by Nora Roberts
“Layla.” Fox reached out. Her hands were wet and cool. Rain sparkled on her lashes. Even without the psychic link, her anxiety and eagerness flowed toward him.
“Just let it come,” he told her. “Don’t push, don’t even reach for it. Relax, look at me.”
“I have a hard time doing both of those things at the same time.”
His grin was pure male pleasure. “We’ll see what we can do about that later. For right now, bring the book into your head. Just the book. Here we go.”
He was both bridge and anchor. She would realize that later, that he had the skill, had the understanding to offer her both. As she crossed the bridge, he was with her. She felt the rain on her face, the ground under her feet. She smelled the earth, the wet grass, even the wet stone. There was a hum, low and steady. She understood with a stab of awe that it was the growing. Grass, leaves, flowers. All humming toward spring and sunlight. Toward the green.
She heard the faint whoosh of air that was a bird winging by, and the scrape that was a squirrel scampering across a branch.
Amazing, she thought, to understand that she was a part of it, and always had been. Always would be. What grew, what breathed, what slept. What lived and died.
There was the smell of earth, of smoke, of wet, of skin. She heard the sigh of rain leaving a cloud, and the murmur of the clouds drifting.
So she drifted, across the bridge.
The pain was sudden and shocking, like a vicious and violent rip inside her. Head, belly, heart. Even as she cried out, she saw the book—just a flash. Then the flash was gone, and so was the pain, leaving her weak and dizzy.
“Sorry. I lost it.”
Gage’s hands hooked under her armpits as she toppled. “Steady, baby. Easy does it. Cybil.”
“Yes, I’ve got her. Lean on me a minute. You had quite a ride.”
“I could hear the clouds moving, and the garden grow. It hums. The flowers hum under the ground. God, I feel . . .”
“Stoned?” Quinn suggested. “You look stoned.”
“That’s about right. Wow. Fox, did you—” She broke off when she managed to focus. He was on his knees on the wet gravel, his friends crouched on either side of him. And there was blood on his shirt.
“Oh my God, what happened?” She pushed instinctively with her mind, but rammed into a wall. She stumbled, went down on her hands and knees in front of him. “You’re hurt. Your nose is bleeding.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Damn it, I just washed this stupid sweatshirt. Just give me some room. Give me room.” He dragged a bandanna out of his pocket, pressing it to his nose as he sat back on his heels.
“Let’s get him inside,” Quinn began, but Fox shook his head, then pressed his free hand to it as if the movement threatened to break it away from his shoulders. “Need a minute.”
“Cal, go get him some water. Let’s try your mother’s trick, Fox.” Cybil moved behind him. “Just breathe.” She found the points, pressed. “Should I ask if you’re pregnant?”
“Not a good time to make me laugh. Little sick here.”
“Why was it worse for him than for Quinn?” Layla demanded. “It was supposed to be less, because we were linked. But it’s worse. You know.” She aimed a fierce look at Gage. “Why?”
“Being O’Dell, he stepped in front of you and took the full punch. That’d be my guess. And because of the link, it was a hell of a punch.”
“Is that it?” Furious, Layla turned on Fox. “I’m listening to clouds and you’re getting kicked in the face.”
“Your face is prettier than mine. Marginally. Quiet a minute, okay? Have a little pity for the wounded.”
“Don’t ever do it again. You look at me, you listen to me. Don’t ever do it again. You promise that, or I’m done with this.”
“I don’t like ultimatums.” Even through the glaze of pain in his eyes, the temper sparked. “In fact, they piss me off.”
“You know what pisses me off? You didn’t trust me to carry my share.”
“It has nothing to do with trust or shares. Thanks, Cybil, it’s better.” He got carefully to his feet, took the water Cal offered and drank it straight down. “They’re wrapped in oilcloth, behind the south wall. I couldn’t tell how many. Two, maybe three. You know where the tools are, Cal. I’ll be back out to help in a minute.”
