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"Five?"
Then put the tips of her pinky and thumb together to add another three.
"Eight? Holy Mother of God. "
Layla switched off the shower, grabbed a towel. "That's not counting twice this morning. I have to admit, I'm a little tired, and I'm starving. And I'd kill for coffee. "
"You know what?" Cybil said after a moment. "I'm going to go down and scramble you some eggs, pour you a giant cup of coffee. Because right at the moment, you're my hero. "
Quinn stayed behind as Layla, wrapped in the towel, rubbed lotion on her arms and legs. "He's a sweetie. "
"I know he is. "
"Are you going to be able to work together, sleep together, and fight the forces of evil together?"
"You're managing it with Cal. "
"Which is why I ask, because the combination can have its moments. I guess I wanted to say that if you run into one of those moments, you can talk to me. "
"I've been able to talk to you from the first. I guess that's one of our perks. " Because it was true, Layla considered as she drew on her robe. "My feelings for him, for just about everything right now, are tangled and confused. And for just about the first time in my life, confusion isn't such a bad thing. "
"Good enough. Well, try not to work too hard today because we're having a summit meeting tonight. Cal wants to know what Fox came up with. "
"About what?"
"I don't know. " Quinn pursed her lips. "He didn't mention anything to you? A theory. "
"No. No, he didn't. "
"Maybe he's still working it out. In any case, we'll talk about whatever we talk about tonight. "
By the time Layla got to the office, Fox was already in and on the phone. With his next client due in shortly after, it wasn't the time, in her opinion, to pin him down about their other collaboration and theories.
She checked his schedule, hunting for a reasonable span of free time, then stewed while she worried about why he hadn't mentioned anything about it to her.
When Sage came in just as Layla was about to take advantage of a lull, Layla decided she was outnumbered for the workday.
"Fox gave me a call, asked me to come by. Is he free now?"
"As a bird. "
"I'll just go on back. "
Thirty minutes passed before Sage came out again. It was obvious she'd been crying even when she sent Layla a brilliant smile. "Just in case you're not aware, you're working for the most amazing, most beautiful, most incredible man in the entire universe. Just in case you didn't know," she added, and ran out.
With a sigh, Layla tried to bury her own questions-and the annoyance that had been working up through them- and went back to see how Fox had weathered what must have been an emotional half hour.
He sat at his desk with the look of a man who was seriously worn at the edges. "She cried," he said immediately. "Sage, she's not much of a crier, but she sure cut loose.
Then she called Paula, and Paula cried. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, so if crying's on your agenda, could we get a continuance?"
Saying nothing, Layla walked to his fridge, got him a Coke.
"Thanks. I've got an appointment to. . . Since I just had a physical a few months ago, they're sending my records to the place where they do it. Sage, she's got a friend in Hagerstown who's her doctor. So I've got-we've got-an appointment day after tomorrow, and the day after, since Paula's going to be. . . "
"Ovulating?"
He winced. "Even with my upbringing, I'm not completely at ease with all
this. So day after tomorrow. Eight. I've got court, so I'll just go there after. " He rose, put a dollar in the jar. "This is fucking bizarre. There, that's better. So what's up next?"
"I am. Quinn told me you were supposed to meet with Cal and Gage last night, and that you wanted to meet with them to tell them about a theory you have. "
"Yeah, then I got a better offer, so. . . " He trailed off. He knew that look in her eyes. "That pisses you off?"
"I don't know. It depends. But it certainly baffles me that you have an idea you think worth discussing with your men friends, and not with me. "
"I would have discussed it with you, but I was busy enjoying mutual multiple orgasms. "
True, she had to admit. But not altogether the point. "I was with you all day in this office, all night in bed. I think there was time in that frame to bring this up. "
"Sure. But I didn't want to bring it up. "
"Because you wanted to talk to Cal and Gage first. "
"Partly, because I've always talked to Cal and Gage first. A thirty-year habit doesn't change overnight. " The first hint of annoyance danced around the edges of his voice. "And mostly because I wasn't thinking about anything but you. I didn't want to think about anything but you. And I'm damn well entitled to take time for that. I didn't consider my idea about Giles Dent as foreplay, and I sure as hell didn't consider talk about human sacrifice as postcoital conversation. Hang me. "
"You should've. . . Human sacrifice? What are you talking about? What do you mean?"
