The Hollow Page 0,76

to sit, bemused, after they'd gotten their breath back, even after she rose and started to step back into her panties.

"Wait. I think those are mine now."

When she laughed, he solved the matter by getting up and snatching them out of her hand.

"Give me those. I can't walk around without-"

"You and I will be the only ones who know. It's already driving me crazy. I need to go up, change out of this suit. Come on up, then I'll drive you home."

"I'll wait here, because if I go up there, you'll get me into bed. Fox, I need those panties. They match the bra."

He only smiled as he strolled out. He intended to get the bra later. And was considering having them preserved in Lucite, along with his desk chair.

ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END, FOX thought, as they spent the next few hours picking through the second journal, turning Ann's ordinary words to every possible angle looking for hidden meanings. Once again, Gage's demand to skip the hell ahead was outvoted.

"Same reasons against apply," Cybil pointed out, taking advantage of the break to roll tension out of her neck and shoulders. "We have to consider the fact that she's lost the man she loved, a traumatic event. That she's about to give birth to triplets. And if that isn't a traumatic event I don't know what would be. This is her lull. She needs to steady herself and gear up at the same time. I think we have to respect that."

"I think it's more." Layla reached out to touch the book Quinn had set down. "I think she's writing about sewing, about cooking, about the heat because she needs some distance. She doesn't write about Giles, about the deaths, what was done. She doesn't write about what she thinks or fears about what's going to happen. It's all the moment."

She looked at Fox, and he nodded.

"I've been leaning that way. It's what she's not writing about. Every day she gets through is an effort. She fills them with routines. But I can't believe that she's not thinking about before and after. Not feeling all of that. It's not a lull so much as... She wanted us to find the journals, even this one that seems to be so full of daily debris. To me it says-she's saying-that after great loss, personal sacrifice, horror, put a name on it. After that, before and after a new beginning, the births, there's still life. That it's still important to live, to go about your business. Isn't that what we do, seven years at a time? We live, and that's important."

"And what the hell does that tell us?" Gage demanded.

"That part of the process is just living. That's giving Twisse the finger, every day. Does it know? In whatever hellhole Dent took it to, does it know? I think it does, and I think it burns its ass that we get up every morning and do what we do."

"I like it." Quinn tapped a finger on her lips. "Maybe it even sucks on its power. It thrives on violent emotions, violent acts. When it's able, it feeds on them, creates them and feeds. Wouldn't the opposite be true? That ordinary emotions and acts, or loving ones starve it?"

"Sweetheart dance." Layla straightened in her chair. "Ordinary, fun, happy. It came there to ruin that."

"And before, in the dining room of the hotel. Sure it wanted to scare us off," Quinn said to Layla. "But its choice of time and place may be a factor. There was a couple celebrating, flirting over candlelight and wine."

"What do you do when a bee stings you?" Cybil asked.

"You swat at it. Maybe we're giving him a few stings. We'll take a closer look at the known incidents, known sightings. And this idea rolls into another for me. Writing something down gives it power, especially names. It's possible she wanted to wait, or needed to wait until some time had passed. Until she felt more secure."

"We wrote down the words," Cal murmured. "We wrote down the words we said that night at the stone, for the blood brothers ritual."

"Adding to their power," Quinn agreed. "Writing, it's another answer. We're writing everything down. While that may be giving him more power-bringing him earlier- it's giving him more stings."

"When we know what we have to do, when we think we know what it's going to take," Fox continued, "we have to write it down. Like Ann did, like we