by Nora Roberts
When he walked out to reception, Mrs. Hawbaker was manning the desk. “I didn’t know you were back,” he began.
“I’ve been back awhile. I’ve just finished proofing the papers Layla took care of for you. Need your signature on these letters.”
“Okay.” He took the pen she handed him, signed. “Where is she? Layla?”
“Gone for the day. She did fine on her own.”
Understanding it was a question as much as an opinion, Fox nodded. “Yeah, she did fine.”
In her brisk way, Mrs. Hawbaker folded the letters Fox had signed. “You don’t need both of us here full-time and can’t afford to be paying double either.”
“Mrs. H—”
“I’m going to come in half days the rest of the week.” She spoke quickly now, tucking letters into envelopes, sealing them. “Just to make sure everything runs smoothly for you, and for her. Any problems, I can come in, help handle them. But I don’t expect there to be. If there aren’t problems, I won’t be coming in after Friday next. We’ve got a lot of packing and sorting to do. Shipping things up to Minneapolis, showing the house.”
“Goddamn it.”
She merely pointed her finger at him, narrowed her eyes. “When I’m gone you can turn the air blue around here, but until I am, you’ll watch your language.”
“Yes, ma’am. Mrs. H—”
“And don’t give me those puppy dog eyes, Fox O’Dell. We’ve been through all this.”
They had, and he could feel her sorrow, and her fear. Dumping his own on her wouldn’t help. “I’ll keep the F-word jar in my office, in memory of you.”
That made her smile. “The way you toss it around, you’ll be able to retire a rich man on the proceeds of that jar. Even so, you’re a good boy. You’re a good lawyer, Fox. Now, you go on. You’re clear for the rest of the day— what’s left of it. I’m just going to finish up a couple things, then I’ll lock up.”
“Okay.” But he stopped at the door, looked back at her. Her snowy hair was perfectly groomed; her blue suit dignified. “Mrs. H? I miss you already.”
He closed the door behind him, and stuck his hands in his pockets as he walked down to the brick sidewalk. At the toot of a horn, he glanced over and waved as Denny Moser drove by. Denny Moser, whose family owned the local hardware store. Denny, who’d been a balletic third base-man for the Hawkins Hollow Bucks in high school.
Denny Moser, who during the last Seven had come after Fox with a pipe wrench and murder on his mind.
It would happen again, Fox thought. It would happen again in a matter of months if they didn’t stop it. Denny had a wife and a kid now—and maybe this time during that week in July, he’d go after his wife or his little girl with a pipe wrench. Or his wife, former cheerleader and current licensed day-care provider, might slit her husband’s throat in his sleep.
It had happened before, the mass insanity of ordinary and decent people. And it would happen again. Unless.
He walked along the wide brick sidewalk on a windy March evening, and knew he couldn’t let it happen again.
Cal was probably still at the bowling alley, Fox thought. He’d go there, have a beer, maybe an early dinner. And maybe the two of them could figure out which direction to try next.
As he approached the Square, he saw Layla come out of Ma’s Pantry across the street, carrying a plastic bag. She hesitated when she spotted him, and that planted a sharp seed of irritation in his gut. After she sent him a casual wave, they walked to the light at the Square on opposite sides of the street.
It might have been that irritation, or the frustration of trying to decide to do what would be natural for him—to wait on his side of the corner for her to cross and speak to her. Or to do what he felt, even with the distance, she’d prefer. For him to simply keep going up Main so they didn’t intersect. Either way, he was nearly at the corner when he felt the fear—sudden and bright. It stopped him in his tracks, had his head jerking up.
There, on the wires crossing above Main and Locust, were the crows.
Dozens of them crowded together in absolute stillness along the thin wire. Hulking there, wings tucked and—he knew—watching. When he glanced across the street, he saw that Layla had seen them, too, either sensing them herself or following the direction of his stare.
He didn’t run, though there was an urgent need to do just that. Instead he walked in long, brisk strides across the street to where she stood gripping her white plastic bag.
