He might have spent two-thirds of his life caught up in something beyond rational belief, but he’d never heard another woman talk like Quinn Black. “I was not in an alternate anything, and I was right inside my body where I belong.”

“I’ve been studying, researching, and writing about the paranormal for some time now.” Quinn drank some coffee and brooded over it.

“It could be he was talking to a ghost who caused the illusion that they were alone on the street, and caused everyone else out there to-I don’t know-blip out for a few minutes.” Layla shrugged at Quinn’s narrowed look. “I’m new at this, and I’m still working really hard not to hide under the covers until somebody wakes me up and tells me this was all a dream.”

“For the new kid, your theory’s pretty good,” Quinn told her.

“How about mine? Which is what she said is a hell of a lot more important right now than how she said it.”

“Point taken.” Quinn nodded at Cal. “This is the time, she said. Three times seven. That one’s easy enough to figure.”

“Twenty-one years.” Cal pushed up to pace. “This July makes twenty-one years.”

“Three, like seven, is considered a magickal number. It sounds like she was telling you it was always going to come now, this July, this year. It’s stronger, you’re stronger, they’re stronger.” Quinn squeezed her eyes shut.

“So, it and this woman-this spirit-have both been able to…”

“Manifest.” Quinn finished Layla’s thought. “That follows the logic.”

“Nothing about this is logical.”

“It is, really.” Opening her eyes again, Quinn gave Layla a sympathetic look. “Inside this sphere, there’s logic. It’s just not the kind we deal with, or most of us deal with, every day. The past, the now, the yet to be. Things that happened, that are happening, and that will or may are all part of the solution, the way to end it.”

“I think there’s more to that part.” Cal turned back from the window. “After that night in the clearing, the three of us were different.”

“You don’t get sick, and you heal almost as soon as you’re hurt. Quinn told me.”

“Yeah. And I could see.”

“Without your glasses.”

“I could also see before. I started-right there minutes afterward-to have flashes of the past.”

“The way you did-both of us did,” Quinn corrected, “when we touched the stone together. And later, when we-”

“Like that, not always that clear, not always so intense. Sometimes awake, sometimes like a dream. Sometimes completely irrelevant. And Fox…It took him a while to understand. Jesus, we were ten. He can see now.” Annoyed with himself, Cal shook his head. “He can see, or sense what you’re thinking, or feeling.”

“Fox is psychic?” Layla demanded.

“Psychic lawyer. He’s so hired.”

Despite everything, Quinn’s announcement made Cal’s lips twitch. “Not like that, not exactly. It’s never been something we can completely control. Fox has to deliberately push it, and it doesn’t always work then. But since then he has an instinct about people. And Gage-”

“He sees what could happen,” Quinn added. “He’s the soothsayer.”

“It’s hardest for him. That’s why-one of the reasons why-he doesn’t spend much time here. It’s harder here. He’s had some pretty damn vicious dreams, visions, nightmares, whatever the hell you want to call them.”

And it hurts you when he hurts, Quinn thought. “But he hasn’t seen what you’re meant to do?”

“No. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?” Cal said bitterly. “Has to be more fun to mess up the lives of three kids, to let innocent people die or kill and maim each other. Stretch that out for a couple of decades, then say: Okay, boys, now’s the time.”

“Maybe there was no choice.” Quinn held up a hand when Cal’s eyes fired. “I’m not saying it’s fair. In fact, it sucks. Inside and out, it sucks. I’m saying maybe it couldn’t be another way. Whether it was something Giles Dent did, or something set in motion centuries before that, there may have been no other choice. She said he was holding it, that he was preventing it from destroying the Hollow. If it was Ann, and she meant Giles Dent, does that mean he trapped this thing, this bestia, and in some form-beatus-has been trapped with it, battling it, all this time? Three hundred and fifty years and change. That sucks, too.”

Layla jumped at the brisk knock on the door, then popped up. “I’ll get it. Maybe it’s the delivery.”

“You’re not wrong,” Cal said quietly. “But it doesn’t make it easier to live through it. It doesn’t make it easier to know, in my gut, that we’re coming up to our last chance.”

Quinn got to her feet. “I wish-”

“It’s flowers!” Layla’s voice was giddy with delight as she came in carrying the vase of tulips. “For you, Quinn.”

“Jesus, talk about weird timing,” Cal muttered.

“For me? Oh God, they look like lollipop cups. They’re gorgeous!” Quinn set them on the ancient coffee table. “Must be a bribe from my editor so I’ll finish that article on-” She broke off as she ripped open the card. Her face was blank with shock as she lifted her eyes to Cal. “You sent me flowers?”

“I was in the florist before-”

“You sent me flowers on Valentine’s Day.”

“I hear my mother calling,” Layla announced. “Coming, Mom!” She made a fast exit.

“You sent me tulips that look like blooming candy canes on Valentine’s Day.”

“They looked like fun.”

“That’s what you wrote on the card. ‘These look like fun.’ Wow.” She scooped a hand through her hair. “I have to say that I’m a sensible woman, who knows very well Valentine’s Day is a commercially generated holiday designed to sell greeting cards, flowers, and candy.”

“Yeah, well.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “Works.”

“And I’m not the type of woman who goes all mushy and gooey over flowers, or sees them as an apology for an argument, a prelude to sex, or any of the other oft-perceived uses.”

“I just saw them, thought you’d get a kick out of them. Period. I’ve got to get to work.”

“But,” she continued and moved toward him, “strangely, I find none of that applies in the least in this particular case. They are fun.” She rose up on her toes, kissed his cheek. “And they’re beautiful.” Then his other cheek. “And thoughtful.” Now his lips. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’d like to add that…” She trailed her hands down his shirt, up again. “If you’ll tell me what time you finish up tonight, I’ll have a bottle of wine waiting in my bedroom upstairs, where I can promise you, you’re going to get really, really lucky.”

“Eleven,” he said immediately. “I can be here at eleven-oh-five. I-Oh shit. Sweetheart Dance, that’s midnight. Special event. No problem. You’ll come.”

“That’s my plan.” When he grinned, she rolled her eyes. “You mean to this dance. At the Bowl-a-Rama. A Sweetheart Dance at the Bowl-a-Rama. God, I’d love that. But, I can’t leave Layla here, not at night. Not alone.”

“She can come, too-to the dance.”

Now her eyeroll was absolutely sincere. “Cal, no woman wants to tag along with a couple to a dance on Valentine’s Day. It paints a big L for loser in the middle of her forehead, and they’re so damn hard to wash off.”

“Fox can take her. Probably. I’ll check.”

“That’s a possibility, especially if we make it all for fun. You check, then I’ll check, then we’ll see. But either way.” She grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and this time brought him to her for a long, long kiss. “My bedroom, twelve-oh-five.”

LAYLA SAT ON HER BRAND-NEW DISCOUNT MATTRESS while Quinn busily checked out the clothes she’d recently hung in her closet.

“Quinn, I appreciate the thought, I really do, but put yourself in my place. The third-wheel position.”

“It’s perfectly acceptable to be the third wheel when there’re four wheels altogether. Fox is going.”

“Because Cal asked him to take pity on the poor dateless V-Day loser. Probably told him or bribed him or-”