The Pagan Stone Page 0,12

grief for the loss of your mother. I lost my father years ago, too. And he chose to leave me, chose to put a bullet in his brain, and still I have grief. You didn't want to talk about it, so I gave you your privacy, then you follow me down here and tell me I'm pissy."

"Which is obviously off," he said dryly, "as you're not in the least pissy."

"I wasn't," she muttered. She let out a breath, then nibbled on the apple again as the kettle began to sputter. "You said she looked very young. How young?"

"Early twenties, I guess. Most of my impressions of her, physically, are from photographs. I... Shit. Shit." He dug out his wallet, pulled a small picture from under his driver's license. "This, this is the way she looked, down to the goddamn dress."

After turning off the burner, Cybil moved to him, stood side-by-side to study the photo in his hand. Her hair was dark and loose, her body slim in the yellow sundress. The little boy was about a year, a year and a half, Cybil judged, and propped on her hip as both of them laughed into the camera.

"She was lovely. You favor her."

"He took this out of my head. You were right about that. I haven't looked at this in... I don't know, a few years maybe. But it's my clearest memory of her because..."

"Because it's the one you carry with you." Now Cybil laid her hand on his arm. "Be annoyed if that's how you have to handle it, but I'm so sorry."

"I knew it wasn't her. It only took a minute for me to know it wasn't her."

And in that minute, she thought, he must have felt unbearable grief and joy. She turned back to pour the water into the pot. "I hope you hit a couple of vital organs, if organs it has, when you punched it."

"That's what I like about you, that healthy taste for violence." He slipped the picture of his mother back into his wallet.

"I'm a fan of the physical, in a lot of areas. It's interesting, isn't it, that in this guise, its first push was to try to convince you to leave. Not to attack, not even to taunt as it has before, but to use a trusted form to tell you to go, to save yourself. I think we have it worried."

"Yeah, it looked really concerned when it knocked me on my ass."

"Got up again, didn't you?" She arranged the plate, the pot, a cup on a tray. " Cal should be here in another hour, and Fox and Layla shortly after. Unless you've got a better offer, why don't you stay for dinner?"

"Are you cooking?"

"That is, apparently, my lot in this strange life we're leading at the moment."

"I'll take that offer."

"Fine. Carry this up for me, and we'll put you to work in the meantime."

"I don't make charts."

She shot him that smug look over her shoulder as she started out ahead of him. "You do today if you want to eat."

LATER, GAGE SAT ON THE FRONT STEPS, ENJOYING the first beer of the evening with Fox and Cal. Fox had changed out of his lawyer suit into jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt. He looked, as Fox habitually did, comfortable in his own skin.

How many times had they done just this? Gage wondered. Sat, sharing a beer? Countless times. And often when he was in another part of the world, he might sit, sip a beer, and think of them in the Hollow.

And there were times he came back, between the Seven, because he missed them as he'd miss his own legs. Then they could sit like this, in the long evening sunlight without the weight of the world-or at least this corner of it-on their shoulders.

But the weight was there now with less than two months left before what they all accepted was do or die.

"We could go back to the cemetery, the three of us," Fox suggested. "See if it wants another round."

"I don't think so. It had its fun."

"Next time you go wandering around, don't go unarmed. I don't mean that damn gun," Cal added. "You can pick up a decent and legal folding knife down at Mullendore's. No point letting it try to take a chunk out of your hand."

Idly, Gage flexed the hand in question. "Felt good to punch the bastard, but you're right. I didn't even have a damn penknife on me. I won't make that