"Mr. Slug slimed right over the bread bowl," Quinn explained. "It was pretty damn gross. Sadly, nothing puts me off food." She snagged a couple of cold fries. "So, if we run with Fox's theory, where is its counterpoint? The good to its bad, the white to its dark. All my research on this points to both sides."

"Maybe it can't pull out yet, or it's hanging back."

"Or the two of you connect to the dark, and not the light," Cal added.

Quinn narrowed her eyes at him, with something glinting between her lashes. Then she shrugged. "Insulting, but unarguable at this time. Except for the fact that, logically, if we were more a weight on the bad side, why is said bad side trying to scare the living daylights out of us?"

"Good point," Cal conceded.

"I want some answers."

Quinn nodded at Layla. "I bet you do."

"I want some serious, sensible answers."

"Thumbnail: The town includes an area in the woods known as the Pagan Stone. Bad stuff happened there. Gods, demons, blood, death, fire. I'm going to lend you a couple of books on the subject. Centuries pass, then something opened it up again. Since nineteen eighty-seven, for seven nights in July, every seventh year, it comes out to play. It's mean, it's ugly, and it's powerful. We're getting a preview."

Gratefully, Layla held out her glass for more wine as she studied Quinn. "Why haven't I ever heard of this? Or this place?"

"There have been some books, some articles, some reports-but most of them hit somewhere between alien abductions and sightings of Bigfoot," Quinn explained. "There's never been a serious, thorough, fully researched account published. That's going to be my job."

"All right. Say I believe all this, and I'm not sure I'm not just having the mother of all hallucinations, why you, and you?" she said to Fox and Cal. "Where do you come in?"

"Because we're the ones who opened it," Fox told her. "Cal, me, and a friend who's currently absent. Twenty-one years ago this July."

"But you'd have been kids. You'd have had to have been-"

"Ten," Cal confirmed. "We share a birthday. It was our tenth birthday. Now, we showed some of ours. How about seeing some of yours. Why did you come here?"

"Fair enough." Layla took another slow sip of her wine. Whether it was that or the brightly lit kitchen with a dog snoring under the table or just having a group of strangers who were likely to believe what she was about to tell them, her nerves were steadier.

"I've been having dreams for the last several nights. Nightmares or night terrors. Sometimes I'd wake up in my bed, sometimes I'd wake up trying to get out the door of my apartment. You said blood and fire. There was both in the dreams, and a kind of altar in a clearing in the woods. I think it was stone. And there was water, too. Black water. I was drowning in it. I was captain of the swim team in high school, and I was drowning."

She shuddered, took another breath. "I was afraid to sleep. I thought I heard voices even when I wasn't asleep. I couldn't understand them, but I'd be at work, doing my job, or stopping by the dry cleaners on the way home, and these voices would justfill my head. I thought I was having a breakdown. But why? Then I thought maybe I had a brain tumor. I even thought about making an appointment with a neurologist. Then last night, I took a sleeping pill. Maybe I could just drug my way out of it. But it came, and in the dream something was in bed with me."

Her breath trembled out this time. "Not my bed, but somewhere else. A small room, a small hot room with a tiny window. I was someone else. I can't explain it, really."

"You're doing fine," Quinn assured her.

"It was happening to me, but I wasn't me. I had long hair, and the shape of my body, it was different. I was wearing a long nightgown. I know because it...it pulled it up. It was touching me. It was cold, it was so cold. I couldn't scream, I couldn't fight, even when it raped me. It was inside me, but I couldn't see, I couldn't move. I felt it, all of it, as if it were happening, but I couldn't stop it."

She wasn't aware of the tears until Fox pressed a napkin into her hand. "Thanks. When it was over, when it was gone, there was a voice in my head. Just one voice this time, and it calmed me, it made me warm again and took away the pain. It said: 'Hawkins Hollow.'"

"Layla, were you raped?" Fox spoke very quietly. "When you came out of the dream, was there any sign you'd been raped?"

"No." She pressed her lips together, kept her gaze on his face. His eyes were golden brown, and full of compassion. "I woke up in my own bed, and I made myself go...check. There was nothing. It hurt me, so there would've been bruises, there would've been marks, but there was nothing. It was early in the morning, not quite four in the morning, and I kept thinking Hawkins Hollow. So I packed, and I took a cab out to the airport to rent a car. Then I drove here. I've never been here."

She paused to look at Quinn now, at Cal. "I've never heard of Hawkins Hollow that I can remember, but Iknew what roads to take. I knew how to get here, and how to get to the hotel. I checked in this morning, went up to the room they gave me, and I slept like the dead until nearly six. When I walked into the dining room and saw that thing, I thought I was still asleep. Dreaming again."

"It's a wonder you didn't bolt," Quinn commented.

Layla sent her an exhausted look. "To where?"

"There's that." Quinn put a hand on Layla's shoulder, rubbing gently as she spoke. "I think we all need as much information as there is to be had, from every source there is. I think, from this point, it's share and share alike, one for goddamn all and all for goddamn one. You don't like that," she said with a nod toward Cal, "but I think you're going to have to get used to it."

"You've been in this for days. Fox and I have lived with it for years. Livedin it. So, don't put on your badge and call yourself captain yet, Blondie."

"Living in it for twenty-one years gives you certain advantages. But you haven't figured it out, you haven't stopped it or even identified it, as far as I can tell, in your twenty-one-year experience. So loosen up."

"You poked at my ninety-seven-year-old great-grandmother today."

"Oh, bull. Your remarkable and fascinating ninety-seven-year-old great-grandmother came up to where I was researching in the library, sat down, and had a conversation with me of her own free will. There was no poking. My keen observation skills tell me you didn't inherit your tight-ass tendencies from her."

"Kids, kids." Fox held up a hand. "Tense situation, agreed, but we're all on the same side, or are on the same side potentially. So chill. Cal, Quinn makes a good point, and it bears consideration. At the same time, Quinn, you've been in the Hollow a couple of days, and Layla less than that. You're going to have to be patient, and accept the fact that some areas of information are more sensitive than others, and may take time to be offered. Even if we start with what can and has been corroborated or documented-"

"What are you, a lawyer?" Layla asked.

"Yeah."

"Figures," she said under her breath.

"Let's just table this," Cal suggested. "Let's let it sit, so we can all think about it for the night. I said I'd take you to the Pagan Stone tomorrow, and I will. Let's see how it goes."

"Accepted."

"Are you two all right at the hotel? You can stay here if you're not easy about going back."

The fact that he'd offered had Quinn's hackles smoothing down again. "We're not wimps, are we, Layla?"

"I wouldn't have said I was a few days ago. Now, I'm not so sure. But I'll be all right at the hotel." In fact, she wanted to go back, crawl into that big, soft bed and pull the covers over her head. "I slept better there than I have all week, so that's something."

Quinn decided she'd wait until they were back before she advised Layla to lower all the shades, and maybe leave a light burning.

CHAPTER Eight

IN THE MORNING, QUINN PRESSED AN EAR AGAINSTthe door to Layla's room. Since she heard the muted sounds of theToday show, she gave the door a knuckle rap. "It's Quinn," she added, in case Layla was still jumpy.

Layla opened the door in a pretty damn cute pair of purple-and-white-striped pajama pants and a purple sleep tank. There was color in her cheeks, and her quiet green eyes had the clarity that told Quinn she'd been awake awhile.

"I'm about to head out to Cal's. Mind if I come in a minute?"

"No." She stepped back. "I was trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with myself today."

"You can come with me if you want."