"You stay, and you look at it straight on."

"It's my town," he said simply.

No, Quinn thought,that was the bravest stand she'd ever known.

"How'd you sleep last night?" he asked her.

"Dreamlessly. So did Layla. You?"

"The same. Always before, once it started, it didn't stop. But then, things are different this time around."

"Because I saw something, and so did Layla."

"That's the big one. And it's never started this early, or this strong." As they walked, he studied her face. "Have you ever had a genealogy done?"

"No. You think we're related back when, or I'm related to someone who was involved in whatever happened at the Pagan Stone way back when?"

"I think, we've always thought, this was about blood." Absently, he glanced at the scar on his wrist. "So far, knowing or sensing that hasn't done any good. Where are your ancestors from?"

"England primarily, some Irish tossed in."

"Mine, too. But then a lot of Americans have English ancestry."

"Maybe I should start researching and find out if there are any Dents or Twisses in my lineage?" She shrugged when he frowned at her. "Your great-grandmother sent me down that path. Have you tried to trace them? Giles Dent and Lazarus Twisse?"

"Yeah. Dent may be an ancestor, if he did indeed father the three sons of Ann Hawkins. There's no record of him. And other than accounts from the time, some old family letters and diaries, no Giles Dent on anything we've dug up. No record of birth, death. Same for Twisse. They could've dropped down from Pluto as far as we've been able to prove."

"I have a friend who's a whiz on research. I sent her a heads-up. And don't get that look on your face again. I've known her for years, and we've worked together on other projects. I don't know as yet if she can or will come in on this, but trust me, if she does, you'll be grateful. She's brilliant."

Rather than respond, he chewed on it. How much of his resistance was due to this feeling of losing control over the situation? And had he ever had any control to begin with? Some, he knew, was due to the fact that the more people who became involved, the more people he felt responsible for.

And maybe most of all, how much was all this exposure going to affect the town?

"The Hollow's gotten some publicity over the years, focused on this whole thing. That's how you found out about us to begin with. But it's been mild, and for the most part, hasn't done much more than bring interested tourists through. With your involvement, and now potentially two others, it could turn the Hollow into some sort of lurid or ridiculous caption in the tourist guides."

"You knew that was a risk when you agreed to talk to me."

She was keeping pace with him, stride-by-stride on the sloppy ground. And, she was striding into the unknown without a quake or a quiver.

"You'd have come whether or not I agreed."

"So part of your cooperation is damage control." She nodded. "Can't blame you. But maybe you should be thinking bigger picture, Cal. More people invested means more brains and more chance of figuring out how to stop what's been happening. Do you want to stop it?"

"More than I can possibly tell you."

"I want a story. There's no point in bullshitting you about that. But I want to stop it, too. Because despite my famous guts, this thing scares me. Better shot at that, it seems to me, if we work together and utilize all our resources. Cybil's one of mine, and she's a damn good one."

"I'll think about it." For now, he thought, he'd given her enough. "Why don't you tell me what made you head down the woo-woo trail, writing-wise."

"That's easy. I always liked spooky stuff. When I was a kid and had a choice between, say,Sweet Valley High or Stephen King, King was always going to win. I used to write my own horror stories and give my friends nightmares. Good times," she said and made him laugh. "Then, the turning point, I suppose, was when I went into this reputed haunted house with a group of friends. Halloween. I was twelve. Big dare. Place was falling down and due to be demolished. We were probably lucky we didn't fall through floorboards. So we poked around, squealed, scared ourselves, and had some laughs. Then I saw her."

"Who?"

"The ghost, of course." She gave him a friendly elbow poke. "Keep up. None of the others did. But I saw her, walking down the stairs. There was blood all over her. She looked at me," Quinn said quietly now. "It seemed like she looked right at me, and walked right by. I felt the cold she carried with her."

"What did you do? And if I get a guess, I'm guessing you followed her."

"Of course, I followed her. My friends were running around, making spooky noises, but I followed her into the falling-down kitchen, down the broken steps to the basement by the beam of my Princess Leia flashlight. No cracks."

"How can I crack when I had a Luke Skywalker flashlight?"

"Good. What I found were a lot of spiderwebs, mouse droppings, dead bugs, and a filthy floor of concrete. Then the concrete was gone and it was just a dirt floor with a hole-a grave-dug in it. A black-handled shovel beside it. She went to it, looked at me again, then slid down, hell, like a woman might slide into a nice bubble bath. Then I was standing on the concrete floor again."

"What did you do?"

"Your guess?"

"I'd guess you and Leia got the hell out of there."

"Right again. I came out of the basement like a rocket. I told my friends, who didn't believe me. Just trying to spook them out as usual. I didn't tell anyone else, because if I had, our parents would have known we were in the house and we'd have been grounded till our Social Security kicked in. But when they demolished the house, started jackhammering the concrete floor, they found her. She'd been in there since the thirties. The wife of the guy who'd owned the house had claimed she'd run off. He was dead by then, so nobody could ask him how or why he'd done it. But I knew. From the time I saw her until they found her bones, I dreamed about her murder, I saw it happen.

"I didn't tell anyone. I was too afraid. Ever since, I've told what I find, confirming or debunking. Maybe partly to make it up to Mary Bines-that was her name. And partly because I'm not twelve anymore, and nobody's going to ground me."

He said nothing for a long time. "Do you always see what happened?"

"I don't know if it's seeing or just intuiting, or just my imagination, which is even more far-famed than my guts. But I've learned to trust what I feel, and go with it."

He stopped, gestured. "This is where the tracks cross. We came in from that direction, picked up the cross trail here. We were loaded down. My mother had packed a picnic basket, thinking we were camping out on Fox's family farm. We had his boom box, his load from the market, our backpacks full of the stuff we figured we couldn't live without. We were still nine years old. Kids, pretty much fearless. That all changed before we came out of the woods again."

When he started to walk once more, she put a hand on his arm, squeezed. "Is that tree bleeding, or do you just have really strange sap in this part of the world?"

He turned, looked. Blood seeped from the bark of the old oak, and seeped into the soggy ground at its trunk.

"That kind of thing happens now and again. It puts off the hikers."

"I bet." She watched Lump plod by the tree after only a cursory sniff. "Why doesn't he care?"

"Old hat to him."

She started to give the tree a wide berth, then stopped. "Wait, wait. This is the spot. This is the spot where I saw the deer across the path. I'm sure of it."

"He called it, with magick. The innocent and pure."

She started to speak, then looking at Cal's face, held her tongue. His eyes had darkened; his cheeks had paled.

"Its blood for the binding. Its blood, his blood, the blood of the dark thing. He grieved when he drew the blade across its neck, and its life poured onto his hands and into the cup."

As his head swam, Cal bent over from the waist. Prayed he wouldn't be sick. "Need a second to get my breath."

"Take it easy." Quickly, Quinn pulled off her pack and pulled out her water bottle. "Drink a little."