“They’re real.” She only whispered it. “I thought, at first, they were just another . . . but they’re real.”
“Yeah.” He took her arm. “We’re going inside. We’re going to turn around, and get inside. Then—”
He broke off as he heard the first stir behind him, just a flutter on the air. And in her eyes, wide now, huge now, he saw it was too late.
The rush of wings was a tornado of sound and speed. Fox shoved her back against the building, and down. Pushing her face against his chest, he wrapped his arms around her and used his body to shield hers.
Glass shattered beside him, behind him. Brakes squealed through the crash and thuds of metal. He heard screams, rushing feet, felt the jarring force as birds thumped into his back, the quick sting as beaks stabbed and tore. He knew the rough, wet sounds were those flying bodies smashing into walls and windows, falling lifeless to street and sidewalk.
It was over quickly, in no more than a minute. A child shrieked, over and over—one long, sharp note after another. “Stay here.” A little out of breath, he leaned back so that Layla could see his face. “Stay right here.”
“You’re bleeding. Fox—”
“Just stay here.”
He shoved to his feet. In the intersection three cars were slammed together. Spiderwebs cracked the safety glass of windshields where the birds had flown into them. Crunched bumpers, he noted as he rushed toward the accident, shaken nerves, dented fenders.
It could have been much worse.
“Everybody all right?”
He didn’t listen to the words: Did you see that? They flew right into my car! Instead he listened with his senses. Bumps and bruises, frayed nerves, minor cuts, but no serious injuries. He left others to sort things out, turned back to Layla.
She stood with a group of people who’d poured out of Ma’s Pantry and the businesses on either side. “The damnedest thing,” Meg, the counter cook at Ma’s, said as she stared at the shattered glass of the little restaurant. “The damnedest thing.”
Because he’d seen it all before, and much, much worse, Fox grabbed Layla’s hand. “Let’s go.”
“Shouldn’t we do something?”
“There’s nothing to do. I’m getting you home, then we’ll call Cal and Gage.”
“Your hand.” Her voice was awe and nerves. “The back of your hand’s already healing.”
“Part of the perks,” he said grimly, and pulled her back across Main.
“I don’t have that perk.” She spoke quietly and jogged to keep up with his long, fast stride. “If you hadn’t blocked me, I’d be bleeding.” She lifted a hand to the cut on his face that was slowly closing. “It hurts though. When it happens, then when it heals, it hurts you.” Layla glanced down at their clasped hands. “I can feel it.”
But when he started to let her go, she tightened her grip. “No, I want to feel it. You were right before.” She glanced back at the corpses of crows scattered over the Square, at the little girl who wept wildly now in the arms of her shocked mother. “I hate that you were right and I’ll have to work on that. But you were. I’m not any real help if I don’t accept what I’ve got in me, and learn how to use it.”
She looked back at him, took a bracing breath. “The lull’s over.”
Two
HE HAD A BEER SITTING AT THE LITTLE TABLE with its fancy iron chairs that made the kitchen in the rental house distinctly female. At least to Fox’s mind. The brightly colored minipots holding herbs arranged on the windowsill added to that tone, he su
pposed, and the skinny vase of white-faced daisies one of the women must have picked up at the flower shop in town finished it off.
The women, Quinn, Cybil, and Layla, had managed to make a home out of the place in a matter of weeks with flea market furniture, scraps of fabric, and generous splashes of color.
They’d managed it while devoting the bulk of their time to researching and outlining the root of the nightmare that infected the Hollow for seven days every seven years.
A nightmare that had begun twenty-one years before, on the birthday he shared with Cal and Gage. That night had changed him, and his friends—his blood brothers. Things had changed again when Quinn had come to town to lay the groundwork for her book on the Hollow and its legend.
It was more than a book to her now, the curvy blonde who enjoyed the spookier side of life, and who had fallen for Cal. It was more than a project for Quinn’s college pal Cybil Kinski, the exotic researcher. And he thought it was more of a problem for Layla Darnell.
