“I’ll get what makes sense out of Fox’s apartment tomorrow,” Layla said. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Flip for the guest room.” Gage took a quarter out of his pocket. “Loser takes the pullout in the office.”
“Oh.” Layla frowned at the coin. “I want to be gracious and say you’re already in there, but I’ve slept on that pullout. Heads. No… tails.”
“Pick one, sweetheart.”
She fisted her hands on either side of her head, wiggled her hips, squeezed her eyes tight. Gage had seen people invent stranger rituals for luck.
“Tails.”
Gage flipped it, snagged it, slapped it on the back of his hand. “Should’ve gone with your first instinct.”
She sighed over the eagle. “Oh well. Fox is going to be a while, so…”
“We’ll try the link as soon as the dining room’s set up.” Cybil glanced out the window. “I guess we stick inside. It’s starting to rain.”
“Plus, snakes. Well, enough basking for them.” Layla walked back in the dining room to help organize.
“YOU’RE TAKING A LOT ON.” FOX STOOD BY HIS FATHER on the back porch of the farmhouse, staring out through the steady, soaking rain.
“I was at Woodstock, kid of mine. We’ll be fine.”
In the distant field a handful of tents stood already pitched. He and his father, along with his brother, Ridge, and Bill Turner, had put together a wooden platform, hung a canopy over it on poles to serve as a kind of cook tent.
That wasn’t so weird, Fox thought, but the line of bright blue Porta Potties along the back edge of the field? That was a strange sight.
His parents would take it in stride, Fox knew. That’s what they did.
“Bill’s going to hook up a few shower areas,” Brian went on, adjusting the bill of his ball cap as he stood in his old work boots and ancient Levi’s. “He’s a handy guy.”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll be pretty rude and crude, but it’ll serve for a week or two, and supplement the schedule your mom and Sparrow are going to make up for people to use the house.”
“Don’t just let people have the run of the place.” Fox looked into his father’s calm eyes. “Come on, Dad, I know you guys. Not everybody’s honest and trustworthy.”
“You mean there are dishonest people in the world who aren’t in politics?” Brian lifted his eyebrows high. “Next thing you’re going to tell me there’s no Easter Bunny.”
“Just lock up at night for a change. Just for now.”
Brian made a noncommittal sound. “Jim expects some people to start heading over within the next couple of days.”
Fox surrendered. His parents would do what they would do. “Could he give you any idea how many?”
“A couple hundred. People listen to Jim. More if he can manage it.”
“I’ll help as much as I can.”
“You don’t worry about that. We’ll take care of this. You do what you have to do, and goddamn it, you take care of yourself. You’re the only oldest son I’ve got.”
“That’s true.” He turned, gave Brian a hug. “I’ll see you later.”
He jogged out to his truck, through the soft summer rain. Hot shower, dry clothes, beer, he thought. In that order. Better, maybe he could talk Layla into the shower with him. He started the truck, backed around his brother’s pickup to head out to the road.
He hoped Gage and Cybil had some luck, or were having some if they were into the link-up. Things had started to… pulse, he decided. He could feel it. The town had taken on shadows, he thought, that had nothing to do with summer rain or wet, gloomy nights. Just a couple more answers, he thought. Just a couple more pieces of the puzzle. That’s all they needed.
He caught the flash of headlights, well behind him, in his rearview mirror, and made the next turn. His windshield wipers swished, and Stone Sour rocked out of the radio. Tapping his hands on the wheel, thinking of that hot shower, he drove another mile before his engine clicked and coughed.
“Oh, come on! Didn’t I just give you a tune-up?” Even as he spoke, the truck shuddered, slowed. Annoyed, he eased to the side of the road, coasting when the engine simply died on him like a sick dog.
“The rain just makes it perfect, doesn’t it?” He started to get out, considered. As his tawny eyes shifted to his rearview mirror, he pulled out his phone. And cursed when he saw the No Service display. “Yeah, yeah, can you hear me now?”
The road behind him was dark and fogged with rain when he closed his fingers on the handle of the door.
IN THE LIVING ROOM, GAGE AND CYBIL SAT ON THE floor, facing each other. And facing each other, reached out to clasp hands. “I think we should try focusing on the three of you,” she said to Gage, “and the bloodstone. It came to the three of you. So we could start there. The three of you, then the stone.”
“Worth a shot. Ready?”
She nodded, leveled her breathing as he did. He came first to her mind. The man, the potential. She focused on what she saw in him as much as his face, his eyes, his hands. And moved on to Cal, putting him shoulder-to-shoulder with Gage inside her head. The physical Cal, and what she considered the spiritual Cal, before pulling Fox into her head.
Brothers, she thought. Blood brothers. Men who stood for each other, believed in each other, loved each other.
The drumming of the rain increased. It all but roared in her ears. A dark road, the splatting rain. A swath of lights turning the wet pavement to black glass. Two men stood in the rain on the black glass of the pavement. For a flash, she saw Fox’s face clearly, just as she saw the gun glistening as it pointed at him.
Then she was falling, cut loose so that her breath gasped in and out, so that she fumbled for a moment for the support that wrenched away. She heard Gage’s voice dimly.
“It’s Fox. He’s in trouble. Let’s go.”
Dizzy, Cybil pushed to her knees as Layla rushed toward Gage, grabbed his arm. “Where? What’s happening? I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not. Let’s move!”
“He’s right. Let them go. Let them go now.” Flailing out with a hand, Cybil gripped Layla’s. “I don’t know how much time there is.”
“I can find him. I can find him.” Clutching Cybil’s hand, and now Quinn’s, Layla pushed everything she had toward Fox. Her eyes darkened, went glassy green. “He’s close. Only a couple of miles… He’s pushing back, pushing toward us. The first bend, the first bend on White Rock Road, heading here from the farm. Hurry. Hurry. It’s Napper. He’s got a gun.”
FOX HUNCHED AGAINST THE RAIN AND LIFTED the hood of the truck. He knew how to build things. Ask him to make a table, stud out a wall, no problem. Engines? Not so much. Basic stuff, sure-change the oil, jump the battery, go wild and replace a fan belt.
As he stood in the rain with headlights approaching, the basic stuff, and his own gift, was all he needed to assess the situation. Getting out of it in one piece? That might not be as simple.
He could run, he supposed. But it just wasn’t in him. Fox shifted, angled his body, and watched Derrick Napper swagger toward him through the rain.
“Got trouble, don’t you?”
“Looks like.” Fox didn’t see the gun Napper held in the hand he kept down at his side so much as he sensed it. “How much sugar did it take?”
“Not as stupid as you look.” Now Napper raised the gun. “We’re going to take a little walk back into the woods here, O’Dell. We’re going to have a talk about you getting me fired.”
Fox didn’t look at the gun but kept his gaze level on Napper’s “I got you fired? I thought you pulled that one off all by yourself.”
“You don’t have your slut of a mother, or your two faggot friends around to protect you now, do you? Now you’re going to find out what happens to people who fuck with me, like you’ve been fucking with me my whole life.”