The Pagan Stone Page 0,101

pepper spray in his eyes.

At the screams, both Quinn and Cybil rushed the bedroom door. They saw Layla scrambling for a knife on the floor, and the boy they all recognized howling with his hands over his face. Whether it was instinct, panic, or simply rage, Cybil followed through. She kicked the boy in the groin, and when he doubled over, his hands leaving his streaming eyes for his crotch, shoved him into the closet. "Quick, quick, help me push the dresser in front of the door," she ordered when she slammed the closet door.

He screamed, he wept, he battered the door.

Though her hand trembled, Quinn retrieved her phone.

Within fifteen minutes, Chief Hawbaker pulled the weeping boy out of the bedroom closet.

"What's going on?" Kaz demanded. "My eyes! I can't see. Where am I? What's going on?"

"He doesn't know," Cybil said as she stood clutching Quinn's hand. He was nothing but a hurt and confused teenage boy now. "It let him go."

After cuffing Kaz, Hawbaker nodded to the can on the floor. "That what you used on him?"

"Pepper spray." Layla sat on the side of the bed, clinging to Fox. Cybil wasn't sure if she held him to stop him from leaping at the pitiful boy, or to ground herself. "I lived in New York."

"I'm going to take him in, deal with his eyes. You need to come in, all of you, make your statements."

"We'll be in later." Fox leveled his gaze on Kaz. "I want him locked up until we get there, sort this out."

Hawbaker studied the rope, the knives, the can of gas. "He will be."

"My eyes are burning. I don't understand," Kaz wept as Hawbaker guided him out. "Fox, hey, Fox, what's up with this?"

"It wasn't him." Layla pressed her face to Fox's shoulder. "It wasn't really him."

"I'm going to get you some water." Cybil started out, stopped as Cal and Gage rushed through the apartment door. "We're all right. Everyone's all right."

"Don't touch anything," Fox warned. "Come on, Layla, let's get you out of here."

"It wasn't him," she repeated, and took Fox's face in her hands. "You know it wasn't his fault."

"Yeah, I know. Doesn't mean I don't want to beat him into a bloody pulp right at the moment, but I know."

"Somebody want to fill us in?" Cal demanded.

"He was going to kill Layla," Gage said tightly. "The kid. What Cybil and I saw. Strip her down, tie her up, light the place up."

"But we stopped it. The way Fox stopped Napper. It didn't happen. That's twice now." Layla let out a breath. "That's two we've changed."

"Three." Cybil gestured toward Fox's front door. "That's it, isn't it?" She turned to Gage. "That's the door we saw Quinn trying to get out of when a knife was stabbing down at her. The knife Kaz had. The one from out of the block in the kitchen. Neither of those things happened because we were prepared. We changed the potential."

"More weight on our side of the scale." Cal drew Quinn to him.

"We need to go down to the police station, deal with this. Press charges."

"Fox."

"Unless," he continued over Layla's distress, "he gets out of town. Out to the farm, or just out, until after the Seven. We'll talk to him, and his parents. He can't stay in the Hollow. We can't risk it."

Layla let out another breath. "If the rest of you could go ahead? I want a few minutes to talk to Fox."

LATER, BECAUSE IT SEEMED LIKE THE THING TO do, Cybil dragged Gage back to Fox's apartment to load up the food.

"What's the big fucking deal about a quart of milk and some eggs?"

"It's more than that, and besides, I don't approve of waste. And it saves Layla from even thinking about coming back up here until she's steadier. And why are you so irritable?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe it has something to do with having a woman I like quite a lot being held at knifepoint by some infected pizza delivery boy."

"You could always tip that and be happy Layla was carrying pepper spray and between her quick reflexes and Quinn and me, we managed to handle it." As a tension headache turned her shoulders into throbbing knots of concrete, Cybil bagged the milk. "And the pizza delivery boy, who was being used, is on his way to stay with his grandparents in Virginia along with the rest of his family. That's five people out of harm's way."

"I could look at it that way."

His tone