The Hollow Page 0,45

"Just look at me. Don't think. Imagine. A small book, the writing inside. The ink's faded. Imagine her handwriting. You've seen it in her other journals."

His eyes were so rich. That old gold color so fascinating. His hands weren't lawyer-smooth. Not like the hands of a man who carried a briefcase, who worked at a desk. There was labor on them, strength and capability in them. He smelled of the rain, just a little of rain.

He would taste like cake.

He wanted her. Imagined touching her, gliding his hands over bare skin, sliding them over her breasts, her belly. Laying his lips there, his tongue, tasting the heat, the flesh...

In bed, when there's only us.

She gasped, jerked back. His voice had been clear inside her head.

"What did you see?" Cal demanded. "Did you see it?"

With his eyes still locked on Layla's, Fox shook his head. "We had to get something out of the way first. One more time?" he said to Layla. "Use your compartments."

Her skin felt hot, inside and out, but she nodded. And she did her best to set her own desires, and his, aside.

Everything drew together into a narrow point. In it she heard the jumbled thoughts of her companions, like background chatter at a cocktail party. There was concern, doubt, anticipation, a mix of feelings. These, too, she set aside.

The book was in her head. Brown leather cover, dried from age. Yellowed pages and faded ink.

With the dark so close outside, I long for my love.

"It's not here." Fox spoke first as he carefully let the connection between him and Layla fade. "It's not in this room."

"No."

"Then I need to try again." Quinn squared her shoulders. "I can try to home in on her, on the journal. See when she packed it away, maybe to take back to her father's house in town. The old library."

"No, they're not in the old library," Layla said slowly. "They're not in this room."

"But they're here," Fox finished. "It was too clear. They have to be here."

Gage tapped a foot on the floor. "Could be under. She might have hidden them under floorboards, if there were floorboards."

"Or buried them," Cybil continued.

"If they're under the house, we're pretty well screwed," Gage pointed out. "If Brian would be unhappy with us taking some stones out of the fireplace, he'd be pretty well crazed if we suggested razing the damn house to get under it for some diaries."

"You don't have enough respect for diaries," Cybil commented. "But you're right about the first part."

"We need to try again. We can go room to room," Layla suggested. "The basement? Is there a basement? If she did bury them, we might get a better signal from there. Because I can't believe they're inaccessible. Giles told her what would happen, told her about us-about you."

"She may have hidden them to keep them from being lost or destroyed." Cal paced as he tried to think it through. "From being found too soon, or by the wrong people. But she'd want us to find them, she'd have wanted that. Even if just for sentiment."

"I agree with that. I know what I felt from her. She loved Giles. She loved her sons. And everything in her hoped for what those who came after her would do. We're her chance to be with Giles again, to free him."

"Let's take it outside. Yeah, there's a basement," Fox told Layla. "But we could focus on the whole house from outside. And the shed. The shed was here, most likely, when Ann was here. We should try the shed."

As Fox had expected, the rain continued, slow and thin. He put his parents' dogs in the house with Lump to keep them out of the way. And with the others, stepped out in the stubborn drizzle.

"Before we do this, I had an idea-came to me in there-about the Bat Signal?"

"The what?" Quinn interrupted.

"Alarm system," Fox explained. "I can get it, the way I could get all the mental chatter in there. It's just like tuning a radio, really. If you push toward me, I should pick it up. If I push toward any of you, same goes. We'll want to run it a few times, but it should work faster than phone tag."

"Psychic team alert." Cybil adjusted her black bucket hat. "Unlimited minutes, and fewer dropped calls. I like it."

"What if you're the one in trouble?" Under her light jacket, Layla wore a hoodie in what he supposed should be called an orchid color. She drew