The Pagan Stone (32 page)

“If that’s true, and without more we can’t say it is, we’re back to straws.” Cal shoved his own coffee aside to lean toward Gage. “It’s been the three of us since day one. You don’t get to decide.”

“I didn’t. It’s the way it is.”

“Then why you? Give me a reason.”

“It’s my turn. Simple as that. You jammed a knife into that thing last winter, showed us we could hurt it. A couple months later, Fox showed us we could kick its ass back and live through it. We wouldn’t be sitting here, this close to ending it, if the two of you hadn’t done those things. If these three women hadn’t come here, stayed here, risked all they’ve risked. So it’s my turn.”

“What next?” Cybil snapped at him. “Are you going to call time-out?”

He looked at her calmly. “We both know what we saw, what we felt. And if we all look back, step by step, we can see this one coming. I was given the future for a reason.”

“So you wouldn’t have one?”

“So, whether I do or not, you do.” Gage shifted his gaze from Cybil to Cal. “The town does. So wherever the hell Twisse plans to go next when he’s done here has a future. I play the cards I’m dealt. I’m not folding.”

Cal rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not saying I’m on board with this, but say I am—we are—there’s time to think of a way for you to do this without dying.”

“I’m all for that.”

“We pull you out,” Fox suggested. “Maybe there’s a way to pull you out. Get a rope on you, some sort of harness rig?” He looked at Cal. “We could yank him back out.”

“We could work with something like that.”

“If we could get Twisse to take an actual form,” Layla put in. “The boy, the dog, a man.”

“And get it to hold form long enough for me to ram the stone up its ass?”

“You said down his throat.”

Gage grinned at Layla over his coffee. “Metaphorically. I’m going to check with my demonologist friend, Professor Linz. Believe me, I’m not going into this unprepared. All things being equal, I’d like to come out of this alive.” He shifted his gaze to Cybil. “I’ve got some plans for after.”

“Then we’ll keep thinking, keep working. I’ve got to get into the office,” Fox said, “but I’m going to cancel or reschedule all the appointments and court dates I can for the duration.”

“I’ll give you a ride in.”

“Why? Shit, right. Napper, truck. Which means I’ve got to swing by and see Hawbaker again this morning and check with the mechanic about my truck.”

“I want in on the first part,” Gage said. “I’ll follow you in. I can run you by the mechanic if you need to go.”

Cal got to his feet. “We’re going to figure this out,” he said to the group at large. “We’re going to find the way.”

With the men gone, the women sat in the kitchen.

“This is so completely stupid.” Quinn rapped the heel of her hand on the counter. “Draw straws? For God’s
sake
. As if we’re going to say sure, one of us falls on the damn grenade while the rest of us stand back and twiddle our thumbs.”

“We weren’t twiddling,” Cybil said quietly. “Believe me. It was horrible, Q. Horrible. The noise, the smoke, the
stink
. And the cold. It was everything, this thing. It was mammoth. No evil little boy or big, bad dog.”

“But we fought it. We hurt it.” Layla closed a hand around Cybil’s arm. “If we hurt it enough, we’ll weaken it. If we weaken it enough, it can’t kill Gage.”

“I don’t know.” She thought of what she’d seen, and of her own research. “I wish I did.”

“Possibilities, Cyb. Remember that. What you see can be changed, has been changed
because
you see it.”

“Some of it. We need to go upstairs. We need one of your spare pregnancy tests.”

“Oh, but I took three.” Distressed, Quinn pressed a hand to her belly. “And I even felt queasy this morning, and—”

“It’s not for you. It’s for Layla.”

“Me? What? Why? I’m not pregnant. My period’s not even due until—”

“I know when it’s due,” Cybil interrupted. “We’re three women who’ve been living in the same house for months. Our cycles are on the same schedule.”

“I’m on birth control.”

“So was I,” Quinn said thoughtfully. “But that doesn’t explain why you think Layla’s pregnant.”

“So pee on a stick.” Cybil rose, gave the come-ahead sign. “It’s easy.”

“Fine, fine, if it makes you feel better. But I’m not pregnant. I’d know. I’d sense it, wouldn’t I?”

“It’s harder to see ourselves.” Cybil led the way upstairs, strolled into Quinn’s room, sat on the bed while Quinn opened a drawer.

“Take your pick.” She held out two boxes.

