The Sign of Seven Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “If fire could kill it, it would already be dead. I’ve seen it ride on flames like they were a damn surfboard.”

  “Its fire, not ours,” Cybil pointed out. “Fire created from the Alpha Stone, from the fragment of that stone passed to you, through Dent, by the gods. Fusing it that night made one hell of a blaze.”

  “How do you propose to light a magic fire with a single stone?”

  “I’m working on it. How about you?” Cybil countered. “Any better ideas?”

  This wasn’t why he was here, Gage reminded himself. He hadn’t come to debate magic stones and conjuring the fire of gods. He wasn’t even sure why he was baiting her. She’d come through, he reminded himself, all the way through in fusing the three parts of the stone into one.

  “I had a visit today, from our resident demon.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” All business, Quinn reached for her tape recorder. “Where, when, how?”

  “In the cemetery, shortly after I left here this morning.”

  “What time was that?” Quinn looked at Cybil. “Around ten, right? So between ten and ten thirty?” she asked Gage.

  “Close enough. I didn’t check my watch.”

  “What form did it take?”

  “My mother’s.”

  Immediately, Quinn went from brisk to sympathetic. “Oh, Gage, I’m sorry.”

  “Has it ever done that before?” Cybil asked. “Appeared in a form of someone you know?”

  “New trick. That’s why it had me conned for a minute. Anyway, it looked like her, like I remember her. Or, actually, I don’t remember her that well. It looked like pictures I’ve seen of her.”

  The picture, he thought, his father had kept on the table beside his bed.

  “She—it—was young,” he continued. “Younger than me, and wearing one of those summer dresses.”

  He sat now, drinking his cooling coffee as he related the event, and the conversation nearly word for word.

  “You punched it?” Quinn demanded.

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Saying nothing, Cybil rose, crossed to him, held out her hand for his. She examined his, back, palm, fingers. “Healed. I’d wondered about that. If you’d heal completely if it was able to wound you directly.”

  “I didn’t say it wounded me.”

  “Of course it did. You punched your fist into the belly of the beast, literally. What kinds of wounds were there?”

  “Burns, punctures. Fucker bit me. Fights like a girl.”

  She cocked her head, appreciating his grin. “I’m a girl, and I don’t bite . . . in a fight. How long did it take to heal?”

  “A while. Maybe an hour altogether.”

  “Longer, considerably, than if you’d sustained burns from a natural source. Any side effects?”

  He started to shrug that off, then reminded himself every detail mattered. “A little nausea, a little dizziness. But it hurt like a mother, so you’ll have that.”

  She cocked her head, sent him a speculative look. “What did you do afterward? There’s a couple of hours between then and now.”

  “I had some things I needed to do. We punching time clocks now?”

  “Just curious. We’ll write it up, log it in. I’m going to make some tea. Do you want any, Quinn?”

  “I want a root beer float, but . . .” Quinn held up her bottle of water. “I’ll stick with this.”

  When Cybil walked out, Gage drummed his fingers on his thigh a moment, then pushed to his feet. “I’m going to top off my coffee.”

  “You do that.” Quinn held her own speculative look until he’d left. Rocks weren’t the only things that shot off sparks when they slapped together, she mused.

  Cybil put the kettle on, set out the pot, measured her tea. When Gage stepped in, she plucked an apple from the bowl, cut it neatly in quarters, then offered him one.

  “So here we are again.” After getting a plate, she quartered a second apple, added a few sprigs of grapes. “When Quinn starts talking root beer floats, she needs a snack. If you’re looking for something more substantial, there’re sandwich makings or cold pasta salad.”

  “I’m good.” He watched her as she added a few crackers, a handful of cubed cheese to the snack plate. “There’s no need to get pissy.”

  She cocked that brow at him. “Why would I be pissy?”

  “Exactly.”

  Taking one of the apple slices, she leaned back against the counter, and took a tiny bite. “You’re misreading me. I came down because I wanted tea, not because I was annoyed with you. Annoyance wasn’t what I felt. You probably won’t like what I was feeling, what I do feel.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sorry that it used your personal grief against you.”