He made it into the house, into the bathroom off the kitchen before he was as sick as a man after a two-day drunk. With his stomach raw and his head a misery, he rinsed his face, his mouth. Then just leaned on the sink until he had his breath back.
When he came out, Layla stood in the kitchen. “We’re not finished.”
“You want to fight? We’ll fight later. Right now we’ve got a job to do.”
“I’m not doing anything until you give me your word you won’t shield me again.”
“Can’t do it. I only give my word when I’m sure I can keep it.” He turned, started rooting through cupboards. “Nothing but holistic shit in this house. Why is there never any damn Excedrin?”
“You had no right—”
“Sue me. I know some good lawyers. We do what we do, Layla. That’s the way it is. That’s the way I am. I took a shot because I knew it was a good one. I got there because of you, because of us. I wasn’t going to let you get hurt if I could stop it, and I’m not going to promise not to do what I can to stop you from being hurt down the road.”
“If you think because I’m a woman I’m weaker, less capable, less—”
His face was sheet pale as he rounded on her. Even temper couldn’t push the color back into his face. “Christ, don’t start waving the feminist flag. Did you meet my mother? Your sex has nothing to do with it—other than the fact that I’m gone on you, which, being straight, I wouldn’t be if you were a guy. I survived. I got a headache, a nose-bleed, and I lost my breakfast—and dinner, and possibly a couple of internal organs. But other than wishing to goddamn hell and back there was some aspirin and a can of Coke around this house, I’m fine. You want to be pissed, be pissed. But be pissed correctly.”
As he drilled his fingers into his forehead, she opened the purse she’d left on the kitchen table. From it she took a little box with a crescent moon on the top.
“Here.” She handed him two pills. “It’s Advil.”
“Praise the lord. Don’t be stingy. Give me a couple more.”
“I’m still pissed, correctly or incorrectly.” She handed him two more pills, inwardly wincing when he dry-swallowed the lot. “But I’m going out to help do the job because I’m part of this team. Let me say this first, if you’re so gone over me, consider how I feel seeing you on the ground, bleeding and in pain. There are lots of ways to be hurt. Think about that.”
When she stalked out he stayed where he was. She might’ve had a point, but he was too worn out to think about it. Instead, he got the pitcher of his mother’s cold tea out of the fridge and downed a glass to wash the dregs of annoyance and sickness from his throat.
Because he still felt shaky, he left the chiseling to Gage and Cal. Eventually, he’d have to tell his parents, he thought. Especially if they weren’t able to replace the stone in such a way the removal didn’t show.
No, he thought, he’d have to tell them either way or he’d feel guilty.
In any case, they’d understand—a lot better than a certain brunette—why he’d wanted to try this when they were away from home. They may not like it, but they wouldn’t start shoveling the you-don’t-trust-me crap over his head. Not their style.
“Try not to chip it.”
“It’s a fucking stone, O’Dell.” Gage slammed the hammer on the knob of the chisel. “Not a damn diamond.”
“Tell that to my parents,” he muttered, then jammed his hands in his pockets.
“You’d better be sure this is the one.” Cal struck from the other side. “Or else we’re going to be doing a lot more than chipping one rock.”
“That’s the one. The wall’s four deep, one of the reasons
it’s still standing. That one was probably loose or she worked it loose. The past shit’s your milieu.”
“Milieu, my ass.” Wet, his knuckles scraped, Cal struck again. By the next strike, the knuckles had already healed, but he was still soaked to the skin. “It’s coming.”
He and Gage worked it loose by hand as Fox fought the image of the whole wall crumbling like a game of Jenga.
“Sucker weighs a ton,” Gage complained. “More like a damn boulder. Watch the fingers.” He cursed as the movement pinched his fingers between rocks, then let the weight of the stone carry it to the ground. Sitting back on his heels, he sucked at his bleeding hand as Cal reached into the opening.
“Son of a bitch. I’ve got it.” Cal drew out a package wrapped in oilcloth. “Score one for O’Dell.” Carefully, hunching over to protect the contents from the rain, he unwrapped the cloth.
