The Sign of Seven Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  “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.”

  “Yeah, I know. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to beat him into a bloody pulp right at the moment, but I know.”

  “Somebody want to fill us in?” Cal demanded.

  “He was going to kill Layla,” Gage said tightly. “The kid. What Cybil and I saw. Strip her down, tie her up, light the place up.”

  “But we stopped it. The way Fox stopped Napper. It didn’t happen. That’s twice now.” Layla let out a breath. “That’s two we’ve changed.”

  “Three.” Cybil gestured toward Fox’s front door. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She turned to Gage. “That’s the door we saw Quinn trying to get out of when a knife was stabbing down at her. The knife Kaz had. The one from out of the block in the kitchen. Neither of those things happened because we were prepared. We changed the potential.”

  “More weight on our side of the scale.” Cal drew Quinn to him.

  “We need to go down to the police station, deal with this. Press charges.”

  “Fox.”

  “Unless,” he continued over Layla’s distress, “he gets out of town. Out to the farm, or just out, until after the Seven. We’ll talk to him, and his parents. He can’t stay in the Hollow. We can’t risk it.”

  Layla let out another breath. “If the rest of you could go ahead? I want a few minutes to talk to Fox.”

  LATER, BECAUSE IT SEEMED LIKE THE THING TO do, Cybil dragged Gage back to Fox’s apartment to load up the food.

  “What’s the big fucking deal about a quart of milk and some eggs?”

  “It’s more than that, and besides, I don’t approve of waste. And it saves Layla from even thinking about coming back up here until she’s steadier. And why are you so irritable?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with having a woman I like quite a lot being held at knifepoint by some infected pizza delivery boy.”

  “You could always tip that and be happy Layla was carrying pepper spray and between her quick reflexes and Quinn and me, we managed to handle it.” As a tension headache turned her shoulders into throbbing knots of concrete, Cybil bagged the milk. “And the pizza delivery boy, who was being used, is on his way to stay with his grandparents in Virginia along with the rest of his family. That’s five people out of harm’s way.”

  “I could look at it that way.”

  His tone made her lips twitch. “But you’d rather be irritable.”

  “Maybe. And we can factor in that now we’ve got two pregnant women instead of one to worry about.”

  “Both of whom have proven themselves completely capable, particularly today. Pregnant Layla managed to keep her head, to reach into her very stylish handbag and yank out a can of pepper spray. Then to blast same in that poor kid’s eyes. Saving herself, potentially saving both Quinn and me from any harm. Certainly saving that boy. I would have shot him, Gage.”

  She sighed as she packed up food. The tension, she realized, wasn’t simply about what had happened, but what might have happened. “I would have shot that boy without an instant’s hesitation. I know this. She saved me from having to live with that.”

  “With that toy you carry, you’d have just pissed him off.”

  Because her lips twitched again, she turned to him. “If that’s an attempt to make me feel better, it’s not bad. But Jesus, I could use some aspirin.”

  When he walked away, she continued bagging food. He returned with a bottle of pills, poured her a glass of water. “Medicine cabinet in the bathroom,” he told her.

  She downed the pills. “Back to our latest adventure, both Layla and Quinn came out of this with barely a scratch—unlike the potential outcome we saw. That’s a big.”

  “No argument.” He went behind her, put his hands on her shoulders and began to push at the knots.

  “Oh God.” Her eyes closed in relief. “Thanks.”

  “So not everything we see will happen, and things we don’t see will. We didn’t see pregnant Layla.”

  “Yes, we did.” She gave his hands more credit than the aspirin for knocking back the leading edge of the headache. “You didn’t recognize what you saw. We saw her and Fox in her boutique, this coming September. She was pregnant.”

  “How do you—never mind. Woman thing,” Gage decided. “Why didn’t you mention it at the time?”

  “I’m not really sure. But what it tells me is that some things are meant, and some things can be changed.” She turned now so they were eye-to-eye. “You don’t have to die, Gage.”

  “I’d rather not, all in all. But I won’t back off from it.”