  “I don’t have any personal grief.”

  “Oh, shut up.” She took another, and this time angry, bite out of the apple. “That is annoying. You were in the cemetery. As I sincerely doubt you go there for nature walks, I have to conclude you went to visit your mother’s grave. And Twisse defiled—or tried to—your memory of her. Don’t tell me you don’t have grief for the loss of your mother. I lost my father years ago, too. And he chose to leave me, chose to put a bullet in his brain, and still I have grief. You didn’t want to talk about it, so I gave you your privacy, then you follow me down here and tell me I’m pissy.”

  “Which is obviously off,” he said dryly, “as you’re not in the least pissy.”

  “I wasn’t,” she muttered. She let out a breath, then nibbled on the apple again as the kettle began to sputter. “You said she looked very young. How young?”

  “Early twenties, I guess. Most of my impressions of her, physically, are from photographs. I . . . Shit. Shit.” He dug out his wallet, pulled a small picture from under his driver’s license. “This, this is the way she looked, down to the goddamn dress.”

  After turning off the burner, Cybil moved to him, stood side-by-side to study the photo in his hand. Her hair was dark and loose, her body slim in the yellow sundress. The little boy was about a year, a year and a half, Cybil judged, and propped on her hip as both of them laughed into the camera.

  “She was lovely. You favor her.”

  “He took this out of my head. You were right about that. I haven’t looked at this in . . . I don’t know, a few years maybe. But it’s my clearest memory of her because . . .”

  “Because it’s the one you carry with you.” Now Cybil laid her hand on his arm. “Be annoyed if that’s how you have to handle it, but I’m so sorry.”

  “I knew it wasn’t her. It only took a minute for me to know it wasn’t her.”

  And in that minute, she thought, he must have felt unbearable grief and joy. She turned back to pour the water into the pot. “I hope you hit a couple of vital organs, if organs it has, when you punched it.”

  “That’s what I like about you, that healthy taste for violence.” He slipped the picture of his mother back into his wallet.

  “I’m a fan of the physical, in a lot of areas. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that in this guise, its first push was to try to convince you to leave. Not to attack, not even to taunt as it has before, but to use a trusted form to tell you to go, to save yourself. I think we have it worried.”

  “Yeah, it looked really concerned when it knocked me on my ass.”

  “Got up again, didn’t you?” She arranged the plate, the pot, a cup on a tray. “Cal should be here in another hour, and Fox and Layla shortly after. Unless you’ve got a better offer, why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  “Are you cooking?”

  “That is, apparently, my lot in this strange life we’re leading at the moment.”

  “I’ll take that offer.”

  “Fine. Carry this up for me, and we’ll put you to work in the meantime.”

  “I don’t make charts.”

  She shot him that smug look over her shoulder as she started out ahead of him. “You do today if you want to eat.”

>   LATER, GAGE SAT ON THE FRONT STEPS, ENJOYING the first beer of the evening with Fox and Cal. Fox had changed out of his lawyer suit into jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt. He looked, as Fox habitually did, comfortable in his own skin.

  How many times had they done just this? Gage wondered. Sat, sharing a beer? Countless times. And often when he was in another part of the world, he might sit, sip a beer, and think of them in the Hollow.

  And there were times he came back, between the Seven, because he missed them as he’d miss his own legs. Then they could sit like this, in the long evening sunlight without the weight of the world—or at least this corner of it—on their shoulders.

  But the weight was there now with less than two months left before what they all accepted was do or die.

  “We could go back to the cemetery, the three of us,” Fox suggested. “See if it wants another round.”

  “I don’t think so. It had its fun.”

  “Next time you go wandering around, don’t go unarmed. I don’t mean that damn gun,” Cal added. “You can pick up a decent and legal folding knife down at Mullendore’s. No point letting it try to take a chunk out of your hand.”

