The Hollow - Sign Of Seven 2 Part 14

Look." The beer gla.s.s in Fox's hand foamed with blood. He set it down slowly.

"Two wasted beers in one night. I guess the party's over."

WHEN QUINN OPTED TO STAY AT THE BOWLING center with Cal until closing, Fox walked Layla and Cybil home. It was only a couple of blocks, and he knew they were far from defenseless. But he didn't like the idea of them being out at night on their own.

"What's the back story on the jerk currently wearing your beer?" Cybil asked him.

"Just a bully who's needled me since we were kids. Deputy Bully now."

"No particular reason?"

"I was skinny, smaller than him-smarter, too-and came from tree- hugger stock."

"More than enough. Well ..." Her fingers gave his biceps a testing pinch. "You're not skinny now. And you're still smarter than him." She sent Fox an approving smirk. "Quicker, too."

"He wants to hurt you. It's on his top ten list of things to accomplish."

Layla studied Fox's profile as they crossed the street. "He won't stop.

His kind doesn't."

"Napper's top ten list isn't my biggest concern. He has to get in line."

"Ah, home again." Cybil climbed the first step, turned, looked around the quiet street. "We managed bowling, dinner, a minor brawl, and a memo from evil, and it's still shy of eleven. The fun never ends in Hawkins Hollow." She laid her hands on Fox's shoulders. "Thanks for walking us home, cutie." She gave him a light kiss. "See you in the morning. Layla, why don't you work out the logistics- timing, transportation-with Fox and let me know. I'll be upstairs."

"My parents should be out of the house by eight," he told Layla when Cybil strolled away. "I can come by and pick you all up if you need."

"That's all right. We'll take Quinn's car, I imagine. Who's going to walk you home, Fox?"

"I remember the way."

"You know what I mean. You should come in, stay here."

He smiled, eased in a little closer. "Where here?"

"On the couch, for now anyway." She put a fingertip to his chest, eased him right back. "Your couch is lumpy, and you only have basic cable.

You need to work on your strategy. If you'd asked me to stay because you were worried about it just being you and Cybil in the house, I'd be trying to sleep on your couch with a rerun of Law and Order while I was thinking about you upstairs in bed. Kiss me good night, Layla."

"Maybe I am worried about being in the house, just me and Cybil."

"No, you're not. Kiss me good night."

She sighed. She really was going to have to work on her strategy.

Deliberately, she tipped her face up, and gave him the light, friendly kiss Cybil had. "Good night. Be careful."

"Careful doesn't always get the job done. Case in point."

He caught her face in his hands, lowered his lips to hers. Though the kiss was soft, though it was slow, she felt the impact from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. The glide of his tongue, the brush of his thumbs at her temples, the solid line of his body dissolved her bones.

He held her face even as he lifted his head, looked into her eyes. "That was a kiss good night."

"It was. No question about it."

He kissed her again with the same silky confidence until she had to grip his forearms for balance.

"Now neither one of us will get any sleep." He stepped back. "So my work here is done. Unfortunately. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay." She made it to the door before she turned, looked back at him from what she considered a safe distance. "I have a careful nature, especially when it's important. I think s.e.x is important, or should be."

"It's on my top ten list of personal priorities."

She laughed, opened the door. "Good night, Fox."

Inside, Layla went straight upstairs where Cybil came out of the office, eyebrow lifted. "Alone?"

"Yeah."

"Can I ask why you're not about to get a good taste of adorable lawyer?"

"I think he might matter too much."

"Ah." With a knowing nod, Cybil leaned on the doorjamb. "That always tangles things up. Want to work off some s.e.xual frustration with research and logs?" "I'm not sure charts and graphs have that kind of power, but I'll give it a shot." She shrugged out of her jacket as she stepped into the office.

"What do you do when they might matter too much?"

"Generally, I run-either straight into it or away. It's had mixed results."

Cybil walked over to study the map of the town Layla had generated and pinned to the wall.

"I tend to circle around and around, weigh and think entirely too much.

I'm wondering now if it was because I tuned in." She tapped her head.

"Without really knowing I was tuning in."

"That may be." Cybil picked up a red pushpin- representing blood- stuck it into the bowling center on the map to signal another incident.

"But Fox would be a lot to think about under normal circ.u.mstances. Add in the abnormal, and it's a lot to consider. Take your time if time's what you need."

"Under normal circ.u.mstances that would be reasonable." At the desk, Layla chose a red index card, wrote: b.l.o.o.d.y Beer, Fox, Bowl-a-Rama, and the time and date. "But time is one of the issues, isn't it? And how much we may actually have."

"You sound like Gage. It's a good thing you two didn't hook up or you'd never look beyond the dark side."

"That may be, but ..." Frowning, Layla studied the map. "There's another pin, a black pin on the road between Fox's house and Cal's."

"Standing for the big, ugly dog. Didn't I tell you? No, that's right, you went straight from work to the center. Sorry."

"Tell me now."

Once she had, Layla selected a dark blue card, the color she'd chosen for any demon-in-animal-form sighting, filled it in.

"I hate to say this, but while my mind is now occupied and my hands busy, I'm still s.e.xually frustrated."

"There, there." Cybil patted Layla's shoulder. "I'm going to go make some tea. We'll add some chocolate. That always helps."