“Don’t open them,” Quinn warned from behind them. “It’s too wet out here. The ink might run. Ann Hawkins’s journals. We found them.”
“We’ll take them back to my place. Get out of these wet clothes, then—”
The blast shook the ground. It knocked Fox off his feet, smashing him into the stone wall with his hip and shoulder taking the brunt. Head ringing, he turned to see the house burning. Flames shot through the roof, clawed through broken windows with the roaring belch of black smoke behind them. He ran toward home, through a blistering wall of heat.
When Gage tackled him, he slammed hard into the ground and swung out with blind fury. “The dogs are inside. Goddamn it.”
“Pull yourself together.” Gage shouted over the bellow of fire. “Is it real? Pull it together, Fox. Is it real?”
He could feel the burn. He swore he could feel it, and the smoke stinging his eyes, scoring his throat as he choked in air. He had to fight back the image of his home going up in flames, of three helpless dogs trapped and panicked.
He gripped Gage’s shoulder as an anchor, then Cal’s forearm as his friends pulled him to his feet. They stood linked for a moment, and a moment was all he needed.
“It’s a lie. Damn. Just another lie.” He heard Cal’s breath shudder out. “Lump’s fine. The dogs are fine. It’s just more bullshit.”
The fire wavered, spurted, died, so the old stone house stood whole under the thin and steady rain.
Fox let out a breath of his own. “Sorry about the fist in the face,” he said to Gage.
“You hit like a girl.”
“Your mouth’s bleeding.”
Gage swiped at it, grinned. “Not for long.”
Cal strode to the house, threw open the door to let the dogs out. Then simply sat on the floor of the back porch with his arms full of Lump.
“It’s not supposed to come here.” Fox walked forward, too, set a hand on the porch rail he’d helped build. “It’s never been able to come here. Not to our families.”
“Things are different now.” Cybil crouched down and rubbed the other two dogs as they wagged tails. “These dogs aren’t scared. It didn’t happen for them. Just us.”
“And if my parents had been in there?”
“It wouldn’t have happened for them either.” Quinn dropped down beside Cal. “How many times have the three of you seen things no one else has?”
“Sometimes they’re real,” Fox pointed out.
“This wasn’t. It just wanted to shake us up, scare us. It—Oh God, the journals.”
“I have them.”
Fox turned, saw Layla standing in the rain, clutching the wrapped package against her breasts. “It wanted to hurt you. Couldn’t you feel it? Because you found them. Couldn’t you feel the hate?”
He’d felt nothing, Fox realized, but panic—and that was a mistake. “So he scored one, too.” He crossed to Layla, drew up the hood that had fallen away. “But we’re still ahead.”
Nine
THERE WAS COFFEE FOR THOSE WHO WANTED IT, and a fire burning bright in Cal’s living room to warm chilled bones. There were enough dry clothes to go around, though Layla wasn’t sure what sort of a fashion statement she made in a pair of Cal’s jogging shorts bagging well past her knees and a shirt several sizes too big. But Cybil had snagged the spare jeans Quinn had left at Cal’s, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
While the washer and dryer churned away, she topped off her coffee. Her feet swished over the kitchen floor in enormous wool socks.
“Nice outfit,” Fox said from the doorway.
“Could start a trend.” She turned to face him. Cal’s clothes fit him a great deal better than they did her. “Are you all right now?”
“Yeah.” He got a Coke out of the fridge. “I’m going to ask you to put whatever mad you’ve still got on aside for a while. We’ll deal with them later, if we have to.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Personal feelings, reactions, relationships. They get in the way, knot things up.”
“Maybe. Can’t do much about it as person’s the root of personal. We can’t stop being people, or it wins.”
“What would have happened if Gage hadn’t stopped you, if you’d gotten inside the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do, or you can speculate. Here’s what I speculate. At that moment, the fire was real to you, you believed it, so it was real. You felt the heat, the smoke. And if you’d gotten in, despite how quickly you heal, you could’ve died because you believed.”
