The Sign of Seven Trilogy (87 page)

“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.

Nine

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.”

“I agree with that, and not just because this place is going to rock,” Quinn added. “You'll put a lot of positive energy here, and that shoves it right up the ass of negative energy. That's a powerful symbol. More than that, it's damn good physics. What we're dealing with breaks down, on a lot of levels, to basic physics.”

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” Cybil decided, nodded. “So don't give it one. Fill it up, Layla.”

Layla sighed. “As I'm about to be officially unemployed, again, I'll have plenty of time to do that. But right now, I've got to get to the office. It's the first full day of training my replacement.”

“How's she working out?” Quinn wondered.

“I think she's going to be perfect. She's smart, efficient, organized, attractive—and happily married with two teenagers. I like her; Fox is a little bit afraid of her. So, perfect.” As they started out, Layla looked at Cybil. “If you talk to Gage today, would you ask him? Physics and ass-kickings aside, if it's too hard for him to have this place a part of his life—and it would be because Fox is—I can take a closer look at that other property.”

“If I talk to him, I will.”

After Layla locked up and turned in the opposite direction to walk to the office, Quinn hooked an arm through Cybil's. “Why don't you go do that?”

“Do what?”

“Go talk to Gage. You'll work better when you're not wondering how he's doing.”

“He's a big boy, he can—”

“Cyb. We go back. First, you're involved. Even if you just thought of the guy as part of the team, you'd be involved. But it's more than that. Just you and me here,” she said when Cybil stayed silent.

“All right, yes, it's more. I'm not sure how more might be defined, but it's more.”

“Okay, there's the nebulous more. And you're thinking of the little boy who lost his mom, and whose father picked up the bottle instead of his son. Of the boy who took more knocks than he should have, and the man who didn't walk away when he could have. So there's the sympathy and respect elements mixed into that more.”

“You're right.”

“He's smart, loyal, a little bit of a hard-ass and just rough enough around some of the edges to be intriguing. And, of course, he's extremely hot.”

“We do go back,” Cybil agreed.

“So, go talk to him. Relieve Layla's mind, maybe get a better handle on the more, then you can concentrate on what we have to do next. Which is a lot.”

“Which is why I can and should talk to him later. We've barely skimmed the surface of what we're thinking of as the hot spots. And I need a fresh look at the Tarot card draws. Most important, I'm not leaving you alone in that house. Not for anything.”

“That's why laptops were invented. I'm taking mine over to the bowling center.” Quinn gestured back toward the Square. “Further proof why I made the right choice in men and home base. I'll set up in Cal's office, or the vicinity, and you can swing by and get me when you're finished talking to Gage.”

“Maybe that's not such a bad idea.”

“Pal of mine,” Quinn said as they walked into the house, “not such bad ideas are my stock and trade.”

 

AT CAL'S KITCHEN COUNTER, GAGE DUG INTO HIS memories, and with coffee at his elbow, documented them on his own laptop. Shit happened, he thought, and a lot of it had been monumentally bad shit. But in writing it down, he began to see there were a handful of locations where it happened repeatedly.

Still, it didn't all make sense. He'd experienced the worst of his life—pain, fear, grief, and fury—in that damn apartment over the bowling alley. Though incidents occurred there during every Seven, he couldn't recall a single major one. No loss of life, no burning, no looting.

And that itself was odd, wasn't it? A town institution, his childhood home, Cal's family's center in a very true sense, Fox's favorite hangout. Yet when the infection raged, and people were burning, breaking, beating hell out of each other, the old Bowl-a-Rama stood almost untouched.

That earned a big
why
in his book, with a secondary,
how can we use it.

There was the old library, and the three of them had certainly put in time there. Cal's great-grandmother had run the place. Ann Hawkins had lived there, and died there during the early days of the Hawkins Hollow settlement. Fox had suffered a major tragedy during the previous Seven when his fiancée took a header off the roof.

But . . . But, he mused, sipping coffee, it was the only tragedy he could remember in that location. No burning or pillaging there either. And with all those books as fuel.

The middle and high schools, hit every time, and the elementary virtually untouched. Interesting.

He shifted to study his drawing of the town map and began to speculate not only on the hot spots, but the cold ones.

The mild irritation of the knock on the front door turned into another kind of speculation when he found Cybil on the other side.

“Why don't you just come in?” he asked her. “Nobody else knocks.”

“Superior breeding.” She closed the door herself then tilted her head as she gave him a slow once-over. “Rough night?”

“I'd've put on a suit and tie if I'd been expecting company of superior breeding.”

“A shave wouldn't hurt. I'm charged with discussing something with you. Should we discuss it standing here?”

