The Sign of Seven Trilogy (46 page)

“My stomach stopped maturing at twelve.” He pulled open the passenger 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 Coke 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.”

“Damn 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 assuming 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 cocked. “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 Saturday 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 with Layla first. We may be able to visualize where the journals are, if they're here. Or at least get a sense of them.”

“That's good thinking. And not just because I'd rather you didn't go through it again,” Cal added when Quinn narrowed her eyes at him. “It could work, and better yet, with Fox and Layla linked, it downscales the side effects.”

“And if it doesn't work,” Fox added, “back to you.”

“All right, that makes sense. Believe me, it's not as if I look forward to having my head explode.”

“Okay, then we're up. This is the oldest part of the house. Actually, this room and the ones directly above
were
the house as far as anyone can tell. So, logically, if there was a cabin or a house here before this one was built, it could be over the same spot. Maybe, especially given Quinn's trip yesterday, they used some of the same materials.”

“Like the fireplace.” Quinn crossed to it, stepped over Lump, who'd already stretched out in front of the low fire, to run her hand over the stones. “I'm big on the idea of hiding stuff behind bricks and stones.”

“And if we hack at that mortar, start pulling out stones without being a hundred percent, my father will kill me. Ready?” Fox asked Layla.

“As I'll ever be.”

“Look at me.” He took her hands. “Just look at me. Don't think. Imagine. A small book, the writing inside. The ink's faded. Imagine her handwriting. You've seen it in her other journals.”

His eyes were so rich. That old gold color so fascinating. His hands weren't lawyer-smooth. Not like the hands of a man who carried a briefcase, who worked at a desk. There was labor on them, strength and capability in them. He smelled of the rain, just a little of rain.

He would taste like cake.

He wanted her. Imagined touching her, gliding his hands over bare skin, sliding them over her breasts, her belly. Laying his lips there, his tongue, tasting the heat, the flesh . . .

In bed, when there's only us
.

She gasped, jerked back. His voice had been clear inside her head.

“What did you see?” Cal demanded. “Did you see it?”

With his eyes still locked on Layla's, Fox shook his head. “We had to get something out of the way first. One more time?” he said to Layla. “Use your compartments.”

Her skin felt hot, inside and out, but she nodded. And she did her best to set her own desires, and his, aside.

Everything drew together into a narrow point. In it she heard the jumbled thoughts of her companions, like background chatter at a cocktail party. There was concern, doubt, anticipation, a mix of feelings. These, too, she set aside.

The book was in her head. Brown leather cover, dried from age. Yellowed pages and faded ink.

“It's not here.” Fox spoke first as he carefully let the connection between him and Layla fade. “It's not in this room.”

“No.”

“Then I need to try again.” Quinn squared her shoulders. “I can try to home in on her, on the journal. See when she packed it away, maybe to take back to her father's house in town. The old library.”

“No, they're not in the old library,” Layla said slowly. “They're not in this room.”

“But they're here,” Fox finished. “It was too clear. They have to be here.”

Gage tapped a foot on the floor. “Could be under. She might have hidden them under floorboards, if there were floorboards.”

“Or buried them,” Cybil continued.

“If they're under the house, we're pretty well screwed,” Gage pointed out. “If Brian would be unhappy with us taking some stones out of the fireplace, he'd be pretty well crazed if we suggested razing the damn house to get under it for some diaries.”

“You don't have enough respect for diaries,” Cybil commented. “But you're right about the first part.”

“We need to try again. We can go room to room,” Layla suggested. “The basement? Is there a basement? If she did bury them, we might get a better signal from there. Because I can't believe they're inaccessible. Giles told her what would happen, told her about us—about you.”

“She may have hidden them to keep them from being lost or destroyed.” Cal paced as he tried to think it through. “From being found too soon, or by the wrong people. But she'd want us to find them, she'd have wanted that. Even if just for sentiment.”

“I agree with that. I know what I felt from her. She loved Giles. She loved her sons. And everything in her hoped for what those who came after her would do. We're her chance to be with Giles again, to free him.”

“Let's take it outside. Yeah, there's a basement,” Fox told Layla. “But we could focus on the whole house from outside. And the shed. The shed was here, most likely, when Ann was here. We should try the shed.”

As Fox had expected, the rain continued, slow and thin. He put his parents' dogs in the house with Lump to keep them out of the way. And with the others, stepped out in the stubborn drizzle.

“Before we do this, I had an idea—came to me in there—about the Bat Signal?”

“The what?” Quinn interrupted.

“Alarm system,” Fox explained. “I can get it, the way I could get all the mental chatter in there. It's just like tuning a radio, really. If you push toward me, I should pick it up. If I push toward any of you, same goes. We'll want to run it a few times, but it should work faster than phone tag.”

“Psychic team alert.” Cybil adjusted her black bucket hat. “Unlimited minutes, and fewer dropped calls. I like it.”

“What if you're the one in trouble?” Under her light jacket, Layla wore a hoodie in what he supposed should be called an orchid color. She drew the hood up and over her hair as they crossed the yard.

“Then I push to Cal or Gage. We've done that during the Seven before. Or to you,” he added, “once you've gotten a better handle on it. We used to play in there. Remember?” Fox called out to Cal and Gage. “We used it for a fort for a while, only we didn't call it a fort—too warlike for the Barry-O'Dells. So we said it was our clubhouse.”

“We murdered thousands from in there.” Gage stopped, hands tucked in his pockets. “Died a million deaths.”

“We made our plans for the birthday hike to the Pagan Stone while we were in there.” Cal stopped. “Do you remember? I'd forgotten that. A couple weeks before our birthday, we got the idea.”

“Gage's idea.”

“Yeah, blame me.”

“We were—what the hell, let me think. School was out. Just out. It was the first full day of freedom, and my mom let me come over and hang all day.”

“No chores,” Fox continued. “I remember now. I got a pass on chores, one-day pass. First day after school let out. We were playing in there.”

“Vice cops against drug lords,” Gage put in.

“A change from cowboys and Indians,” Cybil commented.

“Hippie boy wouldn't play greedy invaders against indigenous peoples. And if you'd ever gotten one of Joanne Barry's lectures on same, you wouldn't either.” The memory had a smile ghosting around Gage's mouth. “We were so juiced up, September was a lifetime off. Everything was hot and bright, green and blue. I didn't want that to end, I remember that, too. Yeah, it was my idea. Major adventure, total freedom.”

“We all jumped on it,” Cal reminded him. “Plotted the whole thing out right in there.” He gestured toward the vine-wrapped stones. I'm damned if that's a coincidence.”

They stood there a moment, side by side. Remembering, Layla supposed. Three men of the same age, who'd come from the same place. Gage in his black leather jacket, Cal in his flannel overshirt and watch cap, Fox in his hooded sweatshirt. Odd, she thought, how something as basic as their choice in outerwear spoke to their individuality even while their stance spoke of their absolute unity.

“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.”