Nora Roberts - The Pagan Stone

“Bowling center’s a major site.” Quinn studied the updated map. “The high school, the bar, what was the Foster house, the area around the Square. Obvious reasons for all that. But it’s interesting that before this year, neither Fox’s building nor this house had any incidents. We’re on to something here.”

“Why didn’t we see this before?” Cal wondered. “How the hell did we miss it?”

“We never did charts and graphs,” Fox pointed out. “We wrote stuff down, sure, but we never put it all together this way. The logical, visual way.”

“And you see it every day,” Cybil added. “You and Cal live here. You see the town every day, the streets, the buildings. Gage doesn’t. So when he looks at the map, he sees it in a different way. And doing what he does for a living, he instinctively looks for patterns.”

“What do we do with this?” Layla asked.

“We add as much data as possible from these guys’ memories,” Cybil began. “We input that, study and analyze the resulting pattern, and…”

“We calculate the odds on the first strike or strikes,” Gage finished when she looked at him. “Bowling center year one, the bar year two. We don’t know, because we were at the Pagan Stone, what took the first hit year three.”

“We might.” Frowning at the map, Cal pinned a finger to a spot. “My father stayed in town. He knew we were going to the clearing, to try to stop this, so he stayed in case… I didn’t know it. He didn’t tell me until after it was all over. He planted himself in the police station. A couple of guys in the bank parking lot, going at each other’s cars-and each other-with tire irons.”

“Did anything significant happen to any of you there?”

“Yeah.” Fox hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “Napper jumped me there once, beat half the snot out of me before I got my second wind and beat the rest of it out of him.”

“Just what I’m after,” Cybil told him. “Where’d you lose your virginity, Cal?”

“Well, Jesus.”

“Don’t be shy.” Muffling laughter, Quinn bumped his shoulder.

“Backseat of my car, like any self-respecting high school senior.”

“He was a late bloomer,” Gage pointed out.

Cal hunched his shoulders, then deliberately straightened them again. “I’ve since made up for it.”

“So I hear,” Cybil said, and Quinn laughed again. “Where were you parked?”

“Up on Rock Mount Lane. There weren’t many houses along there back then. They’d just started to develop, so…” He angled his head, and once again laid a finger on the map. “Here, right about here. And last Seven, two of those houses burned to the ground.”

“Fox?”

“Alongside of the creek. Well outside town limits. There are a few houses tucked in there now, but they’re not part of the Hollow. I don’t know if that plays in this.”

“We should log them in anyway. What we’ll need you to do, all of you, is dig back, think back, note down anything, anywhere, that might be significant. A violent episode, a traumatic one, a sexual one. Then we’ll correlate. Layla, you’re a hell of a correlator.”

“All right. My shop, or what will be my shop,” Layla corrected. “It’s been hit hard every Seven, and already took damage this time. Did anything happen there?”

“It used to be a junk shop.”

The tone of Gage’s voice, the quality of silence from both Cal and Fox told Cybil this wasn’t only significant. It was monumental. “A kind of low-rent antique store. My mother worked there part-time off and on. We were all in there-I think maybe our mothers got together to have lunch in town, or poke around. I don’t remember. But we were all in there when… She got sick, started to hemorrhage. She was pregnant, I can’t remember how far along. But we were all in there when whatever went wrong started going wrong.”

“They got an ambulance.” Cal finished it so Gage wouldn’t have to. “Fox’s mother went with her, and mine took the three of us back to the house with her. They couldn’t save her or the baby.”

“The last time I saw her, she was lying on the floor of that junk shop, bleeding. I guess that’s pretty fucking significant. I need more coffee.”

Downstairs, he bypassed the pot and went straight out on the porch. Moments later, Cybil stepped out behind him.

“I’m sorry, so sorry this causes you pain.”

“Nothing I could do then, nothing I can do now.”

She moved to him, laid a hand on his arm. “I’m still sorry it causes you pain. I know what it is to lose a parent, one you loved and who loved you. I know how it can mark your life into before and after. However long ago, whatever the circumstances, there’s still a place in the child that hurts.”

“She told me it was going to be all right. The last thing she said to me was, ‘Don’t worry, baby, don’t be scared. It’s going to be all right.’ It wasn’t, but I hope she believed it.”

Steadier, he turned to her. “If you’re right about this, and I think you are, I’m going to find a way to kill it. I’m going to kill it for using my mother’s blood, her pain, her fear to feed on. I swear a goddamn oath right here and now on that.”

“Good.” With her eyes on his, she held out a hand. “I’ll swear it with you.”

“You didn’t even know her. I barely-”

She cut him off, taking his face in her hands, pulling so that his mouth met hers in a quick and fierce kiss that was more comforting than a dozen soft words. “I swear it.”

Even as she drew back, her hands stayed on his face. And a single tear spilled out of her eyes to trail down her cheek. Undone, he lowered his forehead to hers.

Grateful, he took the comfort of her tears.

INSIDE WHAT WOULD BE SISTERS, CYBIL STUDIED the swaths of paint on the various walls. Fresh color, she thought, to cover old wounds and scars. Layla, being Layla, had created a large chart of the interior on the wall-to scale-with the projected changes and additions in place. It took little effort to visualize what could be.

And for Cybil, it took little effort to visualize what had been. The little boy, scared and confused as his mother bled on the floor of a junk shop. From that moment, Gage’s life snapped, she thought. He’d glued the pieces back together, but the line of them would be forever changed by those moments in this place, the loss suffered.

She knew, as the line of her life had forever changed at the moment of her father’s suicide.

Another snap in Gage’s, she realized, the first time his father had raised a hand to him. Another patch, another change in the line. Then another break on his tenth birthday.

A great deal of damage and repair for one young boy. It would take a very strong and determined man not only to accept all that damage, but to build a life on it.

Because the chatter behind her had stopped, she turned to see Layla and Quinn watching her.

“It’s perfect, Layla.”

“You’re thinking about what happened here, about Gage’s mother. I’ve thought about it, too.” Layla’s eyes clouded as she looked around the shop. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it last night. There’s another property a few blocks up. It might be better if I looked into renting that instead-”

“No, no, don’t. This is your place.” Cybil touched a hand to the chart.

“He never said a thing. Gage never said a thing, and all the times I babbled on about my plans here. Fox never… Or Cal. And when I asked Fox about it, he said the point was to make things what they should be, or preserve what they were meant to be. You know how he gets.”

“And he’s right.” Fresh paint, Cybil thought again. Color and light. “If we don’t keep what’s ours, or take it back, we’ve already lost. None of us can change what happened to Gage’s mother, or whatever ugliness happened since. But you can make this place live again, and to me, that’s giving Twisse a major ass-kicking. As for Gage, he said his mother liked coming here. I think he’d appreciate seeing you make it somewhere she’d have enjoyed.”