The Sign of Seven Trilogy (85 page)

“Fox.”

“Because I was thinking more like February. You know what a crappy month February is? Why shouldn't there be something really great to look forward to in the mostly crappy month of February?” He took a slug of his Coke, then set it down as she stared back at him. “Plus, it was February when I saw you for the first time. But not Valentine's Day because, you know, complete cliché and way too traditional.”

“You've been thinking?”

“Yeah, I've been thinking, seeing as I'm completely in love with you. But I'm glad you asked me first. Takes the pressure off.” With a laugh, he lifted her off her feet. “February work for you?”

“February's perfect.” She laid her hands on his cheeks, kissed him. Then lifting her head, she grinned. “Fox and I are getting married in February.”

Amid the congratulations and hugs, Cybil caught Gage's eye. “Don't worry,” she said quietly. “I won't propose.”

She put on the kettle for tea, to keep her calm and centered when they went back to work.

Eight

GAGE SLEPT POORLY, AND THE INSOMNIA HAD nothing to do with dreams or visions. He wasn't used to making serious mistakes, or worse—certainly more mortifying—clumsy missteps. Particularly with women. He made his living not just reading cards and the odds, but out of reading people, what went on behind the eyes, the words, the gestures.

It was small comfort to understand, at about three a.m., that he hadn't read Cybil incorrectly. She was just as intrigued and attracted as he, just as interested—and probably just as wary—of acting on those now-famous buzzing sexual vibes.

No, he wasn't wrong about the sexual connection between them.

His monumental mistake had been knee-jerking off a disquiet inside himself and kicking it right into her face. The second layer of the mistake being—and Christ, it was lowering—he'd been after
reassurance
. He'd wanted her to agree with him, to tell him there wasn't anything to worry about. She wasn't any more willing to get dicked around by Fate than he was.

With that all tidied up, they'd work together, sleep together, fight together, hell, maybe die together, and no problem.

All that talk about emotion and emotional connection had spiced the stew he'd already had simmering inside him. Hadn't he watched both his closest friends, his brothers, fall in love? And weren't they both heading toward the altar? Any man in his right mind would take a hard look at the hand being dealt and fold before the draw.

And, with hindsight flashing like neon, he had to admit he should've kept that move, that thought, that opinion to himself. Instead, he'd fumbled it, gone on the defensive. And had, essentially, accused her of setting him up. She'd been right to kick his ass over it. No question about it. Now the question was how to put things back on a level field without having to wade through the sticky waters of an apology first. He could use the greater-good ploy, but however true it might be, it was weak.

In the end, he decided to play it by ear, and walked into the rental house. Quinn was halfway down the steps, and paused when he came in. After the briefest of hesitations, she jogged the rest of the way down. “Hi. You wouldn't be here to work, would you?”

“Actually—”

She plowed right over him with a rush of words and movement. “Because we're very shorthanded. Fox and Cal are both in meetings, and Fox's dad had a couple hours, so Layla's over at the boutique with him going over plans. It's down to me and Cyb, and actually, I need to run out to the place to get the thing. I came down to get Cyb some coffee, there's fresh in the kitchen. Get that, will you? I'll be back in twenty.”

She nipped straight out the door before he could get in a word. At least half of what she'd said was bullshit manufactured on the spot. A man recognized bullshit when he was standing knee deep in it. But since it served his purposes, he just walked back to the kitchen and poured two coffees, then carried them upstairs.

That curly mass of hair tumbled this way and that out of pins Cybil had used to secure it to the top of her head. A new look for her, he thought—at least that he'd seen—and a damn sexy one. She worked with her back to him, on the big dry erase board. Another chart, he noted, and recognized the names of the cards they'd all chosen in the various rounds the night before. The music, he assumed, came from one of the laptops set up in the room. Melissa Etheridge soared.

“Wouldn't logging those into the computer be faster?”

He saw the quick jolt, and the quick recovery before she turned. The look she spared him was what he thought of as beige. Absolutely neutral. “They are logged, but this is easier on the eyes, and more accessible to the whole group. Would one of those be my coffee, or do you plan to drink both?”

He stepped over, held one out to her. “Quinn said she had to go to the place to get the thing, and would be back in twenty.”

Irritation flickered over Cybil's face before she turned back to the board. “In that case, you ought to go downstairs, or outside until you have a chaperone to protect you from my wiles.”

“I can handle you.”

She glanced back. No beige now, Gage mused. This look was all smoke, with the faintest tinge of hot blue at the edges. “Others have thought the same. Their mistake.”

Screw it, he decided as she continued to print her perfectly formed letters. When a man played his hand poorly, he had to take his losses. “I was out of line.”

“Yes, we've established that much already.”

“Then no problem.”

“I never imagined you had one.”

He drank some coffee. He watched her. He tried to figure out why her cool disinterest just pissed him off. So he set the coffee down, and took her arm to get her attention. “Look—”

“Careful.” The warning dripped like molten sugar. “The last time you started a statement that way you ended up with both feet jammed in your mouth. I imagine you'd find it as boring as I do to make the same mistake twice.”

“I never said I made a mistake.”

When she met this with silence, and a long, bland stare, it occurred to him she'd be a killer at the poker table. “Okay. All right. The whole day was over the top. Since I don't see you as a tease, it's pretty clear we're going to end up in bed together.”

The sound she made wasn't quite a laugh, and was all insult. “I wouldn't place my bets on that just yet.”

“I like the odds. But the point is, I thought we'd both want the rules laid out beforehand. The over-the-line part was making it sound as if you were looking for something more.”

“That was the over-the-line part?”

“You could cut me a small break here, Cybil.”

“Actually, I already have.” She thought of the Treatment, and smiled. “You just don't know about it. Let me ask you something. Do you really believe you're so irresistible, so appealing, that I'll fall in love with you and start dreaming of white picket to fence you in?”