  “I understand that. But the things we’ve seen played some part in helping our friends stay alive. I have to believe they’ll help you do the same. I don’t want to lose you.” Afraid she might fall apart, she pushed the first of two grocery bags into his arms and spoke lightly. “You come in handy.”

  “As a pack mule.”

  She shoved the second bag at him. “Among other things.” Because his arms were full, she toed up, brushed her lips over his. “We’d better get going. We’ll need to stop by the bakery.”

  “For?”

  “Another Glad You’re Not Dead cake. It’s a nice tradition.” She opened the door, let him pass through ahead of her. “I’ll tell you what, for your birthday—when you’re still alive—I’ll bake you one.”

  “You’ll bake me a cake if I live.”

  “A spectacular cake.” She closed Fox’s door firmly, glanced at the plywood Gage had put up where the glass pane was broken. “Six layers, one for each of us.” When her eyes stung and welled inexplicably, she pulled her sunglasses out of her bag, put them on.

  “Seven,” Gage corrected. “Seven’s the magic number, right? It should be seven.”

  “July seventh, a seven-layer cake.” She waited for him to put the bags in the trunk of his car. “That’s a deal.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “November.” She slid into the car. “The second of November.”

  “I’ll tell you what. If I get to eat a piece of your famous seven-layer cake, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go on your birthday.”

  Despite the ache in her belly, she sent him an easy smile. “Careful. There are a lot of places I want to go.”

  “Good. Same here.”

  THAT WAS JUST ONE OF THE THINGS ABOUT HER, Gage thought, that kept pushing at his mind. There were a lot of places they wanted to go. When had it stopped being he and she in his mind, and become they? He couldn’t pinpoint it, but he knew that he wanted to go to all of those places with her.

  He wanted to show her his favorite spots, to see hers. And he wanted to go to places neither of them had ever been, and experience them together for the first time.

  He didn’t want just to follow the game any longer. To simply go wherever and whenever alone. He wanted to go, to see, to do, and God knew he wanted to play, but the idea of alone didn’t have the appeal it once had.

  Irritable, she’d called him. Maybe that was part of the reason why. It was, in his opinion, a damn good reason for being irritable. It was ludicrous, he decided, and started to pace the guest room instead of checking his e-mail as he’d intended. It was absolutely insane to start thinking about long-term, about commitment, about being part of a couple instead of going solo.

  But he was thinking about it. That was the kicker. And he could imagine it, could see how it might be—the potential of it—with Cybil. He could imagine the two of them exploring the world together without the weight of it on their shoulders. He could even imagine having a base with her somewhere. New York, Vegas, Paris—wherever.

  A home with her, somewhere to come back to.

  The only place he’d ever had to come back to was Hawkins Hollow. And not by choice, not really by choice.

  But this could be
, if he took the bet.

  It might be fun talking her into it.

  There was time left, he thought, enough time left for him to work out a game plan. Have to be cagey about it, he mused as he sat down at his laptop. He’d have to find just the right way to tie her up in those strings they’d both agreed they didn’t want. Then once he had, he could just tie a knot here, tie a knot there. She was a smart one, but then so was he. He’d lay odds he could have her wrapped up before she realized he’d changed the game—and the rules.

  Pleased with the idea, he opened an e-mail from Professor Linz. And as he read, his belly tightened; his eyes chilled.

  So much, he thought, fatalistically, for planning futures. His was already set—and it had less than two weeks to run.

  Eighteen

  ONCE AGAIN, GAGE CALLED FOR A MEETING AT Cal’s office. Just his brothers. He’d made certain he’d been up and out of the house that morning before Cybil so much as stirred. He’d needed time to think, time alone, just as he needed time now with his two friends.

  He laid out what he’d learned from Linz in calm and dispassionate terms.

  “Screw that,” was Fox’s opinion. “Screw that, Gage.”

  “It’s how it ends.”

  “Because some demon academic we don’t know, who’s never been here, never dealt with what we’ve dealt with says so?”

