Page 19 of What Happens at Nightfall

Adam pulled the door shut with more force than necessary. It clanged in a way that would have done the House of Usher proud.

If the ghost of Cornelia Vanderwilt was trying to speak to him, he thought irritably, it was probably to tell him to get the hell out. If Mrs. Astor had had her four hundred, Cornelia Vanderwilt had had her forty—the number of people in the city she deemed acceptable to invite to tea. In death as in life she was devoted to keeping people out; her grand monument to familial pride boasted multiple locks, deliberately designed to be as difficult to manipulate as possible.

“Can you hold this for me?” Handing the flashlight to Jess, Adam leaned the parasol against the wall and wrestled with the two locks on the inside door.

Jess obligingly shone the light at the door for him. “That’s a lot of locks.”

“Three of them.” Adam shoved the outer door into place, crouching down to hunt for the final lock, cunningly disguised in a riot of pomegranates and vines.

Jess angled the flashlight over his head. “Wasn’t there an M. R. James story about three locks on a tomb?”

Adam squinted at a vine. “Is that the one who wrote the Dalgliesh books? My mother liked those.”

Adam’s mother was a successful labor lawyer who liked to relax after a busy day of fighting the man by reading about British people being murdered, genteelly, in the library, with a candlestick. Or possibly a shooting stick. Or any stick, so long as it was a British stick.

“No, that was P. D. James. M. R. James was an English academic who wrote incredibly creepy ghost stories.”

“Living in a cemetery, I tend to stay away from those.” The key didn’t seem to want to go into the lock. Adam twisted it, trying to find the right angle.

“Probably for the best,” said Jess. There was a pause, and then she added, “I don’t get the impression those boys are going to try it again. They were really scared.”

“Good,” said Adam grimly. The key finally grated into place.

It wouldn’t have been hard for Ben to pocket the keys; they lived in a drawer in Kate’s old desk, largely forgotten. Ben could have grabbed them on an impulse. But the rest of it . . . Ben had to have invited his friends, acquired the Ouija board, collected the candles. How long had Ben been planning this?

The lock clicked into place, but Adam stayed crouching there a moment longer, the riot of vegetation blurring in front of him. There was no getting around it. He was going to have to talk to Ben when he got back.

But what was he going to say? Your mom’s not in there? Don’t go chasing corpses, stick to the living people you’re used to? He’d spent so much time trying to pretend everything was normal, trying to make everything normal, for himself and the kids. Fake it until you make it. But now they were going to have to open up that whole damned can of worms all over again.

Not worms. Worms were great. They enriched the soil.

Snakes. That was what was in there. Feelings. Loss. Anger. Regret.

Maybe they could just go up to Dr. Frank’s farm and hug a chicken. Chicken therapy. It could be a new thing. Cluck your way to calm.

“Is something wrong over there?”

“No.” Lies, lies, all lies. “Just trying to figure out what to do about keeping this place secure.” Not entirely a lie.

Adam levered himself to his feet, noticing the guide’s umbrella leaning against the stone, just below a statue of a woman clinging to a pillar. He found himself strangely reluctant to touch it again.

He gestured in the umbrella’s general direction. “Do you remember what the tour company was called?”

Jess wrinkled her nose. “It was a weird name . . . Houses of the Dead? No. Domiciles of the Damned. That was it.”

“I don’t know them.” Darn it. Some of the tour operators he knew by name; if it was a group that came through regularly, he would have known whom to contact. The lost and found would be closed by now, everyone in the office gone home. He wasn’t sure why, but he really didn’t want to bring that ridiculous umbrella into the house. “I’ll have to google them.”

“I can try to get it back to her if you like. I have the tour company info.”

“Would you? That would be super.” Great, now he was talking like a character in a seventies sitcom. Next he’d be telling her it was all groovy. “I’m not sure why, but that thing gives me the creeps.”

“I’ll trade you.” Jess handed the flashlight back to him, and reached past him to grab the handle of the umbrella. “You live in a cemetery and a parasol gives you the creeps?”

“Maybe I had a childhood encounter with an umbrella that I’ve repressed.”

“Is that like being eaten by raccoons?”

“Don’t joke about the raccoons. We’ve got one here with a major attitude problem. It’s been making a mess of my mulch pit.” Adam covertly studied the umbrella as it hung from Jess’s hand. The jet beads jangled, mocking him. He was being crazy. It was just an ugly umbrella. “The main gate is right down this way. It’s closer to us than you’d think. From there, I can take you to the R.”