Alight The Peril (15 page)

“Hi, what’s up?” I said.

“It’s Bradley. He’s sick.” She sounded worried, but not panicked. It didn’t stop my heart from taking off at a gallop as the vision of Brad in the hospital bed, black fog puffing from his mouth, burst unwanted into my mind. My stomach began to weave itself into a knot, and I pushed the image away.

“What’s wrong with him?” My fingers tightening around my phone, I met Aunt Dorothy’s eyes.

“He’s got a fever, and his stomach hurts. I’m taking him to the clinic to make sure it’s not his appendix. I think it’s probably just an ordinary bug, but I’m going to take him in to be sure.”

“Okay,” I said. “Keep me posted and tell Brad I hope he’s feeling better soon. If he wants anything from the café, text me, and I’ll pick it up.” My brother and I weren’t as close as we used to be, but since his illness, I’d always been ready to jump in to take care of him, even if he just had a cold.

I told the others that Sophie was in Danton and didn’t know when she’d get here. We waited a half hour for her to show up, and finally Aunt Dorothy decided we should get started without her.

I frowned at my great-aunt. “How can we do a drill without Sophie?”

“Angeline can try casting a net using the one that blankets the meadow.” She tilted her head and considered the meadow for a moment, then turned to Ang. “Find an edge that Sophie created, and begin your weave there. Sophie’s edge will anchor your net. It is nowhere near as strong as one created by the two of you, and this is not a technique you should ever use in a non-drill situation, but I think it will do for now.”

I had no idea how Ang could cast a net by herself, but she didn’t seem to think it would cause her any problems.

Aunt Dorothy gave me, Mason, and Ang each a drop of the neon green liquid, and lit a flame beneath the grooved piece of wood. We all took our positions around the meadow. Mason and I stood, side by side, facing the forest. Adrenaline coursed through me as I tried to imagine what nightmare this drill would unleash.

I searched the trees for telltale tendrils of fog, and sniffed the air for the spoiled, burnt smell. A few moments passed and nothing emerged or changed.

“You think something went wrong with the drill?” I asked Mason.

“I don’t know.” He kept his eyes on the forest, and his voice was wary. Then he tensed. “Who the heck is that?”

I followed his gaze and watched as a guy around our age wove his way through the low brush, working his way toward us.

“Hello?” I called, and took a step forward. I looked over my shoulder at Mason. “Does he look familiar?”

“Corinne—”

Mason’s warning came too late. I watched as the stranger raised his hand, and a flash of cool blue lightening streaked through the air, too fast for my eyes to follow. Before I could even turn my head, Mason cried out and collapsed.

“Mason!” I crouched over him as he writhed in agony.

Don’t touch me!
he said.
Whatever that was, it sucked everything out of me. Watch him!

My frantic gaze met the stranger’s, who hadn’t moved from the edge of the meadow. I hesitated, torn between trying to restore Mason’s power and searching for a way to disarm the guy.

I’m rolling the net into a tube and aiming it at him,
Ang said. Her energy was tense, but admirably calm.

In a flash, the gossamer net coiled over itself. It wasn’t the perfect funnel the Guardians had created together last time, but it was all we had to work with. I gathered influences, with no time to try to attenuate a blend with any precision, and let them fly down the center of the coiled net.

Nothing happened. Who was this intruder? Instead of trying more influences, I reached out and began to search the stranger’s mind. Within seconds, I realized that no mind existed within this human-looking form. I pressed my awareness into a mass as black as the fog. In fact, I was pretty sure the guy was somehow
made
of fog. I reached deeper, searching for the core as I had before.

Just as I located the pulsating, putrid center, another zap of blue lightening raced past me. But this time, it targeted Ang. Panicked, I gathered influences in full force and hurled them at the core of the fog within the stranger, praying it was enough.

I whipped my head around to see if Ang was okay, and watched as she stumbled backward several steps, half turned, and nearly regained her balance before tripping over a tree root and smacking her head against the base of a Ponderosa pine. She crumpled into an unmoving heap.

“Angeline!” I screamed and raced toward her. I rolled her over so I could see her face. An angry red scrape marred one cheekbone, and her eyelids were half closed, her eyes rolled back in her head. I brushed blonde strands of hair from her forehead. “Angeline? Can you hear me?”