“Is it going to take long?”

The amused glint in her eye struck a chord with him. “Aren't you the gracious host?”

“Not my house,” he pointed out. “I'm working in the kitchen. You can come on back.”

“Why, thank you. I believe I will.” She strolled ahead of him in what he thought of as her sexy queen glide. “Mind if I make tea?”

He shrugged. “You know where everything is.”

“I do.” She took the kettle off the stove, walked to the sink.

He wasn't particularly annoyed that she'd come by. The fact was, it wasn't exactly a hardship to have a beautiful woman making tea in the kitchen. And that was the sticky part, he admitted. Not just any beautiful woman, but Cybil. Not just any kitchen, but for all intents and purposes right at the moment, his kitchen.

There'd been something intense between them the night before, when she'd kissed him, when she'd shed tears for him. Not sexual, or not at its core, he admitted. Sexual he could work with, he could handle. Whatever was going on between them was a hell of a lot more dangerous than sex.

She glanced over her shoulder and he felt that instant and recognizable punch of physical attraction. And there the ground held firmer under his feet.

“What are you working on?” she asked him.

“My homework assignment.”

She wandered over, then gave his map an approving nod. “Nicely done.”

“Do I get an A?”

Her gaze flicked up to his. “I appreciate bad moods. I have them often myself. Why don't I skip the tea, get right to the point, then I can leave you alone to enjoy yours?”

“Finish making the tea, it's no skin off mine. You can top off my coffee while you're at it. And what is the point?”

Wasn't it fascinating to watch her face while she debated between being pissed and flipping him off, or being superior and doing what she'd come to do.

She turned, got out a cup and saucer—and, he noted, ignored his request to top off his coffee. She leaned back against the opposite counter while she waited for the water to boil. “Layla's considering an alternate location for her boutique.”

He waited for the rest, lifting his hands when it didn't come. “And this needs to be discussed with me because . . . ?”

“She's considering an alternative because she's concerned about your feelings.”

“My feelings regarding ladies' boutiques are pretty much nonexistent. Why would she . . .”

With a nod, Cybil turned to turn off the burner under the sputtering kettle. “I see your brain's able to engage even through your bad mood. She's worried that opening her business there will hurt you. As her cards indicated, compassion and empathy are some of her strengths. You're Fox's brother in the truest sense of the word, so she loves you. She'll adjust her plans.”

“There's no need for that. She doesn't have to . . . It's not . . .” He couldn't put the words together; they simply wouldn't come.

“I'll tell her.”

“No, I'll talk to her.” Christ. “It's just a place where something bad happened. If they boarded up all the places where something bad happened in the Hollow, there wouldn't be a town. I wouldn't give a good damn about that, but there are people I give a good damn about who do.”

And loyalty, Cybil thought, was one of his strengths. “She'll make it shine. I think it's what she's meant to do. I saw her there. Two separate flashes. Two separate potentials. In one the place was burned out, the windows broken, the walls scorched. She stood alone inside the shell of the place. There was light coming through the broken front window, and that made it worse somehow. The way it beamed and burned over the ruin of her hopes.”

Turning again, she poured out a cup of tea. “In the other, the light was beaming and burning in through sparkling glass, over the polished floor. She wasn't alone. There were people inside, looking at the displays, the racks. There was such movement and color. I don't know which may happen, if either. But I do know she needs to try to make that second version the truth. She'll be able to try if you tell her you're okay with it.”

“Fine.”

“Well, since I've completed my mission, I'll just go and leave you alone.”

“Finish your damn tea.”

She carried her cup over, leaned on the counter so they were face-to-face. A little sympathy shone in those big, brown eyes of hers. “Love's a weight, isn't it? And here you are loaded down with Cal and Fox, with the Hawkinses and the Barry-O'Dells. Now Layla goes and drops a big stone on the pile. There's Quinn, too, you might as well shoulder that one because she's the type who'll just keep picking it back up and dropping it on again. No wonder you're in such a sour mood.”

“That's your take. To me, this just feels normal.”

“In that case.” She strolled around the counter to study his laptop screen over his shoulder. “My, my, you
are
doing your homework.”

She smelled like the woods, he thought. Autumn woods. Nothing fragile and pastel like spring, but rich and vivid, with just a hint of distant smoke.

“A lot of locations here,” she commented. “I think I get the basic idea of your groupings, but why don't you explain your—”

He didn't think about the move, he just made it. Usually a mistake, he knew, but it didn't feel like one. It didn't taste like one. He had his mouth on hers, his hands fisted in her hair before either one of them knew it was coming.