The Pagan Stone Page 0,48

end-of-year tempers and stress, but there were a lot of fights at the school."

"We can work with this, I think," Cybil responded as she swung back to her computer and began peppering the keys. "A lot of inputting, cross-referencing, and so on, but we can work this." She glanced up briefly when Quinn came back. "Is he coming?"

"As soon as he sees his parents."

"Get Fox and Layla over here, too."

"She got something?" Quinn asked Gage.

"Apparently."

"Defense is as integral to any war as offense."

"Integral," Gage repeated.

"We pinpoint the highest-risk locations, then take the necessary defensive steps."

"Which would be?"

"Evacuation, fortification." She waved the question off as she might a persistent fly. "One thing at a time."

Gage didn't put much stock in evacuation or fortification, but he followed Cybil's line of thinking. He saw the pattern within the pattern. He edged back as the others arrived, as the six of them crammed into the little office.

"We've agreed we're catalysts," Cybil began. "We know the three men released the entity we call Twisse, as that was the name it was last known by, by performing a blood ritual. We know that Quinn's first sighting was in February, the earliest we have on record-when she arrived. Layla and Quinn, both staying at the hotel, had their first shared sighting there. It's escalated since, faster and stronger. In the bowling center at the Sweetheart Dance when four of the six of us were there. The attack on Lump at Cal 's when all six of us stayed there. We've logged the individual and mutual sightings this time. Again the bowling center, the Square, Fox's office and apartment, this house. So when we go back to previous Sevens, there's a locational pattern."

"Bowling center's a major site." Quinn studied the updated map. "The high school, the bar, what was the Foster house, the area around the Square. Obvious reasons for all that. But it's interesting that before this year, neither Fox's building nor this house had any incidents. We're on to something here."

"Why didn't we see this before?" Cal wondered. "How the hell did we miss it?"

"We never did charts and graphs," Fox pointed out. "We wrote stuff down, sure, but we never put it all together this way. The logical, visual way."

"And you see it every day," Cybil added. "You and Cal live here. You see the town every day, the streets, the buildings. Gage doesn't. So when he looks at the map, he sees it in a different way. And doing what he does for a living, he instinctively looks for patterns."

"What do we do with this?" Layla asked.

"We add as much data as possible from these guys' memories," Cybil began. "We input that, study and analyze the resulting pattern, and..."

"We calculate the odds on the first strike or strikes," Gage finished when she looked at him. "Bowling center year one, the bar year two. We don't know, because we were at the Pagan Stone, what took the first hit year three."

"We might." Frowning at the map, Cal pinned a finger to a spot. "My father stayed in town. He knew we were going to the clearing, to try to stop this, so he stayed in case... I didn't know it. He didn't tell me until after it was all over. He planted himself in the police station. A couple of guys in the bank parking lot, going at each other's cars-and each other-with tire irons."

"Did anything significant happen to any of you there?"

"Yeah." Fox hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. "Napper jumped me there once, beat half the snot out of me before I got my second wind and beat the rest of it out of him."

"Just what I'm after," Cybil told him. "Where'd you lose your virginity, Cal?"

"Well, Jesus."

"Don't be shy." Muffling laughter, Quinn bumped his shoulder.

"Backseat of my car, like any self-respecting high school senior."

"He was a late bloomer," Gage pointed out.

Cal hunched his shoulders, then deliberately straightened them again. "I've since made up for it."

"So I hear," Cybil said, and Quinn laughed again. "Where were you parked?"

"Up on Rock Mount Lane. There weren't many houses along there back then. They'd just started to develop, so..." He angled his head, and once again laid a finger on the map. "Here, right about here. And last Seven, two of those houses burned to the ground."

"Fox?"

"Alongside of the creek. Well outside town limits. There are a few houses tucked in there now, but they're not part of the Hollow. I don't know if that