Aunt Dorothy knelt beside me and folded a handful of blooms into my best friend’s limp hand, holding it in a fist, and a few seconds later, Ang’s eyelids fluttered open.

“Poor thing.” Aunt Dorothy tsked. “Going to have a bit of a headache.”

Worry swelled my throat with the pressure of tears, and I pulled Ang to me as she tried to sit up. I sat on the ground next to her and slipped my arm around her shoulders.

“Ang?” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”

She grunted, and her head bobbed forward. I gave Aunt Dorothy a silent, pleading look as tears overflowed my eyelids and spilled down my face.

Mason joined us, concern lining his face. “I followed the guy across the meadow but lost him in the trees. Is Angeline going to be okay?”

“Give her a moment,” my great-aunt said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle.

“What happened?” Ang mumbled. She rested her temple against my shoulder.

“You fell and hit your head.” I tried to keep my voice from wavering, but I was so relieved to hear her speak, a fresh wave of tears filled my eyes.

“Yeah, really hurts.”

“I think from now on, we must make sure to have both Guardians present for our drills,” Aunt Dorothy said, her eyelids lowered.

Good. I didn’t want to take any chances like this again. I wanted to push her for more of an explanation about the drill, because that wasn’t really an answer, but anger at Sophie flared through me. She’d promised to come to our drills and to show up in every way that we needed her to, and she’d already failed us. Ang would probably be okay right now if Sophie hadn’t bailed.

When Ang assured us she was steady enough to stand up, we all trudged toward one of the picnic tables on the beach. She stumbled once, and Mason scooped her up and carried her the rest of the way. In my concern over her, I’d completely forgotten to check on him, but he looked unharmed by the attack.

So what did that guy do to you, anyway?
I asked. Mason and I sat next to Ang.

Mason ran a hand through his wavy hair.
I don’t know, but it felt like when the old fridge in the garage came ungrounded and I grabbed the metal handle. Not painful, exactly, but very unpleasant. Like paralysis.

Huh, I wonder if there are people or things out there that could actually do that to you, or if it was just something for the drill?

Not sure, but I want to find out, too. It was awful, lying there powerless to help you.
His hand brushed the small of my back, and I leaned into him for a moment.

Then I remembered Sophie. I dug my phone from my purse and called her, but she didn’t answer. No response when I reached out through our link, either. My irritation mounted, and even Aunt Dorothy realized it was best to call it quits for the day.

I made Mason ride with Ang because I didn’t want her taking her mom’s car alone, and I told them to meet me at Aunt Dorothy’s. I parked the Buick in the garage, and moments later, Ang pulled into the driveway. She took me and Mason back to my house.

In my room, I built a nest of blankets and pillows for Ang on the bed, and brought her some juice and Advil. She looked much better, and even the scrape on her face had faded. Aunt Dorothy had tucked a couple handfuls of healing flowers into my pockets to give Ang later, so I pulled some out and made her hold them while she rested.

I paced around my room, straightening my desk and putting away clothes, my irritation mounting.

“I can’t believe she stood us up,” I seethed. “How is this ever going to work?”

“Want me to talk to her?” Ang asked.

“Sure, if you think you can make a dent in her stupid, stubborn brain,” I said.

My phone chimed, and I dug it out of my bag and answered.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. “How’s Brad doing?”

“Not so well.” Her voice held all the fear and sadness I’d been dreading ever since my brother went into remission, and my heart began a slow, sickening descent in my chest. “I’m taking him to the hospital in Danton.”

I could barely focus on her words as she explained the tests he needed, the conversations with the doctor at the clinic. I could think of nothing but the image of my brother lying helpless in a stark room, putrid black fog leaking from his mouth as he begged me for help.