“No, I don't. That's part two of the over-the-line. Straight out?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“All the hookups, the link-ups, the subsets like you called them,” he said, gesturing to her board, “started to make me uneasy. Added in the more we're in this, the more I've got an urge for you—which I know damn well is mutual—I overreacted.”

And that, Cybil decided, was as close to an apology as he'd come up with, unless she beat him with a stick. All in all, it wasn't half bad. “Okay,” she said, mimicking him, “all right. I'll cut you a slightly bigger break than I already have. I'll also toss in the fact that I think both of us are old enough and smart enough to resist our
urges
should we have concerns that acting on them will result in driving the other party into mad and hopeless love. Does that work for you?”

“Yeah, that works for me.”

“In that case, you can either run along and do whatever it is you do, or you can stay and pitch in.”

“Define ‘pitch in.'”

“Lend a fresh eye with the charts, the graphs, the maps. Maybe you'll see something we're missing, or at least the potential of something. I need to finish this one, then it needs to be analyzed.” She began to write again. “Then, if you're still around, it might be a good idea to try another link-up—of the psychic variety—when at least one other person's around. It occurred to me if the timing had been different yesterday, and that dog had gotten there sooner—”

“Yeah, it occurred to me, too.”

“So, I think at least until we have a better handle on it, we shouldn't try that sort of thing alone, or outside.”

He couldn't argue with that. “Tell me about this first, the cards.”

“All right. Start with me. I've listed my cards, in the succession they were picked, and the subsets I picked with. Yours and mine here, then with Q and Layla, then with the group as a whole. There are twenty-two Major Arcana in a Tarot deck. You and I chose five cards each, all ten of them Major Arcana.”

He scanned the board, nodded. “Got that.”

“My female subset, five cards each, and a total of fifteen of Major Arcana. When I picked with the group as a whole, the first three were again Major Arcana, the last three—and as I elected to pull from the deck last, all twenty-two were already pulled—were the Queen of Swords, the Ten of Rods, and the Four of Cauldrons.

“Now, when you look at my three rounds, you see that in the first, and the last, I pulled both Death and the Devil. Other repeats, first and second rounds, the Hanged Man, and in all three rounds, I drew the Wheel of Fortune. Second and third, Strength.”

“All of us drew repeat cards.”

“That's right, so those repetitions add weight to our individual columns. And, tellingly, each woman picked a queen, each man a king. Mine, Queen of Swords, represents someone on guard. An intelligent woman who uses that intellect to gain her own way. Which I'm certainly prone to do. This queen is usually seen as a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. Ten of Rods, a burden, a determination to succeed. Four of Cauldrons, help from a positive source, new possibilities and/or relationships.”

She stepped back, frowned at the board. “My take here is, the cards from the Lesser Arcana represent not only who we are, but what we need to do individually to aid the whole. With the repeat cards representing what was set before us—individually again—what's come to be or is coming, and the eventual outcome.”

“How about my king?”

“Again Swords. Represents a man of action who has an analytical mind. And though it might be seen more as Fox, as it's often someone in the legal profession, it means this man is fair, a good judge and basically, nobody's patsy. Next, you have the Six of Rods, triumph after a struggle. And last, Nine of Cauldrons. Someone who enjoys the good life, and has found material success.

“So . . .” She blew out a breath. “As Q and I are most familiar with the Tarot and its meanings, we'll work this. Shuffle it around, analyze, dig into meanings in each subset and in the order of individual picks, repeats, and so on.”

“Which will tell us . . . ?”

“Strengths and weaknesses—that's a key, isn't it? For each of us, for each subset, and for the whole. And speaking of Q,” Cybil continued when Quinn stepped to the doorway. “Did you get the thing from the place?” Cybil asked sweetly.

“What? Oh, that thing from that place. They were out. So, what are we up to?”

“You and I are on cards. Gage will be putting his analytical mind and his judgment into charts, maps, and graphs.”

“Cool. Isn't it sweet how Cal and I picked King and Queen of Rods?” She beamed her smile at Gage. “Both prefer country living, are loyal with strong ties to family.”

“Handy.” With that, Gage decided the maps needed his attention.

He wondered how many hours they'd put into all this—their pushpins and computer printouts. He understood and valued the need for research and prep work, but honestly couldn't see what help color-coded index cards were against the forces of evil.

As he studied the map of the Hollow, his mind automatically filled in houses, buildings, landmarks. How many times had he cruised those streets—on a bike, then in a car? There was the place where the dog had drowned at the dawn of the second Seven. But the summer before, he and Fox and Cal had snuck out and gone skinny-dipping in that pool one hot summer night.

The bank would be there, corner of Main and Antietam. He'd opened an account there when he'd been thirteen, to hoard money where the old man couldn't find it. And that asshole Derrick Napper had jumped Fox there one night, just for the hell of it, as Fox cut through on his way from ball practice to the Bowl-a-Rama. The Foster house had been right about there, on Parkside, and in the basement family room, he'd lost his virginity and taken that of the pretty Jenny Foster one memorable night when her parents had been out celebrating their anniversary.

Less than eighteen months later, long after he and pretty Jenny had parted ways, her mother had set the bed on fire while her father slept. There had been many fires during that Seven, and Mr. Foster one of the lucky ones. He'd awakened, put the fire out, then managed to subdue his wife before she lit up their children.

There was the bar where he and Cal and Fox had all gotten ridiculously drunk when he'd come back to celebrate their twenty-first birthday. A few years before, he recalled Lisa Hodges had stumbled out of that same bar and shot at anything that moved—and some that didn't. She'd put a bullet in his arm that Seven, Gage thought, then offered him a blow job.

Strange times.