  Idly, Gage flexed the hand in question. “Felt good to punch the bastard, but you’re right. I didn’t even have a damn penknife on me. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Can it just come back as the dead—sorry,” Fox added, laying a hand on Gage’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay. Quinn brought that up earlier. If it can take the form of the living, it’s a big skill. The dead’s hard enough. Cybil thinks not. She had some convoluted, intellectual theory, which I stopped listening to after she and Quinn started the debate. But I’m leaning toward Cybil’s end of it. It had substance. But the image, the form—that was like a shell, and the shell was . . . borrowed, was the gist of Cybil’s long, involved lecture on corporeal changes and shape-shifting. It can’t borrow from the living because they’re still wearing the shell, so to speak.”

  “Whatever,” Fox said after a moment. “We know Twisse has a new twist. If he wants to play that game again, we’ll be ready.”

  Maybe, Gage thought, but the odds were long. And getting longer every day.

  Three

  IN LOOSE COTTON PANTS AND A TANK SHE considered suitable only for sleeping, Cybil followed the life-affirming scent of coffee toward the kitchen. It was lovely to know someone in the household woke before she did and had a pot going. The chore, all too often, fell to her as she was up and about before any of the others.

  Of course, none of the others slept alone, she thought, so they got coffee and sex. Didn’t seem quite fair, she decided, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled. Still, the cookie meant she wasn’t required to make precaffeine conversation, and had a quiet interlude with the morning paper until the frisky puppies rolled out of bed for the day.

  Halfway between the stairs and the kitchen, she stopped, sniffed the air. That, she realized, was more than coffee. Bacon scented the air, which made it a red-letter day. Someone besides Cybil was cooking.

  At the doorway, she saw Layla busy at the stove, humming away as she fried and flipped, her dark hair pulled back in a little stub at the nape of her neck. She looked so happy, Cybil thought and wondered why she felt this big-sister affection for Layla.

  They were of an age, after all, and while Layla might not be as well-traveled as she was, her housemate had lived in New York for several years, and even in cropped pants and a T-shirt wore urban polish. With Quinn, there’d been an instant connection for Cybil—a click the moment they’d met in college. And now, there was Layla.

  She’d never had that same affinity, that click with her own sister, Cybil thought. But then she and Rissa never fully understood each other, and her younger sister tended to get in touch primarily when she needed something or was embroiled in yet another mess.

  Cybil decided she should count herself lucky. There was Quinn, who’d been like a missing piece of herself, and now Layla sliding smoothly into the slot, to make the three of them a unit.

  With the bacon set aside to drain, Layla turned for a carton of eggs and jolted when she saw Cybil. “God!” On a laugh, she clutched at her heart. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry. You’re up early.”

  “And with a yen for bacon and eggs.” Before Cybil could do it herself, Layla got down a cup and poured coffee. “I made plenty of bacon. I figured you’d be down before I finished, and Fox is always up for a meal.”

  “Hmm,” Cybil said, and dumped milk into the coffee.

  “Anyway, I hope you’re hungry because I seem to have fried up half a pig. And the eggs are fresh from the O’Dell farm. I got the paper.” Layla gestured toward the table. “Why don’t you sit down and have your coffee while I finish this up?”

  Cybil took that first mind-clearing sip. “I’m forced to ask. What are you after, Darnell?”

  “Transparent as Saran Wrap.” With a wince, Layla broke the first egg in the bowl. “There is this little favor, and I’d be bribing Quinn with breakfast if she were here instead of at Cal’s. I have the morning off, and a fistful of paint samples. I was hoping I could talk you and Quinn into going over to the shop with me this morning, helping me decide on my color scheme.”

  Cybil pushed her hair back, drank more coffee. “Here’s a question. Why would you think either of us would let you get away with deciding on the color scheme for your own boutique without us badgering you with our opinion?”

  “Really?”

  “Nobody escapes my opinion, but I’ll be eating bacon and eggs.”

  “Good. Good. It just seems crazy, worrying about paint chips when we’ve got life-and-death issues to worry about.”

  “Color schemes are life-and-death issues.”

