An office manager who didn’t jump-start his libido would be a good start, but it was too late for that. “I’m good, too. I’ll just be…” He gestured toward his office, then walked away.
He was tempted to shut the pocket doors, but it felt rude. He never closed the doors of his office unless he was with a client who needed or wanted privacy.
Because he never felt quite real in a suit, Fox pulled off the jacket, tossed it over the grinning pig that served as one of the hooks. With relief, he dragged off his tie and draped it over a happy cow. That left a chicken, a goat, and a duck, all carved by his father, whose opinion had been that no law office could be stuffy when it was home to a bunch of lunatic farm animals.
So far, Fox figured that ran true.
It was exactly what he’d wanted in an office, something part of a house rather than a building, with a view of neighborhood rather than urban streets. Shelves held the law books and supplies he needed most often, but mingled with them were bits and pieces of him. A baseball signed by the one and only Cal Ripken, the stained-glass kaleidoscope his mother had made him, framed snapshots, a scale model of the Millennium Falcon, laboriously and precisely built when he’d been twelve.
And, in a place of prominence sat the big glass jar, and its complement of dollar bills. One for every time he forgot and said fuck in the office. It was Alice Hawbaker’s decree.
He got a Coke out of the minifridge he kept stocked with them and wondered what the hell he was going to do when Mrs. Hawbaker deserted him for Minneapolis and he had to deal with the lovely Layla not only as part of the defeat-the-damn-demon team, but five days a week in his office.
“Fox?”
“Huh?” He spun around from his window, and there she was again. “What? Is something wrong?”
“No. Well, other than Big Evil, no. You don’t have any appointments for a couple of hours, and since Alice isn’t here, I thought we could talk about that. I know you’ve got other work, but-”
“It’s okay.” Big Evil would give him focus on something other than gorgeous green eyes and soft, glossy pink lips. “Do you want a Coke?”
“No, thanks. Do you know how many calories are in that can?”
“It’s worth it. Sit down.”
“I’m too jumpy.” As if to prove it, Layla rubbed her hands together as she wandered the office. “I get jumpier every day that nothing happens, which is stupid, because it should be a relief. But nothing’s happened, nothing at all since we were all at the Pagan Stone.”
“Throwing sticks and stones and really harsh words at a demon from hell.”
“That, and Gage shooting at it. Or Cal…” She stopped, faced Fox now. “I still get shaky when I remember how Cal stepped right up to that writhing mass of black and shoved a knife into it. And now nothing, in almost two weeks. Before, it was nearly every day we saw it, felt it, dreamed of it.”
“We hurt it,” Fox reminded her. “It’s off wherever demons go to lick their wounds.”
“Cybil calls it a lull, and she thinks it’s going to come back harder the next time. She’s researching for hours every day, and Quinn, well, she’s writing. That’s what they do, and they’ve done this before-this kind of thing if not this precise thing. First-timer here, and what I’m noticing is they’re not getting anywhere.” She pushed a hand through her dark hair, then shook her head so the sexy, jagged ends of it swung. “What I mean is… A couple of weeks ago, Cybil had what she thought were really strong leads toward where Ann Hawkins might have gone to have her babies.”
His ancestors, Fox thought. Giles Dent, Ann Hawkins, and the sons they’d made together. “And they haven’t panned out, I know. We’ve all talked about this.”
“But I think-I feel-it’s one of the keys. They’re your ancestors, yours, Cal’s, Gage’s. Where they were born may matter, and more since we have some of Ann’s journals, we’re all agreed there must be others. And the others may explain more about her sons’ father. About Giles Dent. What was he, Fox? A man, a witch, a good demon, if there are such things? How did he trap what called itself Lazarus Twisse from that night in sixteen fifty-two until the night the three of you-”
“Let it out,” Fox finished, and Layla shook her head again.
“You were meant to-that much we agree on, too. It was part of Dent’s plan or his spell. But we don’t seem to know any more than we did two weeks ago. We’re stalled.”
“Maybe Twisse isn’t the only one who needs to recharge. We hurt it,” he repeated. “We’ve never been able to do that before. We scared it. ” And the memory of that was enough to turn his gilded brown eyes cool with satisfaction. “Every seven years all we’ve been able to do is try to get people out of the way, to mop up the mess afterward. Now we know we can hurt it.”
“Hurting it isn’t enough.”
“No, it’s not.” If they were stalled, he admitted, part of the reason was his fault. He’d pulled back. He’d made excuses not to push Layla on honing the skill-the one that matched his own-that had been passed down to her.
“What am I thinking now?”
She blinked at him. “Sorry?”
“What am I thinking?” he repeated, and deliberately recited the alphabet in his head.
“I told you before I can’t read minds, and I don’t want-”
“And I told you it’s not exactly like that, but close enough.” He eased a hip onto the corner of his sturdy old desk, and brought their gazes more level. His conservative oxford-cloth shirt was open at the throat, and his bark brown hair waved around his sharp-featured face and brushed the back of his collar. “You can and do get impressions, get a sense, even an image in your head. Try again.”
“Having good instincts isn’t the same as-”
“That’s bullshit. You’re letting yourself be afraid of what’s inside you because of where it came from, and because it makes you other than-”
“Human?”
“No. Makes you ‘other.’ ” He understood the complexity of her feelings on this issue. There was something in him that was other as well. At times it was more difficult to wear than a suit and tie. But to Fox’s mind, doing the difficult was just part of living. “It doesn’t matter where it came from, Layla. You have what you have and are what you are for a reason.”
“Easy to say when you can put your ancestry back to some bright, shining light, and mine goes back to a demon who raped some poor sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Thinking that’s only letting him score points off you. Try again,” Fox insisted, and this time grabbed her hand before she could evade him.
“I don’t-stop pushing it at me,” she snapped. Her free hand pressed against her temple.
It was a jolt, he knew, to have something pop in there when you weren’t prepared. But it couldn’t be helped. “What am I thinking?”
“I don’t know. I just see a bunch of letters in my head.”
“Exactly.” Approval spread in his smile, and reached his eyes. “Because I was thinking of a bunch of letters. You can’t go back.” He spoke gently now. “And you wouldn’t if you could. You wouldn’t just pack up, go back to New York, and beg your boss at the boutique to give you your job back.”
Layla snatched her hand away as color flooded her cheeks. “I don’t want you prying into my thoughts and feelings.”
“No, you’re right. And I don’t make a habit of it. But, Layla, if you can’t or won’t trust me with what’s barely under the surface, you and I are going to be next to useless. Cal and Quinn, they flash back to things that happened before, and Gage and Cybil get images, or even just possibilities of what’s coming next. We’re the now, you and me. And the now is pretty damn important. You said we’re stalled. Okay then, let’s get moving.”
“It’s easier for you, easier for you to accept because you’ve had this thing…” She waved a finger beside her temple. “You’ve had this for twenty years.”