“Sorry, Cal. Just wanted you to know I was here. Thought I’d go ahead and get that painting done in the rest rooms since you’re not open this morning.”

“Okay, Bill. Got everything you need?”

“Sure do.” Bill Turner, five years, two months, and six days sober, cleared his throat. “Wonder if maybe you’d heard anything from Gage.”

“Not in a couple months now.”

Tender area, Cal thought when Bill just nodded. Boggy ground.

“I’ll just get started then.”

Cal watched as Bill moved away from the doorway. Nothing he could do about it, he told himself. Nothing he was sure he should do.

Did five years clean and sober make up for all those whacks with a belt, for all those shoves and slaps, all those curses? It wasn’t for him to judge.

He glanced down at the thin scar that ran diagonally across his wrist. Odd how quickly that small wound had healed, and yet the mark of it remained-the only scar he carried. Odd how so small a thing had catapulted the town and people he knew into seven days of hell every seven years.

Would Gage come back this summer, as he had every seventh year? Cal couldn’t see ahead, that wasn’t his gift or his burden. But he knew when he, Gage, and Fox turned thirty-one, they would all be together in the Hollow.

They’d sworn an oath.

He finished up the morning’s work, and because he couldn’t get his mind off it, composed a quick e-mail to Gage.

Hey. Where the hell are you? Vegas? Mozambique? Duluth? Heading out to see Fox. There’s a writer coming into the Hollow to do research on the history, the legend, and what they’re calling the anomalies. Probably got it handled, but thought you should know.

It’s twenty-two degrees with a windchill factor of fifteen. Wish you were here and I wasn’t.

Cal

He’d answer eventually, Cal thought as he sent the e-mail, then shut down the computer. Could be in five minutes or in five weeks, but Gage would answer.

He began to layer on the outer gear again over a long and lanky frame passed down by his father. He’d gotten his outsized feet from dear old Dad, too.

The dark blond hair that tended to go as it chose was from his mother. He knew that only due to early photos of her, as she’d been a soft, sunny blonde, perfectly groomed, throughout his memory.

His eyes, a sharp, occasionally stormy gray, had been twenty-twenty since his tenth birthday.

Even as he zipped up his parka to head outside, he thought that the coat was for comfort only. He hadn’t had so much as a sniffle in over twenty years. No flu, no virus, no hay fever.

He’d fallen out of an apple tree when he’d been twelve. He’d heard the bone in his arm snap, had felt the breathless pain.

And he’d felt it knit together again-with more pain-before he’d made it across the lawn to the house to tell his mother.

So he’d never told her, he thought as he stepped outside into the ugly slap of cold. Why upset her?

He covered the three blocks to Fox’s office quickly, shooting out waves or calling back greetings to neighbors and friends. But he didn’t stop for conversation. He might not get pneumonia or postnasal drip, but he was freaking tired of winter.

Gray, ice-crusted snow lay in a dirty ribbon along the curbs, and above, the sky mirrored the brooding color. Some of the houses or businesses had hearts and Valentine wreaths on doors and windows, but they didn’t add a lot of cheer with the bare trees and winter-stripped gardens.

The Hollow didn’t show to advantage, to Cal ’s way of thinking, in February.

He walked up the short steps to the little covered porch of the old stone townhouse. The plaque beside the door read: FOX B. O’DELL, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

It was something that always gave Cal a quick jolt and a quick flash of amusement. Even after nearly six years, he couldn’t quite get used to it.

The long-haired hippie freak was a goddamn lawyer.

He stepped into the tidy reception area, and there was Alice Hawbaker at the desk. Trim, tidy in her navy suit with its bowed white blouse, her snowcap of hair and no-nonsense bifocals, Mrs. Hawbaker ran the office like a Border collie ran a herd.

She looked sweet and pretty, and she’d bite your ankle if you didn’t fall in line.

“Hey, Mrs. Hawbaker. Boy, it is cold out there. Looks like we might get some more snow.” He unwrapped his scarf. “Hope you and Mr. Hawbaker are keeping warm.”

“Warm enough.”

He heard something in her voice that had him looking more closely as he pulled off his gloves. When he realized she’d been crying he instinctively stepped to the desk. “Is everything okay? Is-”

“Everything’s fine. Just fine. Fox is between appointments. He’s in there sulking, so you go right on back.”

“Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Hawbaker, if there’s anything-”

“Just go right on back,” she repeated, then made herself busy with her keyboard.

Beyond the reception area a hallway held a powder room on one side and a library on the other. Straight back, Fox’s office was closed off by a pair of pocket doors. Cal didn’t bother to knock.

Fox looked up when the doors slid open. He did appear to be sulking as his gilded eyes were broody and his mouth was in full scowl.

He sat behind his desk, his feet, clad in hiking boots, propped on it. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt open over a white insulated tee. His hair, densely brown, waved around his sharp-featured face.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on. My administrative assistant just gave me her notice.”

“What did you do?”

“Me?” Fox shoved back from the desk and opened the minifridge for a can of Coke. He’d never developed a taste for coffee. “Try we, brother. We camped out at the Pagan Stone one fateful night, and screwed the monkey.”

Cal dropped into a chair. “She’s quitting because-”

“Not just quitting. They’re leaving the Hollow, she and Mr. Hawbaker. And yeah, because.” He took a long, greedy drink the way some men might take a pull on a bottle of whiskey. “That’s not the reason she gave me, but that’s the reason. She said they decided to move to Minneapolis to be close to their daughter and grandchildren, and that’s bogus. Why does a woman heading toward seventy, married to a guy older than dirt, pick up and move north? They’ve got another kid lives outside of D.C., and they’ve got strong ties here. I could tell it was bull.”

“Because of what she said, or because you took a cruise through her head?”

“First the one, then the other. Don’t start on me.” Fox gestured with the Coke, then slammed it down on his desk. “I don’t poke around for the fun of it. Son of a bitch.”

“Maybe they’ll change their minds.”

“They don’t want to go, but they’re afraid to stay. They’re afraid it’ll happen again-which I could tell her it will-and they just don’t want to go through it again. I offered her a raise-like I could afford it-offered her the whole month of July off, letting her know that I knew what was at the bottom of it. But they’re going. She’ll give me until April first. April frickin’ Fools,” he ranted. “To find somebody else, for her to show them the ropes. I don’t know where the damn ropes are, Cal. I don’t know half the stuff she does. She just does it. Anyway.”

“You’ve got until April, maybe we’ll think of something.”

“We haven’t thought of the solution to this in twenty years plus.”

“I meant your office problem. But yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about the other.” Rising, he walked to Fox’s window, looked out on the quiet side street. “We’ve got to end it. This time we’ve got to end it. Maybe talking to this writer will help. Laying it out to someone objective, someone not involved.”

“Asking for trouble.”

“Maybe it is, but trouble’s coming anyway. Five months to go. We’re supposed to meet her at the house.” Cal glanced at his watch. “Forty minutes.”

“We?” Fox looked blank for a moment. “That’s today? See, see, I didn’t tell Mrs. H, so it didn’t get written down somewhere. I’ve got a deposition in an hour.”