  “Because it’s how it ends,” Gage repeated. “Everything we know, everything we’ve found out, everything we’ve dealt with leads right up to it.”

  “I’m going to have to go with the lawyer’s technical terminology on this,” Cal said after a moment. “Screw that.”

  Gage’s eyes were green and clear; he’d made his peace with what had to be. “I appreciate the sentiment, but we all know better. None of us should have made it this far. The only reason we have is because Dent broke the rules, gave us abilities, gave us a power source. Time to pay up. Don’t say ‘why you.’” Gage tapped a finger in the air at Fox. “It’s all over your face, and we’ve been over that part. It’s my turn, and it’s my goddamn destiny. It stops this time. This is when and how. Upside is I’m not going to have to haul my ass back here every seven years to save you guys.”

  “Screw that, too,” Fox said, but without heat as he pushed to his feet. “There’s going to be another way. You’re looking at this in a straight line. You’re not checking out the angles.”

  “Brother, angles are my business. It’s either destroyed this time, or it becomes. Fully corporeal, fully in possession of all its former power. We’ve already seen that begin to happen.”

  Absently, Gage rubbed his shoulder where the scar rode. “I’ve got a souvenir. To destroy it, absolutely take it out, requires a life from our side. Blood sacrifice, to pay the price, to balance the scales. One light for the dark, and blah blah blah. I’m going to do this thing one way or the other. It’d be a hell of a lot easier if I had you behind me.”

  “We’re not just going to sit back and watch you take one for the team,” Cal told him. “We keep looking for another way.”

  “And if we don’t find one? No bullshit, Cal,” Gage added. “We’ve been through too much to bullshit each other.”

  “If we can’t, can I have your car?”

  Gage glanced over at Fox and felt the weight drop off his shoulders. They’d do what needed to be done. They’d stand behind him, just like always. “The way you drive? Hell no. Cybil gets it. That woman knows how to handle a car. I need you to lawyer up that kind of thing for me. I’d have that off my head.”

  “Okay, no problem.” He shrugged off Cal’s curse. “And my fee’s a bet. One thousand says we not only off the Big Evil Bastard, but you walk away from the Pagan Stone with the rest of us after we do.”

  “I want in on that,” Cal said.

  “That’s a bet then.”

  Cal shook his head, absently rubbed Lump under his desk as the dog stirred from sleep. “Only a sick son of a bitch bets a thousand he’s going to die.”

  Gage only smiled. “Dead or alive, I like to win.”

  “We need to take this back to the women,” Fox put in, then narrowed his eyes at Gage. “Problem?”

  “Depends. If we take it back to the women—”

  “There’s no if,” Cal interrupted. “There are six of us in this.”

  “When we take it back to the women,” Gage qualified, “the three of us go in as a unified front. I’m not going to be arguing with you and them. The deal is, we look for another way until time runs out. When time runs out and there’s no other way, it’s my way. Nobody welshes.”

  Cal rose, preparing to come around the desk to shake on the deal. The office door burst open. Cy Hudson, one of the fixtures of the Bowl-a-Rama’s leagues, rushed in, teeth bared, and madly firing a .38. One of the bullets plowed into Cal’s sternum, took him down even as Gage and Fox dove at Cy.

  His enormous bulk didn’t topple, and his sheer madness flung them off like flies. He aimed at Cal again, shifted the gun at the last moment as Gage shouted, and Lump bunched to attack. Gage braced for the bullet, caught Fox rising up like a runner off the mark out of the corner of his eye.

  Bill Turner came through the door like fury. He leaped onto Cy’s back, fists pounding even as Fox went in low and the dog sprang, jaw snapping. The four of them went down in a bone-breaking tangle. The gun went off again even as Gage shoved up and grabbed a chair. He brought it down, brutally, twice on Cy’s exposed head.

  “Okay?” he said to Fox as Cy went limp.

  “Yeah, yeah. Hey, boy, good dog.” Fox hooked an arm around Lump’s big neck. “Cal?”

