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it, and maybe you’ll remember something more?”
    Since she had a point, he began at the moment he’d looked up and seen the crows.
    â€œWhat were you doing right before you looked up?”
    â€œWalking up Main. I was going to drop in and see Cal. Buy a beer.” Lips curved in a half smile, he lifted the bottle. “Came here and got one free.”
    â€œYou bought them, as I recall. It just seems if you were walking toward the Square, and these birds were doing their Hitchcock thing above the intersection, you’d have noticed before you said you did.”
    â€œI was distracted, thinking about . . . work, and stuff.” He raked his fingers through hair still damp from being stuck under the faucet to wash the bird gunk out. “I guess I was looking across the street more than up the street. Layla came out of Ma’s.”
    â€œShe walked over to get some of Quinn’s revolting two percent milk. Was it luck—good or bad—that both of you were there, right on the spot?” Her head cocked to the side; her eyebrow lifted. “Or was that the point?”
    He liked that she was quick, that she was sharp. “I lean toward it being the point. If the Big Evil Bastard wanted to announce it was back to play, it makes a bigger impact if at least one of us was on the scene. It wouldn’t be as much fun if we’d just heard about it.”
    â€œI lean the same way. We agreed before that it’s able to influence animals or people under some kind of impairment easier, quicker. So, crows. That’s happened before.”
    â€œYeah. Crows or other birds flying into windows, into people, buildings. When it does, even people who were here when it happened before are surprised. Like it was the first time they’d seen anything like it. That’s part of the symptoms, we’ll call it.”
    â€œThere were other people out—pedestrians, people driving by.”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œAnd none of them stopped and said: Holy crap, look at all those crows up there.”
    â€œNo.” He nodded, following her. “No. No one saw them, or no one who did found them remarkable. That’s happened before, too. People seeing things that aren’t there, and people not seeing things that are. It’s just never happened this far out from the Seven.”
    â€œWhat did you do after you saw Layla?”
    â€œI kept walking.” Curious, he angled his head in an attempt to read her notes upside down. What he saw were squiggles of letters and signs he didn’t understand how anyone could decipher right-side up. “I guess I stopped for a second the way you do, then I kept walking. And that’s when I . . . I felt it first, that’s what I do. It’s a kind of awareness. Like the hair standing up on the back of your neck, or that tingle between the shoulder blades. I saw them, in my head, then I looked up, and saw them with my eyes. Layla saw them, too.”
    â€œAnd still, no one else did?”
    â€œNo.” Again, he scooped a hand through his hair. “I don’t think so. I wanted to get her inside, but there wasn’t time.”
    She didn’t interrupt or question when he ran through the rest of it. When he was done, she set down her pencil, smiled at him. “You’re a sweetheart, Fox.”
    â€œTrue. Very true. Why?”
    She continued to smile as she rose, skirted the little table. She took his face in her hands and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I saw your jacket. It’s torn, and it’s covered with bird blood and God knows what else. That could’ve been Layla.”
    â€œI can get another jacket.”
    â€œLike I said, you’re a sweetheart.” She kissed him again.
    â€œSorry to interrupt this touching moment.” Gage strode in, his dark hair windblown, his eyes green and cynical. He stored the six-pack he carried in the fridge, then pulled out a