Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

“Just let me know when we’ve reached that point.”

“You’ll be the first. What?” she demanded as Quinn slapped a hand at the air.

“Just swatting at these damn buzzing vibes.”

“Aren’t you the funny one? But moving on,” Cybil continued, “as the astute and handsome Caleb theorized, it’s about connections, links. And there are links every bit as intimate as sex.”

“Still tops my scoreboard,” Fox commented. He grinned at Cybil’s stony look and reached for more pizza. “But you were saying.”

“Gage and I experienced one of those links when we combined our particular gifts. There was power, and there were consequences. Before that shared experience, he had another on his own. Ann Hawkins.”

Cybil paused again, but this time to watch the iridescent flash of a hummingbird outside the window as it dived to the heart of a bold red blossom. “Before I left to come here, Quinn and I logged that incident, charted and mapped it. Gage went through it again for me, for my notes, in case there were any details that dropped out in the relay. There weren’t, that I found.”

“I thought about that off and on today,” Layla put in. “She said she’d wept for him, for Gage, and that you would, Cybil. At least that’s my interpretation. That it would matter.”

“Tears should matter.” Cybil continued to watch as the jeweled bird darted to another blossom.

“I wonder if tears are literal, like a magickal ingredient we’ll need, or if they’re symbolic again. Grief, joy-emotion. If it’s the emotional connection that’s important.”

“And again, I agree exactly,” Cybil added.

“We know emotions are part of it,” Quinn continued. “Twisse feeds on the negative-fear, hate, anger. And it seems pretty likely the positive is one of the things that kept us all from being crisped at the Pagan Stone last trip.”

“In other words, she wasn’t telling us anything we don’t already know.”

“Positive reinforcement,” Quinn said to Gage. “And she said, clearly, we have everything we need to win this. Figuring out what that everything is, and how to use it-that’s the problem.”

“Weaknesses versus strengths.” Fox took a swig of his beer. “Twisse knows our weaknesses, and plays on them. We need to counter that, and in fact, negate that, with our strengths. Basic strategy.”

“That’s good.” Layla nodded. “We need to make lists.”

“My girl’s hell on lists.”

“Seriously. Our strengths and weaknesses as a group, and as individuals. It’s war, isn’t it? Our strengths are our weapons, and weaknesses are the gaps in our defense. Shore up the defense, or at least recognize where the gaps are, and we build up the offensive position.”

“I’ve been teaching her chess,” Fox told the group. “She catches on quick.”

“It’s a little late in the day for lists,” Gage said.

Unoffended, Layla shook her head. “It’s never too late for lists.”

As Cybil picked up her wine, the hummingbird shot away like a sparkling bullet. “Next on mine is cards.”

“You want to play cards?” Cal asked her. “Aren’t we a little busy for a game?”

“You’re never too busy for a game,” Gage corrected. “But I think the lady’s referring to her Tarot deck.”

“I brought it with me today, and Gage and I conducted an experiment.”

Though she trusted her memory, Cybil took out her notes to relate the result to the others. “All Major Arcana, all with meanings specific to both of us,” she concluded. “As our resident gambler would agree, the odds of that being coincidence are in the astronomical range. The cards are open to various interpretations depending on the reader, the question, the surrounding cards, and so on. But it feels as though, in this case, they spoke of connection-physical, emotional, psychic connection. Then the symbol of each ancestry, and the potential for dramatic change, and consequence. I’d like to do a series of this same experiment. Cal and Quinn, Fox and Layla, all three men, all three women, and lastly, all six of us together.”

“You always had a hand with Tarot,” Quinn said.

“My Romany forebears. But this today was more than that.”

“You did the card trick before the dog came on the scene,” Fox commented. “Before the attack.”

“Yeah.” As the memory still unsettled her, Cybil reached for her wine. “Before.”

“Maybe it was part of the trigger. That,” Fox continued, “and you and Gage linking up. We still need the details on that, but if the cards weren’t coincidence, and the linking generates energy and power, it doesn’t seem like another coincidence that the attack came right on the heels.”

“No,” Cybil said slowly. “No, it really doesn’t.”

“You were outside,” Quinn prompted. “In the backyard.”

“Yeah.” Cybil glanced at Gage. “Why don’t you take this part?”

He didn’t particularly care to give reports, but he assumed it was still difficult for her to speak of it. He ran it through, from the moment they’d sat and linked fingertips on the grass, to the moment Cybil fired the kill shot.

“Oh, honey.” Her face filled with concern, Layla reached for Cybil’s hand.

“Excuse me?” Gage held up a finger. “Teeth, claws, rended flesh, spilled blood. Crazy Roscoe took a chunk out of my shoulder the size of a-”

“Oh, honey.” Layla rose and surprised and amused Gage by rounding the table to plant a kiss on his cheek.

“That’s more like it. Anyway, that covers it.”

“Gage has neglected to add that I fell apart. If we’re making lists, that one has to go under weakness. I had a serious meltdown afterward. I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again, but I don’t think it will.”

“Said meltdown was intense, but brief,” Gage continued. “And went into effect after the job was done. Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass how much anybody gnashes their teeth or freaks after the job’s done.”

“Point well taken,” Cybil decided.

“It made a mistake.” Quinn spoke quietly, but her eyes were a vivid and burning blue. “It made a big goddamn mistake.”

“How?” Cal asked her.

“For three of us here, a crucial element of this has all been theory before today. We’ve talked about what happens to people during the Seven, what they’re capable of doing when infected. But only you, Fox, and Gage have ever dealt with it face-to-face. Only the three of you have ever had to defend yourselves or someone else from an attack of another living thing. An ordinary living thing that’s turned into a threat. How could we know, how could we be sure, how we’d react, if we’d really be able to do what needed to be done when we were faced with it? Now we do.

“That dog today wasn’t one of Twisse’s nasty illusions. It was flesh and blood. Meltdown, my ass, Cyb. You didn’t panic, you didn’t run, you didn’t freeze. You got a gun and you put it down. You saved a life. So the bastard made a big mistake with his preview of coming attractions. Because now four of us have had face-offs, and I’ll be damned if Layla and I aren’t just as able to stand up the way Cybil did. My vote? That’s a big red check in the plus column.”

“That’s telling him, Blondie.” Cal leaned over, kissed her.

“You’re right.” Fox lifted his beer in toast. “It wanted to show off, and got shot down. Literally. Psych.”

Cybil continued to stare at Quinn for another moment, as the last knots of shock and grief inside her untangled. “You’ve always been able to cut through the bullshit, haven’t you? So, okay then.” She took her first truly clear breath in hours. “Let’s take a moment to congratulate ourselves… And that’s the moment. Somebody start clearing the table, and I’ll get my cards.”