The Hollow Read Free

of their tenth birthday in the woods west of town.
    Instead they’d listened. And when Cal’s parents had come over, they’d listened, too.
    Fox glanced down at the thin scar across his wrist. That mark, one made when Cal had used his Boy Scout knife nearly twenty-one years before to make him, Cal, and Gage blood brothers, was the only scar on his body. He’d had others before that night, before that ritual—what active boy of ten didn’t? Yet all of them but this one had healed smooth— as he’d healed from any injury since. Without a trace.
    It was that mark, that mixing of blood, that had freed the thing trapped centuries before. For seven nights it had stormed through Hawkins Hollow.
    They thought they’d beaten it, three ten-year-old boys against the unholy that infected the town. But it came back, seven years later, for seven more nights of hell. Then returned again, the week they’d turned twenty-four.
    It would come back again this summer. It was already making itself known.
    But things were different now. They were better prepared, had more knowledge. Only it wasn’t just him, Cal, and Gage this time. They were six with the three women who’d come to the Hollow, who were connected by ancestry to the demon, just as he, Cal, and Gage were connected to the force that had trapped it.
    Not kids anymore, Fox thought as he pulled up to park in front of the townhouse on Main Street that held his office and his apartment. And if what their little band of six had been able to pull off a couple weeks before at the Pagan Stone was any indication, the demon who’d once called himself Lazarus Twisse was in for a few surprises.
    After grabbing his briefcase, he crossed the sidewalk. It had taken a lot of sweat and considerable financial juggling for Fox to buy the old stone townhouse. The first couple of years had been lean—hell, they’d been emaciated, he thought now. But they’d been worth the struggle, the endless meals of PB and J, because every inch of the place was his—and the Hawkins Hollow Bank and Trust’s.
    The plaque at the door read FOX B. O’DELL, ATTORNEY AT LAW. It could still surprise him that it had been the law he’d wanted—more that it had been small-town law.
    He supposed it shouldn’t. The law wasn’t just about right and wrong, but all the shades between. He liked figuring out which shade worked best in each situation.
    He stepped inside, and got a jolt when he saw Layla Darnell, one of that little band of six, behind the desk in his reception area. His mind went blank for a moment, as it often did if he saw her unexpectedly. He said, “Um . . .”
    â€œHi.” Her smile was cautious. “You’re back sooner than expected.”
    Was he? He couldn’t remember. How was he supposed to concentrate with the hot-looking brunette and her mermaid green eyes behind the desk instead of his grandmotherly Mrs. Hawbaker? “I—we—won. The jury deliberated less than an hour.”
    â€œThat’s great.” Her smile boosted up several degrees. “Congratulations. That was the personal injury case? The car accident. Mr. and Mrs. Pullman?”
    â€œYeah.” He shifted his briefcase to his other shoulder and kept most of the pretty parlorlike reception area between them. “Where’s Mrs. H?”
    â€œDentist appointment. It’s on your calendar.”
    Of course it was. “Right. I’ll just be in my office.”
    â€œShelley Kholer called. Twice. She’s decided she wants to sue her sister for alienation of affection and for . . . Wait.” Layla picked up a message pad. “For being a ‘skanky, no-good ho’—she actually said ‘ho.’ And the second call involved her wanting to know if, as part of her divorce settlement, she’d get her cheating butt-monkey of a soon-to-be-ex-husband’s points for some sort of online NASCAR