Behind Adam, Jess could see the faint outline of a figure, as transparent as stained glass, a woman in a narrow-fronted dress with a bustle at the back, her hair intricately arranged in curls. The woman in the portrait.

The woman from the tomb.

Oblivious, Ingrid went on, “Cornelia Vanderwilt came from an old Anglo-Dutch-Huguenot family and she married into another old Dutch family. Their blood was so blue they bled indigo, but the family fortunes had been reduced over the years. By the 1870s she was forced to watch as the new money—the railroad money and mining money—took over New York society. You see, after the Civil War—”

“It’s okay,” said Jess, blinking hard. There was nothing behind Adam now. Just a family organizer hanging on the wall. No women, transparent or otherwise. “I’ve watched season one of The Gilded Age. You don’t have to explain.”

“You cannot rely on TV for your historical information,” said Ingrid sternly. “Don’t even get me started on The Tudors. Anyway, some old families banded together and tried to close the new ones out. Not Cornelia Vanderwilt. She tried another way.” Ingrid pulled up another picture on her phone. “This is the symbol of the Ordo Hermeticus Fratres Crepusculum Aeris.”

“The what?” Adam looked to Jess.

“I took Spanish in school.”

Adam regarded her quizzically. “I thought I heard you saying something in Latin back there.”