He and Cal and Gage went back to babyhood—even before, as their mothers had taken the same childbirth class. Quinn and Cybil had been college roommates, and had remained friends since. But Layla had come to the Hollow, come into this situation, alone.
He reminded himself of that whenever his patience ran a bit thin. However tightly the friendship was that had formed between her and the other two women, however much she was connected to the whole, she’d come into this alone.
Cybil walked in carrying a legal pad. She tossed it on the table, then picked up a bottle of wine. Her long, curling hair was pinned back from her face with clips that glinted silver against the black. She wore slim black pants and an untucked shirt of candy pink. Her feet were bare, with toe-nails painted to match the shirt.
Fox always found such details particularly fascinating. He could barely remember to match up a pair of socks.
“So . . .” Her deep brown eyes tracked over to his. “I’m here to get your statement.”
“Aren’t you going to read me my rights?” When she smiled, he shrugged. “We gave you the gist when we came in.”
“Details, counselor.” Her voice was smooth as top cream. “Quinn particularly likes details in the notes for her books and we all need them to keep painting the picture. Quinn’s getting Layla’s take upstairs while Layla changes. She had blood on her shirt. Yours, I’m assuming, as she didn’t have a scratch on her.”
“Neither do I, now.”
“Yes, your super-duper healing power. That’s handy. Run it through for me, will you, cutie? I know it’s a pain, because when the others get here, they’ll want to hear it, too. But isn’t that what they say on the cop shows? Keep going over it, and maybe you’ll remember something more?”
Since she had a point, he began at the moment he’d looked up and seen the crows.
“What were you doing right before you looked up?”
“Walking up Main. I was going to drop in and see Cal. Buy a beer.” Lips curved in a half smile, he lifted the bottle. “Came here and got one free.”
“You bought them, as I recall. It just seems if you were walking toward the Square, and these birds were doing their Hitchcock thing above the intersection, you’d have noticed before you said you did.”
“I was distracted, thinking about . . . work, and stuff.” He raked his fingers through hair still damp from being stuck under the faucet to wash the bird gunk out. “I guess I was looking across the street more than up the street. Layla came out of Ma’s.”
“She walked over to get some of Quinn’s revolting two percent milk. Was it luck—good or bad—that both of you were there, right on the spot?” Her head cocked to the side; her eyebrow lifted. “Or was that the point?”
He liked that she was quick, that she was sharp. “I lean toward it being the point. If the Big Evil Bastard wanted to announce it was back to play, it makes a bigger impact if at least one of us was on the scene. It wouldn’t be as much fun if we’d just heard about it.”
“I lean the same way. We agreed before that it’s able to influence animals or people under some kind of impairment easier, quicker. So, crows. That’s happened before.”
“Yeah. Crows or other birds flying into windows, into people, buildings. When it does, even people who were here when it happened before are surprised. Like it was the first time they’d seen anything like it. That’s part of the symptoms, we’ll call it.”
“There were other people out—pedestrians, people driving by.”
“Sure.”
“And none of them stopped and said: Holy crap, look at all those crows up there.”
“No.” He nodded, following her. “No. No one saw them, or no one who did found them remarkable. That’s happened before, too. People seeing things that aren’t there, and people not seeing things that are. It’s just never happened this far out from the Seven.”
“What did you do after you saw Layla?”
“I kept walking.” Curious, he angled his head in an attempt to read her notes upside down. What he saw were squiggles of letters and signs he didn’t understand how anyone could decipher right-side up. “I guess I stopped for a second the way you do, then I kept walking. And that’s when I . . . I felt it first, that’s what I do. It’s a kind of awareness. Like the hair standing up on the back of your neck, or that tingle between the shoulder blades. I saw them, in my head, then I looked up, and saw them with my eyes. Layla saw them, too.”
“And still, no one else did?”
