The Hollow

“What will?” Fox countered. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Cybil held up a hand. “Since I opened this can of worms, let me try. You’ve got reservations about this, Layla. Why don’t you tell us what they are?”

“I feel like I’m losing pieces of myself, or who I thought I was. Adding this in, I’m never going to be who I was again.”

“That may be,” Gage said easily. “But you’re probably not going to live past July anyway.”

“Of course.” On a half laugh, Layla picked up her glass of wine. “I should look on the bright side.”

“Let’s try this.” Cal shook his head at Gage. “The odds are you’d have been hurt today if something hadn’t clicked between you and Fox. And it clicked without either one of you purposely trying. What?” he asked as Qui

“No. Nothing.” Qui

“A younger branch than all of yours, so far as I can tell,” Cybil continued. “One of my ancestors, a Nadia Sytarskyi, traveled here with her family, and with others in the mid-nineteenth century. She married Jonah Adams, a descendent of Hester Deale. I actually get two branches, as about fifty years later, one of my other ancestors-Kinski side- also came here, and hooked up with Nadia and Jonah’s grandchild. So, like Qui

“Making us all one big happy family,” Gage put in.

“Making us something. It doesn’t sit well with me,” Cybil added, speaking directly to Layla, “to know that part of what I have, part of what I am, comes down from something evil, something neither human or humane. In fact, it pisses me off. Enough that I intend to use everything I have, everything I am to kick its ass.”

“Does it worry you that it may be able to use what you have and are?”

Cybil lifted her glass again, her dark eyes cool as she sipped. “It can try.”

“It worries me.” Layla sca

“Nobody’s chaining you to that chair,” Gage pointed out.

“Ease off,” Fox told him, but Gage only shrugged.

“I don’t think so. She’s got a problem, we’ve all got a problem. So let’s deal with it. Why don’t you just pack up and go back to New York? Get your job back selling-what is it-overpriced shoes to bored women with too much money?”

“Step back, Gage.”

“No.” Layla put a hand on Fox’s arm as he started to rise. “I don’t need to be rescued, or protected. Why don’t I leave? Because it would make me a coward, and up until now I’ve never been one. I don’t leave because what raped Hester Deale, what put its half-demon bastard in that girl, drove her mad, drove her to suicide, would like nothing better than for me to cut and run. I know better than anyone here what it did to her, because it made me experience it. Maybe that makes me more afraid than the rest of you; maybe that was part of the plan. I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid. Of what’s out there, and of what’s inside me. Inside all of us.”

“If you weren’t afraid you’d be stupid.” Gage lifted his glass in a half toast. “Smart and self-aware are harder to manipulate than stupid.”

“Every seven years good people in this town, ordinary people, smart, self-aware people hurt each other, and themselves. They do things they’d never consider doing at any other time.”

“You think you could be infected?” Fox asked her. “That you could turn, hurt someone? One of us?”

“How can we be sure I’m immune? That Cybil and Qui

“That’s a good question. Disturbing,” Qui

“Doesn’t fly.” Fox shifted so Layla met his eyes. “Things didn’t go the way Twisse pla

“Good answer.” Qui

“Part two,” Fox continued. “It’s not just a matter of immunity to the power he has to cause people to commit violent, abnormal acts. It’s a matter of having some aspect of that power, however diluted, that when pooled together is going to end him, once and for all.”

Layla studied Fox’s face. “You believe that?”

He started to answer, then took her hand, tightening his grip when she started to pull it free. “You tell me.”

She struggled-he could see it, and he could feel it, that initial and instinctive shying away from accepting the link with him. He had to resist the urge to push, and simply left himself open. And even when he felt the click, he waited.

“You believe it,” Layla said slowly. “You… you see us as six strands braided together into one rope.”

“And we’re going to hang Twisse with it.”

“You love them so much. It’s-”

“Ah…” It was Fox who pulled away, flustered and embarrassed that she’d seen more, gone deeper than he’d expected. “So, now that we’ve got that settled, I want another beer.”

He headed into the kitchen, and as he turned from the refrigerator with a beer in his hand, Layla stepped in.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s nothing. No big.”

“It is. I just… It was like being inside your head, or your heart, and I saw-or felt-this wave of love, that co

“Okay, look, it’s a tricky process. I was a little more open than I should’ve been because I figured you needed me to be. The fact is, you don’t need as much help as I thought. As you thought.”

“No, you’re wrong. I do need help. I need you to teach me.” She walked to the window to look out at the dark. “Because Gage was right. If I keep letting this be a problem for me, it’s a problem for all of us. And if I’m going to use this ability, I have to be able to control it so I’m not walking into people’s heads right and left.”

“We’ll start working on it tomorrow.”

She nodded. “I’ll be ready.” And turned. “Would you tell the others I went on up? It’s been a very strange day.”

“Sure.”

For a moment, she just stood, looking at him. “I want to say, and I’m sorry if it embarrasses you, but there’s something exceptional about a man who has the capacity to love as deeply as you do. Cal and Gage are lucky to have a friend like you. Anyone would be.”