“It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t matter.” Layla took one at random.

“Go pee,” Cybil told her. “We’ll wait.”

When Layla went into the bathroom, Quinn turned to Cybil. “You want to tell me why she’s in there peeing on a stick?”

“Let’s just wait.”

Moments later Layla came back with the test stick. “There, done. And no plus sign.”

“It’s been about thirty seconds since you flushed,” Quinn pointed out.

“Thirty seconds, thirty minutes. I can’t be pregnant. I’m getting married in February. I don’t even have the ring yet. After February, and if we buy this house we’re thinking about, and I decorate it, after my business is up and running smoothly,
then
I can be pregnant. Next February—our first anniversary—would be the perfect time to conceive. Everything should be in place by then.”

“You really are an anal and organized soul,” Cybil commented.

“Absolutely. And I know my own body, my own cycle, my own . . .” She trailed off when she glanced down at the test stick. “Oh.”

“Let me see that.” Quinn snatched it out of her hand. “That’s a really big, really clear, really unmistakable plus for positive Miss I Can’t Be Pregnant.”

“Oh. Oh. Wow.”

“I said holy shit a lot.” Quinn passed the stick to Cybil. “Give yourself a minute. See how you feel after the shock clears.”

“That might take more than a minute. I . . . I had a sort of loose schedule worked out, for when this would happen. We want kids. We talked about it. I just thought . . . Let me see that again.” Taking it from Cybil, Layla stared. “Holy shit.”

“Good shit or bad shit?” Quinn asked.

“Another minute, and that one sitting down.” Layla dropped onto the bed and just breathed. Then she laughed. “Good, really, really good. About a year and a half ahead of schedule, but I can adjust. Fox is going to be over the moon! I’m pregnant. How did you know?” She swiveled to Cybil. “How did you know?”

“I saw you.” Moved by the radiant smile, Cybil stroked Layla’s hair. “Both you and Quinn. I’ve been expecting this. We saw you, Quinn, Gage and I. In the winter—next winter. You were napping on the couch when he came in. And when you turned over, well, you were unmistakably pregnant.”

“How’d I look?”

“Enormous. And beautiful, and wonderfully happy. You both did. And I saw Layla. You were in your boutique, which looked terrific, by the way. Fox brought you flowers. They were for your first month in business. It was sometime in September.”

“We think I could open in mid-August, if . . . I’m going to open in mid-August,” she corrected.

“You weren’t showing yet, not really, but something you said . . . I don’t think Gage caught that. A man probably wouldn’t. You were all so happy.” Remembering what else she’d seen, only the night before, Cybil pressed her lips together. “That’s how it should be. I believe now that’s how it will be.”

“Honey.” Quinn sat beside her, draped an arm over Cybil’s shoulder. “You think Gage has to die for all this to happen for the rest of us.”

“I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen all of it happen. So has he. How much is destiny, how much is choice? I just don’t know anymore.” She took Layla’s hand, laid her head on Quinn’s shoulder. “Some of the research, it talks about the need for sacrifice, for balance—destroy the dark, the light must die, too. The stone—the power source—must be taken into the dark, by the light. I didn’t tell you.”

Cybil lifted her hands, held them over her face, dropped them. “I didn’t tell any of you because I didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to face it. I don’t know why I had to fall in love with him to lose him. Not this way.”

Quinn hugged harder. “We’ll find another.”

“I’ve tried.”

“We’ll all be trying now,” Layla reminded her. “We’ll find it.”

“We don’t give up,” Quinn insisted. “That’s the one thing we don’t do.”

“You’re right. You’re right.” Hope wasn’t something to dismiss, Cybil reminded herself. “And this isn’t the moment for gloom and doom. Let’s get out of this house. Let’s just get out of this house for a few hours.”

“I want to tell Fox. We could drive into town, and I could tell him face-to-face. Make his day.”

“Perfect.”

 

WHEN THEY LEARNED FROM FOX’S PEPPY NEW office manager that Fox was with a client, Layla decided to multitask.

“I’ll run upstairs, get some more clothes, clean out the perishables from the kitchen. If he’s not done by that time, well, I’ll just wait.”

“I’ll let him know you’re here as soon as he’s free,” the new office manager sang out as the three women started up the stairs.

“I’ll start in the kitchen,” Cybil said.