The phone rang, and cursing, Layla reached across his desk to answer. "Good afternoon, Fox B. O'Dell's office. I'm sorry, Mr. O'Dell's with a client. May I take a message?" She scribbled a name and number on Fox's memo pad. "Yes, of course, I'll see he gets it. Thank you. "
She hung up. "You can call them back when we're done here. I need to know what you're talking about. "
"A possibility. Ann wrote that Dent intended to do something no guardian had done, and that there'd be a price. The guardians are the good guys, right? That's how we've always looked at them, at Dent. The white hats. But even white hats can step into the gray. Or past the gray. I see it all the time in my line of work. What people do if they're desperate enough, if they feel justified, if they stop believing they have another choice. Blood sacrifice. That's the province of the other side. Usually. "
"The deer, the one Quinn saw in her dream last winter, lying across the path in the woods with its throat slit. The blood of the innocent. It's in the notes. We speculated that Dent did that, that he sacrificed the fawn. But you said human. "
"Do you think that sacrificing Bambi could have given Dent the power he needed to hold Twisse for three hundred years? The power to pass what he did to me, Cal, and Gage when the time came? That's what I asked myself, Layla. And I don't think it could've been enough. "
He paused, because even now it left him slightly ill to consider it. "He told Hester to run. On the night of July seventh, sixteen fifty-two, after she'd condemned him as a witch, he told her to run. That came from you. "
"Yes, he told her to run. "
"He knew what was about to happen. Not just that he'd pull Twisse into some other dimension for a few centuries, but what it would cost to do it. "
She put a fist to her heart, rubbed it there as she stared at Fox. "The people who were at the Pagan Stone. "
"About a dozen of them, as far as we can tell. That's a lot of blood. That's a major sacrifice. "
"You think he used them. " Slowly, carefully, she lowered to a chair. "You think he killed them. Not Twisse, but Dent. "
"I think he let them die, which being a lawyer I could argue isn't the same by law. Depraved indifference we could call it, except for the little matter of intent. He used their deaths. " Fox's voice was heavy on the words. "I think he used the fire-the torches they carried, and the fire he made, to engulf them, to scorch the ground, to draw from that act-one no guardian had ever committed, the power to do what he'd decided had to be done. "
The color died out of her face, leaving her eyes eerily green. "If it's true, what does that make him? What does that make any of us?"
"I don't know. Damned maybe, if you subscribe to damnation. I've been a subscriber for nearly twenty-one years now. "
"We thought, we assumed, it was Twisse who caused the deaths of all those people that night. "
"Maybe it was. In part, even if my idea's crap, it was. How many of them would have gone to the Pagan Stone, looking to kill Giles Dent and Ann Hawkins if they hadn't been under Twisse's influence? But if we tip that to the side, and we look at the grays, isn't it possible Dent used Twisse? He knew what was coming, according to the journals, he knew. He sent Ann away to protect her and his sons. He gave his life-white hat time. But if he took the others, that put a lot of bloodstains on the white. "
"It makes horrible sense. It makes sickening sense. "
"We need to look at it, and maybe when we do, we'll know better what has to be done. " He studied her face, the shock that covered it. "Pack it in, go on home. "
"It's barely two. I have work. "
"I can handle the phones for the next couple of hours. Take a walk, get some air. Take a nap, a bubble bath, whatever. "
Bracing a hand on the arm of the chair, she got slowly to her feet. "Is that what you think of me? That I crumble at the first ugly slap? That I can't or won't stand up to it? It took me a while to get my feet when I came to the Hollow-hang me-but I've got them now. I don't need a goddamn bubble bath to soothe my sensibilities. "
"My mistake. "
"Don't underestimate me, Fox. However diluted, I have that bastard's blood in me. It could be, in the long run, I can handle the dark better than you. "
"Maybe. But don't expect me to want that for you, or you overestimate me. Now you might have a better idea why I didn't bring this up yesterday, or you might just want to stay pissed about it. "
She closed her eyes and steadied herself. "No, I don't want to be mad about it, and yes, I have a better idea. " She also had a much better idea what Quinn had meant by her warning. Working, sleeping with, fighting beside. It was a lot to ask of a relationship.