  Pushing up again, Gage dropped down beside Cal. Cal’s face was bone white, his eyes glassy, and his breath came in short pants. But when Gage ripped his shirt open, he saw the spent bullet pushing up through the wound. Sidling over, Lump licked Cal’s face and whined.

  “It’s okay, you’re okay. You’re pushing it out.” He gripped Cal’s hand, sent him all he could. “Give me something.”

  “Smashed a rib, I think,” Cal managed. “Ripped hell out of me in there.” He struggled to even his breathing as Lump nosed his shoulder. “I can’t exactly tell.”

  “We’ve got it. Fox, for Christ’s sake, give me a hand.”

  “Gage.”

  “What! Can’t you see he’s . . .” Furious, Gage whipped his head around. He saw Fox kneeling on the floor pressing the blood-soaked wad of his own shirt to Bill’s chest.

  “Call for an ambulance. I’ve got to keep the pressure on.”

  “Go. God.” Cal pushed breath out, drew more in. He fisted his hand in Lump’s fur. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this. Go.”

  But Gage kept Cal’s hand tight in his, drew out his phone. And with his eyes locked on his father’s pale face, called for help.

  CYBIL WOKE GROGGY, HEADACHY. THE GROGGY wasn’t much of a surprise. Mornings weren’t her finest hour, particularly after a restless night, and the dreams were a plague now. More, Gage had been closed in the night before. Barely speaking, she thought, as she grabbed a robe in case there were men in the house.

  Well, his moods weren’t her responsibility, she decided, and felt fairly closed in herself. She’d take her coffee out on the back deck—alone. And sulk.

  The idea perked her up a little, or would have if she hadn’t found both Layla and Quinn holding a whispered conference in the kitchen.

  “Go away. Nobody talk to me until I’ve had two solid hits of caffeine.”

  “Sorry.” Quinn blocked her path to the stove. “You’ll have to put that off.”

  Warning flashed into her eyes. “Nobody tells me to put off my morning coffee. Move it or lose it, Q.”

  “No coffee until after this.” She picked the pregnancy test off the counter, waved it in front of Cybil’s face. “Your turn, Cyb.”

  “My turn for what. Move!”

  “To pee on a stick.”

  Cybil’s jones for coffee tripped over sheer shock. “What? Are you crazy? Just because
sperm met egg for the two of you doesn’t mean—”

  “Isn’t it funny I have this on hand just like I had one for Layla.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “And it’s interesting,” Layla continued, “how you pointed out yesterday the three of us are on the same cycle.”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  Layla looked at Quinn. “Isn’t that what I said?”

  Nearly desperate for coffee, Cybil rolled her eyes. “I saw you pregnant. Both of you. I didn’t see me that way.”

  “It’s always harder to see ourselves,” Quinn returned. “You’ve told me that a few times. Let’s make it simple. You want coffee? Go pee on a stick. You won’t get past both of us to the goal, Cyb.”

  Fuming, Cybil snatched the box. “Pregnancy’s made both of you bossy and bitchy.” She stalked off to the first-floor powder room.

  “It has to mean something.” Layla rubbed her hands over her arms, ridiculously nervous. “If we’re right, or if we’re wrong, it has to mean something. I just wish I could figure out what.”

  “I’ve got some ideas, but . . .” Worried, Quinn paced to the kitchen doorway. “We’ll think about that later. After. And either way, we have to be with her on this.”

  “Well, of course. Why wouldn’t . . . Oh. You mean if she is, and she doesn’t want to be.” With a nod, Layla stepped up so she stood beside Quinn. “No question about it. Whatever it is, whatever she needs.”

  They waited a few more minutes, then Quinn dragged both hands through her hair. “That’s it. I can’t stand it.”

  She marched to the door, knocked for form, then pushed the door open. “Cyb, how long does—Oh, Cybil.” She knelt down immediately to gather Cybil up as her friend sat on the floor.

  “What am I going to do?” Cybil managed. “What am I going to do?”

  “Get off the floor to start.” Briskly, Layla leaned down to help her up. “I’m going to make you some tea. We’ll figure this out.”