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jogged to keep up with his long, fast stride. “If you hadn’t blocked me, I’d be bleeding.” She lifted a hand to the cut on his face that was slowly closing. “It hurts though. When it happens, then when it heals, it hurts you.” Layla glanced down at their clasped hands. “I can feel it.”
    But when he started to let her go, she tightened her grip. “No, I want to feel it. You were right before.” She glanced back at the corpses of crows scattered over the Square, at the little girl who wept wildly now in the arms of her shocked mother. “I hate that you were right and I’ll have to work on that. But you were. I’m not any real help if I don’t accept what I’ve got in me, and learn how to use it.”
    She looked back at him, took a bracing breath. “The lull’s over.”

Two
    HE HAD A BEER SITTING AT THE LITTLE TABLE with its fancy iron chairs that made the kitchen in the rental house distinctly female. At least to Fox’s mind. The brightly colored minipots holding herbs arranged on the windowsill added to that tone, he supposed, and the skinny vase of white-faced daisies one of the women must have picked up at the flower shop in town finished it off.
    The women, Quinn, Cybil, and Layla, had managed to make a home out of the place in a matter of weeks with flea market furniture, scraps of fabric, and generous splashes of color.
    They’d managed it while devoting the bulk of their time to researching and outlining the root of the nightmare that infected the Hollow for seven days every seven years.
    A nightmare that had begun twenty-one years before, on the birthday he shared with Cal and Gage. That night had changed him, and his friends—his blood brothers. Things had changed again when Quinn had come to town to lay the groundwork for her book on the Hollow and its legend.
    It was more than a book to her now, the curvy blonde who enjoyed the spookier side of life, and who had fallen for Cal. It was more than a project for Quinn’s college pal Cybil Kinski, the exotic researcher. And he thought it was more of a problem for Layla Darnell.
    He and Cal and Gage went back to babyhood—even before, as their mothers had taken the same childbirth class. Quinn and Cybil had been college roommates, and had remained friends since. But Layla had come to the Hollow, come into this situation, alone.
    He reminded himself of that whenever his patience ran a bit thin. However tightly the friendship was that had formed between her and the other two women, however much she was connected to the whole, she’d come into this alone.
    Cybil walked in carrying a legal pad. She tossed it on the table, then picked up a bottle of wine. Her long, curling hair was pinned back from her face with clips that glinted silver against the black. She wore slim black pants and an untucked shirt of candy pink. Her feet were bare, with toe-nails painted to match the shirt.
    Fox always found such details particularly fascinating. He could barely remember to match up a pair of socks.
    â€œSo . . .” Her deep brown eyes tracked over to his. “I’m here to get your statement.”
    â€œAren’t you going to read me my rights?” When she smiled, he shrugged. “We gave you the gist when we came in.”
    â€œDetails, counselor.” Her voice was smooth as top cream. “Quinn particularly likes details in the notes for her books and we all need them to keep painting the picture. Quinn’s getting Layla’s take upstairs while Layla changes. She had blood on her shirt. Yours, I’m assuming, as she didn’t have a scratch on her.”
    â€œNeither do I, now.”
    â€œYes, your super-duper healing power. That’s handy. Run it through for me, will you, cutie? I know it’s a pain, because when the others get here, they’ll want to hear it, too. But isn’t that what they say on the cop shows? Keep going over