"It's hard to separate the different things we are to each other," she said carefully. "And when the lines get blurred, it's harder yet. You said, when I came in, you were feeling overwhelmed. You overwhelm me, Fox, on a lot of levels. So I keep losing my balance. "
"I haven't had mine since I met you. I'll try to catch you when you stumble if you do the same for me. "
And didn't that say it all. She glanced at her watch. "Oh, look at that. I nearly missed my afternoon break. Only a couple minutes left. Well, I'd better put them to good use. "
She walked around the desk, leaned down. "You're on break, too, by the way, so this office is closed for the next thirty seconds. " She laid her lips on his, brushing her fingertips over his face, back into his hair.
And there, she thought, as strange as it was, she found her balance again.
Straightening, she took his hand between both of hers for the last few seconds, then letting it go, stepped back. "Mrs. Mullendore would like to speak with you. Her number's on your desk. "
"Layla," he said when she reached the doorway. "I'm going to have to give you longer breaks. "
She smiled over her shoulder as she continued out. Alone, Fox sat quietly at his desk another moment, and thought of what a good man, even the best of men might do if all he loved was threatened.
WHEN THE SIX OF THEM WERE TOGETHER THAT evening in the sparsely furnished living room of the rental house, Fox read the passages from Ann's journal that had flicked the switch for him. He laid out his theory, as he had for Layla.
"Jesus, Fox. Guardian. " Cal's resistance to the idea was palpable. "It means he protected. He'd dedicated his life to that purpose, and all the lives he remembered before the last. I've felt some of what he felt, I've seen some of what he saw. "
"But not all. " Gag
e paced in front of the window as he often did during discussions. "Bits and pieces, Cal, and that's it. If it went down this way, I'd say that these particular bits and pieces would be ones Dent would do his best to keep hidden, for as long as he could. "
"Then why let Hester go?" Cal demanded. "Wasn't she both the most innocent there, and the most dangerous to him?"
"Because we had to be. " Cybil looked at Quinn, at Layla. "We three had to become, and Hester's child had to survive for that to happen. It's a matter of power. The guardian, lifetime after lifetime, played by the rules-as far as we know-and could never win. He could never completely stop his foe. "
"And becoming more human," Layla added. "I was thinking that through today. Every generation, wouldn't he have become more human, with all the frailties? But Twisse remained as ever. How much longer could Dent have fought? How many more lifetimes did he have?"
"So he made a choice. " Fox nodded. "And used the kind of weaponry Twisse had always used. "
"And killed innocent people so he could buy time? So he could wait for us?"
"It's horrible. " Quinn reached for Cal's hand. "It's horrible to think about it, to consider it. But I guess we have to. "
"So if we go with this, you're descendents of a demon, and we're descendents of a mass murderer. " Cal shook his head. "That's a hell of a mix. "
"We are what we make ourselves. " There was a whiff of heat in Cybil's words. "We use what we have and we decide what we are. Was what he did right, was it justified? I don't know. I'm not going to judge him. "
Gage turned from the window. "And what do we have?"
"We have words on a page, a stone broken in three equal parts, a place of power in the woods. We have brains and guts," Cybil continued. "And a hell of a lot of work to do, I'd say, before we put everything together and kill the bastard. "
