The Hollow Page 0,78
hands were red with their blood. Fire crawled up the stone, over the stone, and consumed them while I watched. While I did nothing. When it came out of the dark, it smiled at me. It called me daughter, and it embraced me. Then you leaped out of the shadows and killed us both."
"That's a nightmare, not a vision."
"I hope to God you're right. Either way, it tells me you and I have to start to work together soon. I won't have their blood on my hands." Her fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. "Whatever has to be done, I won't have that."
When she left, he stayed, and he wondered how much she would be willing to do to save the people they both loved.
NO TRACE OF SNOW REMAINED WHEN FOX LEFT his office in the morning. The sun beamed out of a rich blue sky that seemed to laugh at the mere idea of winter. On the trees the leaves of summer were in tight buds of anticipation. Pansies rioted in the tub in front of the flower shop.
He peeled off his coat-really had to start listening to the weather-and strolled as others did along the wide bricked sidewalks. He smelled spring, the freshness of it, felt it in the balm of the air on his face. It was too nice a day to huddle inside an office. It was a day for the park, or porch sitting.
He should take Layla to the park, hold her hand and stroll over the bridge, talk her into letting him push her on one of the swings. Push her high, hear her laugh.
He should buy her flowers. Something simple and springlike. The idea had him backtracking, checking traffic, then dashing across the street. Daffodils, he thought as he pulled open the door of the shop.
"Hi, Fox." Amy sent him a cheery wave as she came in from the back. She'd run the Flower Pot for years, and to Fox's mind never tired of flowers. "Terrific day, huh?"
"And then some. That's what I'm after." He gestured to the daffodils, bright as butter in the glass refrigerated display.
"Pretty as a picture." She turned, and in the glass, the dim reflection of her face grinned back at his with sharply pointed teeth in a face that ran with blood. Even as he took a step back, she turned around, smiling her familiar and pretty smile. "Who doesn't love daffodils?" she said cheerfully as she wrapped them. "Are they for your girl?"
"Yeah." I'm jumpy, he realized. Just jumpy. Too much in my head. As he got out his wallet to pay, he caught a scent under the sweet fragrance of blooms. A swampy odor, as if some of the flowers had rotted in water.
"Here you go! She's going to love them."
"Thanks, Amy." He paid, took the flowers.
"See you later. Tell Carly I said hi."
He stopped dead, spun around. "What? What did you say?"
"I said tell Layla I said hi." Her eyes shone with puzzled concern. "Are you all right, Fox?"
"Yeah. Yeah." He pushed through the door, grateful to be back outside.
As traffic was light, he walked across the street in the middle of the block. The light changed as a cloud rolled over the sun, and he felt a prickle of cold against his skin- the breath of winter out of a springtime sky. His hand tightened on the stems of the flowers as he whirled around, expected to see it, in whatever form it chose to take. But there was nothing, no boy, no dog, no man or dark shadow.
Then he heard her call his name. This time the cold washed over him, into him, through his bones, at the fear in her voice. She called out again as he ran, as he followed her terror to the old library. He rushed through the open door that slammed like death behind him.
Where there should have been empty space, some tables, folding chairs for what was now the community center, the room was as it had been years before. Books in stacks, the scent of them, the desks, the carts.
He ordered himself to steady. It wasn't real. It was making him see what was not. But she screamed, and Fox ran for the steps, taking them two and three at a time. He ran on legs that trembled, that remembered running this way before. Up the stairs, up past the attic, to heave himself against the door leading out to the roof. When his