“I let the son of a bitch scam me. My mistake.”
“Not the point. It could kill you. I never really considered that before. It could use your mind to end your life.”
“So we have to be smarter.” He shrugged, but the gesture was an irritable jerk that told her temper was still lurking inside him. “It got one over on me today because nothing’s ever happened at the farm, or at Cal’s parents’ house. They’ve always been out-of-bounds. Safe zones. So I didn’t think, I just reacted. That’s never smart.”
“If it had been real, you’d have gone in. You’d have risked your life to save three dogs. I don’t know what to think of you,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know what to feel. So I guess, like my mad, I need to put that aside and deal with it later.”
“Sorry.” Quinn stood in the doorway of the adjoining dining room. “We’re ready in here.”
“Just coming.” Layla walked out. A few seconds later, Fox followed.
“I guess we should just dive in.” Quinn took a seat beside Cal at the table. She glanced over to where Cybil sat with a notepad, ready to write down thoughts, impressions. “So, who wants to do the honors?”
Six people studied the wrapped package on the table. Six people said nothing.
“Oh, hell, this is silly.” Quinn picked up the books, carefully unwrapped them. “Even considering they were protected, they’re awfully well preserved.”
“We can assume, under the circumstances, she had some power, some knowledge of magicks,” Cybil pointed out. “Pick one, read an entry aloud.”
“Okay, here goes.” There were three, so she took the top one, opened it to the first entry. The ink was faded, but legible, the handwriting—familiar now—careful and clear.
“ ‘There must be a record, I think, of what was, what is, what will be. I am Ann. My father, Jonathan Hawkins, brought my mother, my sister, brother, and me to this place we call the Hollow. It is a new world where he believes we will be happy. So we have been. It is a green place, a rough place, a quiet place. He and my uncle cleared land for shelter, for crops. The water is cold and clear in the spring. More came, and the Hollow became Hawkins Hollow. My father has built a small and pretty stone house, and we have been comfortable there.
“ ‘There is work, as there should be work, to keep the mind and hands busy, to provide and to build. Those who settle here have built a stone chapel for worship. I have attended the services, as is expected. But I do not find God there. I have found him in the wood. It is there I feel at peace. It is there I first met Giles.
“ ‘Perhaps
love does not come in an instant, but takes lifetimes. Is this how I knew, in that instant, such love? Is this how I felt, even saw in my mind’s eye lifetime by lifetime with this man who lived alone in a stone cabin in the green shadowed wood that held the altar stone?
“ ‘He waited for me. This I knew as well. He waited for me to come to him, to see him, to know him. When we met we spoke of simple things, as is proper. We spoke of the sun and the wild berries I picked, of my father, of the hide Giles tanned.
“ ‘We did not speak of gods and demons, of magic and destiny, not then. That would come.
“ ‘I walked the wood, wandered my way to the stone cabin and the altar at every opportunity. He was always waiting for me. So the love of lifetimes bloomed again, in the green wood, in secret. I was his again, as I ever was, as I ever will be.’ ”
Quinn paused, sighed. “That’s the first entry. It’s lovely.”
“Pretty words don’t make much of a weapon,” Gage commented. “They don’t provide answers.”
“I disagree with that,” Cybil said. “And I think she deserves to have those words read as she wrote them. Lifetimes,” she continued, tapping her notes. “That indicates her understanding that she and Dent were reincarnations of the guardian and his mate. Time and again. And he waited for her to accept it. He didn’t launch right into, ‘Hey, guess what, you and I are going to get cozy. You’ll get knocked up with triplets, we’ll hassle with some Big Evil Bastard, and a few hundred years from now our ancestors are going to fight the fight.’ ”
“Boy, a guy hits me with a line like that, I’m naked in a heartbeat.” Quinn traced a finger down the page. “I’m with Cyb on this. There’s value in every word because she wrote it. It’s hard not to be impatient, just skim over looking for some magic formula for destroying demons.”
Layla shook her head. “It won’t be like that anyway.”