The Hollow Page 0,108

welcoming smile. Could he help it if that was exactly what he hoped to come home to every night?

"Hey." He leaned down to kiss her, leaned up and cocked his head at the absent response. "Why don't we try that again?"

"Sorry. I'm distracted." She took the lapels of his jacket in her hands, and put herself into the kiss.

"That's what I'm talking about." But he saw now there was no reflection of that smile of greeting in her eyes. "What's the matter?"

"Did you get my voice mail?"

"Meeting here, as soon as I could make it. I made it."

"We're in the living room. It's-Cybil thinks she's nailed down the blood ritual."

"Fun and games for all." Concerned, he brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. "What's the problem?"

"She- She's waiting until you get here to explain it to the three of you."

"Whatever she explained to you didn't put roses in your cheeks."

"Some of the variables on the potential outcome aren't rosy." She took his hand. "You'd better hear it for yourself. But before... I have to tell you something else."

"Okay."

"Fox..." Her fingers tightened on his, as if in comfort. "Can we just sit here a minute?"

They sat on the porch steps, looking out at the quiet street. Her hands clasped on her knee, one of her signs- Gage would call it a tell-of nerves. "How bad is it?" Fox asked her.

"I don't know. I don't know how you'll feel about it." She pressed her lips together once, hard. "I'm going to say it straight out, then you can take whatever time you need to, well, absorb it. Carly was connected. To this. She was a descendent of Hester Deale's."

It hit him, a hard, fast punch to the solar plexus. His thoughts spun, so he asked the first question that popped. "How do you know?"

"I asked Cybil-" She broke off, shifted to face him, started again. "It seemed that there had to be a reason for what happened, Fox, a reason she was infected so quickly, so... fatally. So I asked Cybil to look into it, and she has been."

"Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"I wasn't sure, and if I'd been wrong, I'd have upset you for nothing. And... I should've told you," she amended. "I'm sorry."

"No." The spinning stopped; the ache just under his heart eased. She'd wanted to shield him until supposition became fact and he'd have done exactly the same. "No, I get it. Cybil climbed Carly's family tree?"

"Yes. Tonight she told me she'd found the connection. She has the details of the genealogy if you want to see them."

When he only shook his head, she went on. "I don't know if this makes it better for you, or worse, or if it changes nothing. But I thought you should know."

"She was part of it," he said quietly. "All along."

"Twisse used that, and you, and her. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but nothing you did, nothing you didn't do would have changed that."

"I don't know if that's true, but there's nothing I can do now to change it. Maybe we found each other, Carly and me, because of this. But then we made choices, both of us, that led to the end of it. Different choices, maybe a different result. No way to know."

After a moment, he laid his hand over hers. "There's always going to be guilt, and grief, when I think of her. But now, I know at least part of the why. I never understood why, Layla, and that twisted me up."

"Twisse took her to hurt you. And was able to take her, the way he did, because she was of his bloodline. And because..."

"Keep going," he told her when she trailed off.

"I think because she didn't believe, not really. She didn't believe enough to be afraid, or to fight, even to run. That's just speculation, and I might be overstepping, but-"

"No." He said it quietly. "No, you're exactly right. She didn't believe, even when she saw with her own eyes." He lifted his free hand, studied the unmarred palm. "She told me what she thought I wanted to hear, promised to stay at the farm that night without ever intending to keep the promise. She was built skeptical, she couldn't help it."

He closed his hand into a loose fist, lowered it. And for the first time in nearly seven years, he let it go. "I never thought of a connection. That was smart. And you were right to tell me." He lifted their hands, slid his