Layla doubted if candy was going to satisfy her appet.i.te for adorable lawyer, but she'd take what she could get.

CHAPTER Eight

A CHILLY TRICKLE OF RAIN DAMPENED THE morning. It was the sort, Fox knew, that tended to hang around all day like a sick headache. Nothing to do but tolerate it.

He dug out a hooded sweats.h.i.+rt from a basket of laundry he'd managed to wash, but hadn't yet put away. At least he was ninety percent sure he'd washed it. Maybe seventy-five. So he sniffed it, then b.u.mped that up to a hundred percent.

He found jeans, underwear, socks-though the socks took longer as he actually wanted them to match. As he dressed, glanced around his bedroom, he vowed he'd find the time and the willpower to put the stupid laundry away, even though it would eventually be in need of was.h.i.+ng and putting away again. He'd make the bed sometime in this decade, and shovel out the rest of the junk.

If he could get it to that point, maybe he could find a cleaning lady who'd stick it out. Maybe a cleaning guy, he considered over his first c.o.ke of the day. A guy would get it better, probably.

He'd look into it.

He laced on his old workboots, and because housekeeping was on his mind, tossed discarded shoes in the closet and, inspired, shoved the laundry basket in after them.

He grabbed his keys, another c.o.ke and a Devil Dog that would serve as his while-driving breakfast. Halfway down the outside steps, he spotted Layla standing at the base.

"Hey."

"I was just coming up. We saw your truck was still here, so I had Quinn drop me off. I thought I'd ride with you."

"Great." He held up the snack cake. "Devil Dog?"

"Actually, I've had enough of devil dogs on four legs."

"Oh yeah." He ripped the wrapper as he joined her. "Strangely, that's never put me off the joy of the Devil Dog."

"That is not your breakfast," she said as he bit in. He only smiled, kept walking.

"My stomach stopped maturing at twelve." He pulled open the pa.s.senger door of his truck. "How'd you sleep?" She shot a look at him over her shoulder as she climbed in. "Well enough." She waited until he'd rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel. "Even after Cybil told me about her and Gage's run-in- literally-with a devil dog. It happened when they were driving to Cal's from your place."

"Yeah, Gage filled me in while I was skinning him at pinball." He set his c.o.ke in the drink holder, took another bite of the cake. After a quick check, he pulled away from the curb.

"I wanted to ride with you because I had some ideas on how to approach this thing today."

"And I thought it was because you can't keep away from me."

"I'm trying not to react with my hormones."

"d.a.m.n shame."

"That may be, but ... It took so much out of Quinn yesterday. I'm hoping we could try, you and me, and take her out of the mix. The whole point is to find the journals, if they're there. If they are, they're in the now. If not, then we'd have to fall back to Quinn. But-"

"You'd like to spare her the migraine. We can try it. I'm also a.s.suming you didn't mention this idea to her."

"I figured, if you agreed, we could bring it up as something we came up with on the drive over." She smiled over at him. "There, I'm working on my strategy. Did you dream last night?"

"Only about you. We were in my office, and you were wearing this really, really little red dress and those high heels with the ankle straps?

Those kill me. You sat on my desk, facing me. I was in the chair. And you said, after you'd licked your lips: 'I'm ready to take dictation, Mr.

O'Dell.'"

She listened, head c.o.c.ked. "You just made that up."

He shot her a quick and charming grin. "Maybe, but I guarantee I'll have that dream tonight. Maybe we should go out. There's this bar over the river? A nice bar. They have live music on Sat.u.r.day nights. They get some pretty decent musicians in."

"It sounds so normal. I keep trying to keep a grip on normal with one hand while I'm digging into the impossible with the other. It's ..." "Surreal. I forget about it-between the Sevens, I can forget about it for weeks, even months sometimes. Then something reminds me. That's surreal, too. Going along, doing the work, having fun, whatever and zap, it's right back in my head. The closer it gets, the more it's in my head."

His fingers danced against the steering wheel to the beat of Snow Patrol.

"So a nice bar with good music is a way to remember it's a lot, but it's not everything."

"That's a smart way to look at it. I'm not sure I can get to that point, but I'd like to listen to some music across the river. What time?"

"Ah ... nine? Is nine good for you?"

"All right." She drew in a breath when he turned in the lane to the farmhouse. She was making a date with a man she was about to link with psychically. Surreal didn't quite cover it.

It also felt rude, she discovered, to go inside the house without invitation. It was Fox's childhood home, true enough, but he no longer lived there. She thought about going into her parents' condo when they weren't there, deliberately choosing a time they weren't there, and simply couldn't.

"This feels wrong," she said as they stood in the living room. "It feels wrong and intrusive. I understand why we want to do this while they're not home, but it feels ..." At a loss, she settled for the standby. "Rude."

"My parents don't mind people coming in. Otherwise, they'd lock the doors."

"Still-"

"We have to prioritize, Layla." Quinn spread her hands. "The reason we're here is more important than standard guidelines of courtesy. I got so much outside the house yesterday. I'm bound to get more inside."

"About that. I had this idea, talked it over with Layla on the drive. If you don't mind us cutting in line, Quinn, I'd like to try something wi th Layla first. We may be able to visualize where the journals are, if they're here.