Now I understood what the vision meant. Some unseen evil had escaped into Tapestry and sought out my brother. And I knew what medical tests hadn’t yet confirmed: his cancer had returned.

|| 17 ||

ANG RUBBED MY SHOULDER and Mason held my hand. They both tried to comfort me with soft words, but all I could do was stare numbly at the floor. Mom had instructed me to wait for Dad to come home from the café, and then he and I would drive to Danton and meet her and Bradley. I told Ang and Mason about my vision of my brother, how I was sure it had been a premonition of his illness returning, and then I lay curled into a ball on my bed, a nightmarish merry-go-round of thoughts playing in my head. Bradley sick . . . Sophie deserting us . . . Ang’s head slamming into the tree . . . Harriet lurking in the shadows.

I’d been incredibly naïve to think that as long as Harriet didn’t attack the four of us, and if we kept an eye on the convergence, everything would be okay. If something from the hypercosmic realm had already invaded Brad’s body, without any of us seeing it coming, what else could we expect next? And summer solstice was barely more than a month away. Was it already too late?

Mason called Aunt Dorothy to tell her about Bradley and find out if she had any idea how this had happened, and what, if anything, we could do. I tried to follow his end of the conversation.

Someone knocked on my bedroom door, and I sat up, hoping my dad was home early.

“Come in,” I called.

The door swung open, and Sophie let herself in.

“The front door was unlocked, so I just came down,” she said.

I glared at her, waiting.

“What’s going on?” she asked, frowning as she picked up on the morose mood of the room. Then she focused on my face and blinked a couple of times. “Geez, Corinne, you look really awful. What’s wrong?”

I hardly knew where to begin. Anger welled up like a tidal wave inside me. I kept my eyes on Sophie and pointed at Ang.

“First of all, Ang got hurt because you weren’t there today. You promised you’d be dedicated to this now, to
us
. And you flaked out. You don’t get to pick and choose when to participate, Sophie. Where have you been this whole time? And if you’d been with us, you’d know why I’m so upset. Brad is sick, and Mom is taking him to the hospital in Danton.”

Her face fell for a second when I mentioned my brother, but then the haughty mask she’d worn the last five years obscured her initial reaction.

“Just because you’re Pyxis doesn’t mean you can control everyone else.” She narrowed her eyes and leaned toward me. “I’m not going to jump when you snap your fingers, and you’d better accept that. Besides, you didn’t have to do the drill without me. Maybe
you
should have stopped it, all-powerful Pyxis. If anyone here is responsible for what happened to Angeline, it’s
you
.”

Silence seemed to pressurize the room.

“Get out.” I was sweating with the effort it took to restrain myself from springing from the bed and throttling her neck. “Now.”

“I wouldn’t stay if you paid me.” She turned on her heel, her hair whipping out in an auburn curtain behind her, and stomped out of the house. I buried my face in my hands, my anger fading back to worry about my brother.

“She’s wrong,” Ang said. “It wasn’t your fault. No one blames you, Corinne.”

“She’s probably right, though. I should have stopped it.” Before Ang could respond, I looked up at Mason. “What did Aunt Dorothy say?”

He hesitated and licked his dry lips. “She thinks you’re right about Brad. But she doesn’t think it was a breach in the convergence. That’s good, I guess. She’s pretty sure it has something to do with Harriet. Aunt Dorothy suspects that she’s targeting your brother to distract you.”

“So what’s stopping us from busting down Harriet’s door and, I don’t know, knocking her unconscious?” I asked.

“Aunt Dorothy says that short of killing her, which is obviously out of the question—unfortunately—there’s not a lot we can do to permanently stop her. If Harriet is physically unconscious, she still has access to the hypercosmic realm.”

I slumped. “I guess that makes sense. Maybe Ione, the Rome Pyxis, will come up with something that will help us control her.”

I heard footfalls upstairs, and a moment later, Dad appeared in the doorway, his face pale and drawn. He nodded to Mason and Ang.

“Ready to go?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said. I stood to gather my bag and jacket, and Dad turned and headed back upstairs.

Ang wrapped her arms around me. “Text me as soon as you hear anything.”

When Mason pulled me to his chest, I almost lost it. I buried my face in his sweatshirt and inhaled the smell of his soap.

It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure out how to help Brad. Don’t worry about everything else. We’ll find a way to take care of all of it.

I remembered Zane pulling me back from the grip of Harriet’s influence. Maybe he could help us? But it was nearly winter solstice in Perth and he’d have his own union and convergence to attend to.