Page 83 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Yes, but no demons. Jess, if you were, um—”

“Immortal?”

It was a terrifying thought. In the dimness of the Campbell apartment, Jess could hear the crackle of flames, feel the urgency that she—that someone!—had felt that night in Brooklyn 150 years ago.

But she wasn’t an immortal thirtysomething. She’d been a baby. She knew she’d been a baby. She had the baby pictures to prove it. She’d blown out birthday candles year after year. She’d lost teeth and gained zits and drank too much on her twenty-first birthday. Kimmy could vouch for it, even if Jess was beginning to doubt her own memories.

“I am not my own grandchild,” Jess said fiercely, pushing Adam’s phone back at him. “That Lois Duncan book was fiction, Adam. It’s called fiction for a reason. Do you need me to show you my birth certificate?”

“That won’t be necessary,” he mumbled.

“Are you sure?” To be fair, Jess would have wanted to see the birth certificate if the shoe were on the other foot. A sudden thought struck her, making her choke on her punch. “Is this why you wanted to see me? Because you think I’m some sort of immortal, statue-crushed time traveler?”

“No! I wanted to see you because I wanted to see you.” Adam sat up so quickly that the table rocked. Liquid slopped over the sides of his punch glass. “Cal sent me this yesterday. I didn’t even open it until I was on the subway over to my meeting today. We’d already made our plans. But Jess . . . It’s weird. You have to admit it’s weird.”

“It’s all weird. Everything that’s happened since the night I met you is weird.” Jess wished she could make it all his fault, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t just the cemetery and the Vanderwilts. It was Jess too. She traced a finger along the side of her glass. “I talked to my mother the other night. She told me my grandmother died beneath a fallen statue of an angel in a Brooklyn cemetery. That was . . . news to me.”

“This had never come up before?” Adam couldn’t raise just one brow, so he raised both. It was a ridiculously adorable gesture. “My family talks about everything. They even talk about talking.”

“Good for you,” said Jess sourly. “All I knew was that my grandmother died when my mother was an infant. And that she was named Jacinta. Jan. My Pop called her Jan.”

“And she died at Green-Wood.” Adam was silent for a moment. “Why is her last name the same as yours? Shouldn’t she be Jacinta Something-Else?”

Jess shook her head. “My grandmother’s married name was Waters. My mother never married—I don’t know who my father is, only that he was someone my mother met at Berkeley when she was in grad school.”

All through her childhood, Jess had spun fantasies about her father showing up one day, claiming her; about seeing someone on TV who looked exactly like her; about being princess of a small European principality like Mia in The Princess Diaries. She’d always assumed that someday, when she’d grown up, her mother would finally tell her, let her make her own choices. She hadn’t. That aching absence was still there. Jess didn’t even know if her father had ever known about her, if he would have wanted her if he’d known—or if he had known and, knowing, walked away.

“Anyway.” Jess took another slug of her punch. “That’s why I have my mother’s last name, which is the same as her mother’s last name. I am the unwed daughter of an unwed mother. In a matriarchal society, we would just take this for granted, you know.”

“At least yours is easy to spell,” said Adam, his calloused fingers playing with the short stem of his drink. “Waters. Like a bridge over troubled?”

“Ha,” said Jess. “There’s nothing mysterious about the Waters side of the family. They were farmers in New England until the Depression, when it all went bust. Pop grew up poor, got a scholarship, got his accounting degree, moved to New York.”

“Where he met your grandmother. Jacinta.”

“Yeah.” It was the Jacintas you had to watch out for.

Jacinta Piatti, Cornelia Vanderwilt’s seamstress.

Jacinta Waters, dead beneath the statue of an angel.

Jacinta Waters the Third, whose head was fuzzy and whose tongue was slowly going numb under the influence of whatever it was they put in these Prohibition Punches.

“Adam?” Jess leaned across the table, the words tumbling out in a rush. “You know how you said you were having someone else’s thoughts? So have I. I keep remembering things I shouldn’t be able to remember, like being at the Brooklyn Theater Fire. Oh, and whenever I go to Green-Wood, Cornelia Vanderwilt shows up and tries to talk to me. She threw that urn at me. Now. Tell me I’m crazy.”

“Cornelia Vanderwilt threw the urn at you? Not—” Adam flapped his hands. Neither of them wanted the sound system to start blasting “What’s My Name.” It wouldn’t go with the atmosphere at all.

Jess nodded. “I think. She said something about hitting me over the head with the truth.” She cocked her head. “For truth, read urn? Or was she trying to kill me? Like my grandmother.”

“That was terrifying.” Adam looked across at her, his expression unguarded. “Seeing that urn coming toward you— Do we need to get you out of here? Could you go to California to visit your mom?”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No! I’m trying to not get rid of you. I’m trying to prevent you being gotten rid of.” Adam frowned at his drink. “That didn’t sound right.”

“I appreciate the sentiment. I would also prefer not to be gotten rid of. But I don’t know if running away is the answer. Whatever this is—I’m not in it by accident. There’s some connection there. There’s some reason Cornelia Vanderwilt keeps following me. Probably with homicidal motives.” Jess shuddered and took another slug of Prohibition Punch.

“We could come up with an answer to all of this,” Adam said hopefully. “Cornelia could be a hallucination, the fire memories could be suggestion . . . But we’d be kidding ourselves. Was it Sherlock Holmes who said when you remove all the impossible, whatever is left, however unlikely, is the possible?”