“I’ll give you a hand with that. As soon as I pee.” Quinn shifted from foot to foot. “It’s probably psychological pee, because I know I’m pregnant. But my bladder thinks otherwise. Wow,” she continued when Layla opened the door to Fox’s apartment to the living room. “This place is . . .”

“The word is
habitable
.” With a laugh, Layla shut the door behind them. “It’s amazing what a regular cleaning woman can do.”

They separated, Cybil to the kitchen, Quinn to the bathroom. Layla stepped into the bedroom, and froze with a knife point at her throat.

“Don’t scream. It’ll go right through you, right through, and that’s not the way it has to be.”

“I won’t scream.” Her gaze latched on to the bed—and the rope, the roll of duct tape on it. On the can of gasoline. Cybil’s vision, she thought. Cybil and Gage had seen her bound and gagged, on the floor with fire crawling toward her.

“You don’t want to do this. Not really. It’s not you.”

He eased the door shut. “It needs to burn. It all needs to burn. To purify.”

She looked up at his face. She knew that face. Kaz. He delivered pizza for Gino’s. He was only seventeen. But now his eyes gleamed with a kind of jittery madness she thought was ancient. And his grin was wild as he backed her toward the bed. “Take off your clothes,” he said.

In the kitchen Cybil pulled milk, eggs, fruit out of the refrigerator, set them on the counter. When she turned toward a broom closet, hoping for a box or bag, she saw the broken pane in the back door. Instantly she pulled her .22 from her purse and reached for a knife in the block.

One missing, she thought, fighting panic. A knife already out of the block. Gripping hers, she spun back toward the living room just as Quinn opened the bathroom door. Cybil put her finger to her lips, pushed the knife into Quinn’s hand. She gestured toward the bedroom door.

“Go get help,” Cybil whispered.

“Not leaving you. Not leaving either one of you.” Instead, Quinn pulled out her phone.

Inside, Layla stared at the boy who delivered the pizza, who liked to talk with Fox about sports. Keep his eyes on yours, she told herself while her heart made odd piping sounds in her chest. Talk. Keep talking to him. “Kaz, something’s happened to you. It’s not your fault.”

“Blood and fire,” he said, still grinning.

She took another backward step as he jabbed out with the knife, nicked her arm. And the hand fumbling in her purse behind her back finally clamped on its target. She did scream now, and so did he, as she spewed the pepper spray in his eyes.

At the screams, both Quinn and Cybil rushed the bedroom door. They saw Layla scrambling for a knife on the floor, and the boy they all recognized howling with his hands over his face. Whether it was instinct, panic, or simply rage, Cybil followed through. She kicked the boy in the groin, and when he doubled over, his hands leaving his streaming eyes for his crotch, shoved him into the closet. “Quick, quick, help me push the dresser in front of the door,” she ordered when she slammed the closet door.

He screamed, he wept, he battered the door.

Though her hand trembled, Quinn retrieved her phone.

Within fifteen minutes, Chief Hawbaker pulled the weeping boy out of the bedroom closet.

“What’s going on?” Kaz demanded. “My eyes! I can’t see. Where am I? What’s going on?”

“He doesn’t know,” Cybil said as she stood clutching Quinn’s hand. He was nothing but a hurt and confused teenage boy now. “It let him go.”

After cuffing Kaz, Hawbaker nodded to the can on the floor. “That what you used on him?”

“Pepper spray.” Layla sat on the side of the bed, clinging to Fox. Cybil wasn’t sure if she held him to stop him from leaping at the pitiful boy, or to ground herself. “I lived in New York.”

“I’m going to take him in, deal with his eyes. You need to come in, all of you, make your statements.”

“We’ll be in later.” Fox leveled his gaze on Kaz. “I want him locked up until we get there, sort this out.”

Hawbaker studied the rope, the knives, the can of gas. “He will be.”

“My eyes are burning. I don’t understand,” Kaz wept as Hawbaker guided him out. “Fox, hey, Fox, what’s
up
with this?”

“It wasn’t him.” Layla pressed her face to Fox’s shoulder. “It wasn’t really him.”

“I’m going to get you some water.” Cybil started out, stopped as Cal and Gage rushed through the apartment door. “We’re all right. Everyone’s all right.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Fox warned. “Come on, Layla, let’s get you out of here.”

“It wasn’t him,” she repeated, and took Fox’s face in her hands. “You know it wasn’t his fault.”