“No.” Again, he scooped a hand through his hair. “I don’t think so. I wanted to get her inside, but there wasn’t time.”
She didn’t interrupt or question when he ran through the rest of it. When he was done, she set down her pencil, smiled at him. “You’re a sweetheart, Fox.”
“True. Very true. Why?”
She continued to smile as she rose, skirted the little table. She took his face in her hands and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I saw your jacket. It’s torn, and it’s covered with bird blood and God knows what else. That could’ve been Layla.”
“I can get another jacket.”
“Like I said, you’re a sweetheart.” She kissed him again.
“Sorry to interrupt this touching moment.” Gage strode in, his dark hair windblown, his eyes green and cynical. He stored the six-pack he carried in the fridge, then pulled out a beer.
“Moment’s over,” Cybil announced. “Too bad you missed all the excitement.”
He popped the top. “There’ll be plenty more before it’s over. Doing okay?” he asked Fox.
“Yeah. I won’t be pulling out my DVD of The Birds anytime soon, but other than that.”
“Cal said Layla wasn’t hurt.”
“No, she’s good. She’s upstairs changing. Things got a little messy.”
At Fox’s glance, Cybil shrugged. “Which is my cue to go up and check on her and leave you two to man talk.”
As she walked out, Gage followed her with his eyes. “Looks good coming or going.” Taking a long pull on the beer, he sat across from Fox. “You looking in that direction?”
“What? Oh, Cybil? No.” She’d left a scent in the air, Fox realized, that was both mysterious and appealing. But . . . “No. Are you?”
“Looking’s free. How bad was it today?”
“We’ve seen a lot worse. Property damage mostly. Maybe some cuts and bruises.” Everything about him hardened, inside and out. “They’d’ve messed her up, Gage, if I hadn’t been there. She couldn’t have gotten inside in time. They weren’t just flying at cars and buildings. They were heading right for her.”
“It could’ve been any one of us.” Gage pondered on it a moment. “Last month, it went after Quinn when she was alone in the gym.”
“Targeting the women,” Fox said with a nod, “most specifically when one of them is alone. From the viewpoint—the faulty viewpoint—that a woman alone is more vulnerable.”
“Not entirely faulty. We heal, they don’t.” Gage kicked back in his ch
air. “There’s no way to keep three women under wraps while we try to come up with how to kill a centuries-old and very pissed-off demon. Besides that, we need them.”
He heard the front door open and close, then shifted in his chair to watch Cal come in with an armload of take-out bags. “Burgers, subs,” Cal announced. He dumped them on the counter as he studied Fox. “You’re okay? Layla’s okay?”
“The only casualty was my leather jacket. What’s it like out there?”
Getting out his own beer, Cal sat with his friends. His eyes were a cold and angry gray. “About a dozen broken windows on Main Street, and the three-car pileup at the Square. No serious injuries, this time. The mayor and my father got some people together to clean up the mess. Chief Hawbaker’s taking statements.”
“And if it goes as it usually does, in a couple of days, nobody will think any more about it. Maybe it’s better that way. If things like this stuck in people’s minds, the Hollow’d be a ghost town.”
“Maybe it should be. Don’t give me the old hometown cheer,” Gage said to Cal before Cal could speak. “It’s a place. A dot on the map.”
“It’s people,” Cal corrected, though this argument had gone around before. “It’s families, it’s businesses and homes. And it’s ours, goddamn it. Twisse, or whatever name we want to call it, isn’t going to take it.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that it would be a hell of a lot easier to take him down if we didn’t have to worry about the three thousand people in the Hollow?” Gage tossed back. “What do we end up doing through most of the Seven, Cal? Trying to keep people from killing themselves or each other, getting people medical help. How do we fight it when we’re busy fighting what it causes?”
“He’s got a point.” Fox lifted a hand for peace. “I know I’ve wished we could just clear everybody the hell out, have a showdown. Fucking get it done. But you can’t tell three thousand people to leave their homes and businesses for a week. You can’t empty out an entire town.”
