Page 90 of What Happens at Nightfall

Jess pushed her hair back behind her ears, looking at him with a troubled expression. Adam resisted the urge to suck in his stomach. He’d been frying a lot of Dr. Frank’s chicken. Also, there were pigs on his boxers. With wings.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Adam felt like there was glass in his throat. Broken glass. Scratchy. “Fair enough.”

What did he have to offer her, after all? He was a middle-aged widower with two kids and a demon. He lived in a cemetery. The high point of his life was new chicken recipes. She was better off without him.

“Have you seen my pants?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

Jess pointed to the foot of the bed, where his khakis sprawled in glorious abandon. “I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. I wasn’t saying no.” Her face scrunched together, like she was trying not to cry. “I just don’t know—are we getting free of this thing? Adam, I don’t know if you realized, but if you’re hearing it here—it means he’s in my apartment. He’s in my bed.”

Adam hadn’t realized. His blood had been somewhere other than his brain. “Belfagor.”

“What’s my name? What’s my name?” blared out of Jess’s phone.

“I’m really starting to hate that song,” said Jess.

Adam jammed a foot into his pants, almost overbalancing. “You can come to my place.”

“But he’s there too.”

Half in his pants, Adam stared at her, knowing she was right. Whatever wards Ingrid said were there, they hadn’t worked. And it was at his house that Jess had almost been killed by Cornelia Vanderwilt throwing an urn at her. He couldn’t risk that. He didn’t know how many urns Cornelia had on hand.

“A hotel—” he began.

“Like Poltergeist?” Jess shook her head, her mouth wobbling in something that was neither a laugh nor a sob but somewhere in between. “Doesn’t the ghost follow them to the hotel?”

It had been so long since he’d seen it that Adam couldn’t remember, but he took the point. He shoved his left leg into his pants and hastily pulled up the zipper. “Have you seen my phone?”

“Floor,” said Jess. It must have fallen out of his pants in the mad scramble to the bed. She frowned at him as he typed into the search bar. “Are you calling an Uber?”

Adam held up the phone. “I’m googling how to get rid of demons.”

“I see,” said Jess. “How to get rid of demons. Very direct.”

Adam fished his shirt off the floor and shrugged into it. “I’ve had it. No more denial. No more hoping it will just go away. I will fight this thing with whatever I’ve got.”

On an impulse, Adam pulled up a song on his phone.

“Push it good! Push it real good!” blasted into Jess’s bedroom.

Jess’s mouth fell open. “You’re fighting evil with Salt-N-Pepa?”

“We tried using real salt and that didn’t work . . .”

Jess kissed him. Quick, hard, over far too soon.

“What was that for?”

“For being you,” she said. “Shall we have that glass of water?”

Adam looked regretfully at the bed. He didn’t dare risk it, even with Salt-N-Pepa drowning out whatever the demon might be trying to whisper. “Not a euphemism this time.”

Jess headed toward the kitchen. “It was never a euphemism.”

“Mostly,” said Adam, trailing after her.

“Mostly,” agreed Jess. She glanced at the glowing clock on the stove. “Did you realize it’s after ten already?”