Blood Brothers Page 0,63

boxy chest someone had painted a murderous and shiny red. On it stood a Wonder Woman lamp.

"Homey."

"It'll be very livable when we're done."

"Yeah. You know I think that lamp might've been my sister Jen's twenty, twenty-five years ago."

"It's classic," Quinn claimed. "It's kitschy."

He fell back on the standard. "Okay."

"I think I have Danish modern," Layla commented from the doorway. "Or possibly Flemish. It's absolutely horrible. I have no idea why I bought it."

"Did you two haul this stuff up here?"

"Please." Quinn tossed her head.

"We opted for brain over brawn."

"Every time. That and a small investment. Do you know how much a couple of teenage boys will cart and carry for twenty bucks each and the opportunity to ogle a couple of hot chicks such as we?" Quinn fisted a hand on her hip, struck a pose.

"I'd've done it for ten. You could have called."

"Which was our intention, actually. But the boys were handy. Why don't we go down and sit on our new third-or fourthhand sofa?"

"We did splurge," Layla added. "We have an actual new coffeemaker and a very eclectic selection of coffee mugs."

"Coffee'd be good."

"I'll get it started."

Cal glanced after Layla. "She seems to have done a one-eighty on all this."

"I'm persuasive. And you're generous. I think I should plant one on you for that."

"Go ahead. I can take it."

Laughing, she braced her hands on his shoulders, gave him a firm, noisy kiss.

"Does that mean I don't get ten bucks?"

Her smile beamed as she poked him in the belly. "You'll take the kiss and like it. Anyway, part of the reason for Layla hanging back was the money. The idea of staying was-is-difficult for her. But the idea of taking a long leave, unpaid, from her job, coming up with rent money here, keeping her place in New York, that was pretty much off the table."

She stepped up to the bright red chest to turn her Wonder Woman lamp on and off. From the look on her face, Cal could see the act pleased her.

"So, the rent-free aspect checked one problem off her list," Quinn went on. "She hasn't completely committed. Right now, it's a day at a time for her."

"I've got something to tell you, both of you, that may make this her last day."

"Something happened." She dropped her hand, turned. "What happened?"

"I'll tell you both. I want to call Fox first, see if he can swing by. Then I can tell it once."

HE HAD TO DO IT WITHOUT FOX, WHO, ACCORDING to Mrs. Hawbaker, was at the courthouse being a lawyer. So he sat in the oddly furnished living room on a couch so soft and saggy he was already wishing for the opportunity to get Quinn naked on it, and told them about the visitation on Main Street.

"An OOB," Quinn decided.

"An oob?"

"No, no. Initials, like CYA. Out of body-experience. It sounds like that might be what you had, or maybe there was a slight shift in dimensions and you were in an alternate Hawkins Hollow."

He might have spent two-thirds of his life caught up in something beyond rational belief, but he'd never heard another woman talk like Quinn Black. "I was not in an alternate anything, and I was right inside my body where I belong."

"I've been studying, researching, and writing about the paranormal for some time now." Quinn drank some coffee and brooded over it.

"It could be he was talking to a ghost who caused the illusion that they were alone on the street, and caused everyone else out there to-I don't know-blip out for a few minutes." Layla shrugged at Quinn's narrowed look. "I'm new at this, and I'm still working really hard not to hide under the covers until somebody wakes me up and tells me this was all a dream."

"For the new kid, your theory's pretty good," Quinn told her.

"How about mine? Which is what she said is a hell of a lot more important right now than how she said it."

"Point taken." Quinn nodded at Cal. "This is the time, she said. Three times seven. That one's easy enough to figure."

"Twenty-one years." Cal pushed up to pace. "This July makes twenty-one years."

"Three, like seven, is considered a magickal number. It sounds like she was telling you it was always going to come now, this July, this year. It's stronger, you're stronger, they're stronger." Quinn squeezed her eyes shut.

"So, it and this woman-this spirit-have both been able to..."

"Manifest." Quinn finished Layla's thought. "That follows the logic."

"Nothing about this is logical."

"It is, really."