  Layla laughed, but shook her head. “We’ve got a demon who wants us dead, coming into full power in about six weeks, and I’m pursuing the wild hare of opening my own business in the town it wants for its personal playground. Meanwhile Fox has to interview and train—or I have to train—my replacement as his office manager while we figure out how to stay alive and destroy ancient evil. And I’m going to ask Fox to marry me.”

  “We can’t stop living because . . . Whoa.” Cybil held up a hand, and waited for her morning-fuzzy brain to clear. “In my journalism classes, that’s what we called burying the lead. Big time.”

  “Is it crazy?”

  “Of course, you never bury the lead.” Since it was there, Cybil reached over and took a slice of bacon. “And yes, of course, marriage is insane—that’s why it’s human.”

  “I don’t mean marriage, I mean asking him. It’s so unlike me.”

  “I would hope so. I’d hate to think you go around proposing to men all willy-nilly.”

  “I always thought when everything was in place, when the time was right, that I’d wait for the man I loved to set the scene, buy the ring, and ask.” Sighing, Layla went back to breaking eggs in the bowl. “That’s like me—or was. But I don’t care about everything being in place, and how the hell can anybody know, especially us, if the time’s right? And I don’t want to wait.”

  “Go get him, sister.”

  “Would you—I mean under the circumstances?”

  “You’re damn right I would.”

  “I feel . . . Here he comes,” Layla whispered. “Don’t say anything.”

  “Damn, I was planning to blurt it all out, then toss a few handfuls of confetti.”

  “Morning.” Fox sent Cybil a sleepy smile, then turned a dazzling one on Layla. “You’re cooking.”

  “My boss gave me the morning off, so I’ve got time to spare.”

  “Your boss should always give you whatever you need.” He reached in the fridge for his usual Coke. And, popping the top, looked from one woman to the other. “What? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” And thinking of his ability to read thoughts and feelings, Layla pointed her whisk at him. “And no peeking. We were just talking about the boutiqu
e, paint chips, that sort of thing. How many eggs do you want?”

  “A couple. Three.”

  Layla sent Cybil a satisfied smile when Fox leaned in to nuzzle her and cop some bacon behind her back.

  THE BUILDING THAT WOULD HOUSE LAYLA’S BOUTIQUE had an airy feel to it, good light, good location. Important pluses, to Cybil’s mind. Layla had years of experience in fashion retail, as well as an excellent eye for style—other major advantages. Added to them was her shared ability with Fox to sense thoughts, and that sense of what a customer really wanted would be an enormous advantage.

  She wandered the space. She liked the old wood floors, the warm tones of it and the wide trim. “Charming or slick?” Cybil asked.

  “Charming, with slick around the edges.” Standing at the front window with Quinn, Layla held one of the paint chips up in the natural light. “I want to respect the space, and jazz it up with little touches. Female, comfortable, but not cozy. Accessible, but not altogether expected.”

  “No pinks, roses, mauves.”

  “None,” Layla said decisively.

  “A couple of good chairs for customers to sit in,” Quinn suggested, “to try on shoes, or wait for a friend in the changing area, but no floral fabrics, no chintz.”

  “If this were a gallery, we’d say your stock would be your art.”

  “Exactly.” Layla beamed over at Cybil. “That’s why I’m thinking neutral tones for the walls. Warm neutrals, because of the wood. And I’m thinking instead of a counter”—she waved the flat of her hand waist-high—“I might find a nice antique desk or pretty table for the checkout area. And over here—” She pushed the chips into Quinn’s hand, crossed the bare floor. “I’d have clear floating shelves in a random pattern, to display shoes, smaller bags. And then here . . .”

  Cybil followed as Layla moved from section to section, outlining her plans for the layout. The image formed clearly—open racks, shelves, pretty glass-fronted curios for accessories.

  “I need Fox’s father to build in a couple of dressing rooms back here.”

  “Three,” Cybil said. “Three’s more practical, is more interesting to the eye and it’s a magickal number.”