“Coffee’d be good.”
“I’ll get it started.”
Cal glanced after Layla. “She seems to have done a one-eighty on all this.”
“I’m persuasive. And you’re generous. I think I should plant one on you for that.”
“Go ahead. I can take it.”
Laughing, she braced her hands on his shoulders, gave him a firm, noisy kiss.
“Does that mean I don’t get ten bucks?”
Her smile beamed as she poked him in the belly. “You’ll take the kiss and like it. Anyway, part of the reason for Layla hanging back was the money. The idea of staying was-is-difficult for her. But the idea of taking a long leave, unpaid, from her job, coming up with rent money here, keeping her place in New York, that was pretty much off the table.”
She stepped up to the bright red chest to turn her Wonder Woman lamp on and off. From the look on her face, Cal could see the act pleased her.
“So, the rent-free aspect checked one problem off her list,” Quinn went on. “She hasn’t completely committed. Right now, it’s a day at a time for her.”
“I’ve got something to tell you, both of you, that may make this her last day.”
“Something happened.” She dropped her hand, turned. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you both. I want to call Fox first, see if he can swing by. Then I can tell it once.”
HE HAD TO DO IT WITHOUT FOX, WHO, ACCORDING to Mrs. Hawbaker, was at the courthouse being a lawyer. So he sat in the oddly furnished living room on a couch so soft and saggy he was already wishing for the opportunity to get Quinn naked on it, and told them about the visitation on Main Street.
“An OOB,” Quinn decided.
“An oob?”
“No, no. Initials, like CYA. Out of body-experience. It sounds like that might be what you had, or maybe there was a slight shift in dimensions and you were in an alternate Hawkins Hollow.”
He might have spent two-thirds of his life caught up in something beyond rational belief, but he’d never heard another woman talk like Quinn Black. “I was not in an alternate anything, and I was right inside my body where I belong.”
“I’ve been studying, researching, and writing about the paranormal for some time now.” Quinn drank some coffee and brooded over it.
“It could be he was talking to a ghost who caused the illusion that they were alone on the street, and caused everyone else out there to-I don’t know-blip out for a few minutes.” Layla shrugged at Quinn’s narrowed look. “I’m new at this, and I’m still working really hard not to hide under the covers until somebody wakes me up and tells me this was all a dream.”
“For the new kid, your theory’s pretty good,” Quinn told her.
“How about mine? Which is what she said is a hell of a lot more important right now than how she said it.”
“Point taken.” Quinn nodded at Cal. “This is the time, she said. Three times seven. That one’s easy enough to figure.”
“Twenty-one years.” Cal pushed up to pace. “This July makes twenty-one years.”
“Three, like seven, is considered a magickal number. It sounds like she was telling you it was always going to come now, this July, this year. It’s stronger, you’re stronger, they’re stronger.” Quinn squeezed her eyes shut.
“So, it and this woman-this spirit-have both been able to…”
“Manifest.” Quinn finished Layla’s thought. “That follows the logic.”
“Nothing about this is logical.”
“It is, really.” Opening her eyes again, Quinn gave Layla a sympathetic look. “Inside this sphere, there’s logic. It’s just not the kind we deal with, or most of us deal with, every day. The past, the now, the yet to be. Things that happened, that are happening, and that will or may are all part of the solution, the way to end it.”
“I think there’s more to that part.” Cal turned back from the window. “After that night in the clearing, the three of us were different.”
“You don’t get sick, and you heal almost as soon as you’re hurt. Quinn told me.”
“Yeah. And I could see.”
“Without your glasses.”
“I could also see before. I started-right there minutes afterward-to have flashes of the past.”
“The way you did-both of us did,” Quinn corrected, “when we touched the stone together. And later, when we-”
“Like that, not always that clear, not always so intense. Sometimes awake, sometimes like a dream. Sometimes completely irrelevant. And Fox…It took him a while to understand. Jesus, we were ten. He can see now.” Annoyed with himself, Cal shook his head. “He can see, or sense what you’re thinking, or feeling.”
“Fox is psychic?” Layla demanded.
“Psychic lawyer. He’s so hired.”
Despite everything, Quinn’s announcement made Cal’s lips twitch. “Not like that, not exactly. It’s never been something we can completely control. Fox has to deliberately push it, and it doesn’t always work then. But since then he has an instinct about people. And Gage-”
“He sees what could happen,” Quinn added. “He’s the soothsayer.”
“It’s hardest for him. That’s why-one of the reasons why-he doesn’t spend much time here. It’s harder here. He’s had some pretty damn vicious dreams, visions, nightmares, whatever the hell you want to call them.”
And it hurts you when he hurts, Quinn thought. “But he hasn’t seen what you’re meant to do?”
“No. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?” Cal said bitterly. “Has to be more fun to mess up the lives of three kids, to let innocent people die or kill and maim each other. Stretch that out for a couple of decades, then say: Okay, boys, now’s the time.”
“Maybe there was no choice.” Quinn held up a hand when Cal’s eyes fired. “I’m not saying it’s fair. In fact, it sucks. Inside and out, it sucks. I’m saying maybe it couldn’t be another way. Whether it was something Giles Dent did, or something set in motion centuries before that, there may have been no other choice. She said he was holding it, that he was preventing it from destroying the Hollow. If it was Ann, and she meant Giles Dent, does that mean he trapped this thing, this bestia, and in some form-beatus-has been trapped with it, battling it, all this time? Three hundred and fifty years and change. That sucks, too.”
Layla jumped at the brisk knock on the door, then popped up. “I’ll get it. Maybe it’s the delivery.”
“You’re not wrong,” Cal said quietly. “But it doesn’t make it easier to live through it. It doesn’t make it easier to know, in my gut, that we’re coming up to our last chance.”
Quinn got to her feet. “I wish-”
“It’s flowers!” Layla’s voice was giddy with delight as she came in carrying the vase of tulips. “For you, Quinn.”
“Jesus, talk about weird timing,” Cal muttered.
“For me? Oh God, they look like lollipop cups. They’re gorgeous!” Quinn set them on the ancient coffee table. “Must be a bribe from my editor so I’ll finish that article on-” She broke off as she ripped open the card. Her face was blank with shock as she lifted her eyes to Cal. “You sent me flowers?”
“I was in the florist before-”
“You sent me flowers on Valentine’s Day.”
“I hear my mother calling,” Layla announced. “Coming, Mom!” She made a fast exit.
“You sent me tulips that look like blooming candy canes on Valentine’s Day.”
“They looked like fun.”
“That’s what you wrote on the card. ‘These look like fun.’ Wow.” She scooped a hand through her hair. “I have to say that I’m a sensible woman, who knows very well Valentine’s Day is a commercially generated holiday designed to sell greeting cards, flowers, and candy.”
“Yeah, well.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “Works.”
“And I’m not the type of woman who goes all mushy and gooey over flowers, or sees them as an apology for an argument, a prelude to sex, or any of the other oft-perceived uses.”
“I just saw them, thought you’d get a kick out of them. Period. I’ve got to get to work.”