Alight The Peril (16 page)

Tilting my chin up with his fingers, Mason rested his forehead against mine for a second. When he kissed me, I wanted to melt into the warmth of his lips and forget this entire day.

Mason and Ang went home, and Dad and I got into the café delivery van and headed toward the highway to Danton. The van smelled faintly of French bread, and my stomach gurgled a little.

“I brought a sandwich for you,” Dad said, and reached behind my seat to produce a paper bag.

“Thanks, you read my mind.” I gave him a grateful smile. “Heard anything from Mom?”

“Brad is checked in and they’re going to draw blood,” he said. “I told her we were on our way.”

I wondered how my dad would react if he knew about my premonition, Harriet’s possible connection to Bradley’s illness, or my responsibility in all of it. It struck me that if Dad had a sister, this scenario might be a whole lot different. I might not even be Pyxis yet. Maybe my imaginary aunt could have stopped Harriet.

Mile markers and trees whipped by, and my body weighed me down like a block of stone, as if I had a private zone of extra gravity that pressed me to my seat with suffocating force. Propping my cheek against my fist, I let my eyelids close. I needed . . . escape.

When I opened my eyes, I could barely make out the cove through all the sparkling filaments surrounding me. I lifted my arm, trailing my hand through them and allowing them to slide over my skin, feeling the tiny vibrations as I touched them. I tried to remember how Zane and I had floated through the threads of subconscious, but my stubborn feet remained planted on the ground.

I thought about my brother. What it would be like for him to find out his illness had returned? I imagined the pain that must be gripping my parents’ hearts and weighing down every breath as they hoped their son would be spared another nightmare year of treatment . . . or worse. I tried to picture what my family would be without my brother. Tears built up through my chest, gripped my throat, and overflowed from my eyes.

“Need to get away, Pyxis?” A deep voice drifted from my right, quiet but resonant, like notes plucked on a guitar.

I turned to Zane, wiping my wet cheeks with my fingers. “I didn’t think you’d come. Winter solstice. . . .” I was too tired to finish the sentence.

“My union can spare me here and there for a while yet.” Warmth and concern gave his face a vulnerability I hadn’t seen before.

He offered his hand, and I placed my damp fingers against his warm palm. He held my hand at chest height, poised as if we were partners standing ready for the opening notes of a ballroom dance, and I stared into his ice-blue eyes as my feet lost contact with the ground. Mason’s presence in my mind faded, but before I could feel anxious at his absence, Zane was there.

I don’t know how to do this, how to float
, I said to him.
Can you teach me?

I could. But then you wouldn’t need me here.
He lowered his hand that held mine, drawing us closer together.

That’s true,
I said. If I weren’t so exhausted, so scared, I might have blushed. But I didn’t have the energy for self-consciousness.

As we drifted deeper into the sea of fine threads, I trained my gaze on his eyes to keep vertigo at bay. Zane’s face was my only point of reference in this undulating cloud.

He held my gaze, unblinking. His eyes softened, and I could almost see him letting his guard down. I held my breath, remembering our last encounter, his focused expression just before he turned the conversation away from what he was going to tell me.

Then he quirked an eyebrow, the one with the bar pierced through it. And just like that, he masked himself again. I let out my breath silently.

Want to listen to one of them?
Zane asked, a tiny smile turning up one corner of his mouth.

We can do that?

He reached out with his free hand, catching a filament between two fingers and letting it lie across his palm. His skin began to glow white, and a faint blue spark traveled the length of the thread.

Touch it. Gently, now,
he instructed.

I brushed my index finger across his palm, and when I contacted the filament, a dozen images and thoughts burst into my mind, passing almost too quickly to comprehend. A scruffy brown terrier wagging its tail, a view out of an airplane window, a pile of textbooks on a desk, an old man with a newspaper. . . . Images whipped through my mind’s eye in a fraction of a second.

What is it? What am I seeing?

That’s a direct line into someone’s subconscious,
Zane said. He let the filament slip from his fingers and blend into the cloud around us.

That’s amazing,
I said, and I gazed into the threads with a new sense of wonder. Each one was someone’s mind, their thoughts and memories stored away. I thought of my grandmother, my parents, Brad, Mason, Angeline . . . each person I knew, reduced to a fine strand of gossamer. Really, what more were we than our thoughts and memories? Our bodies faded and failed us, but all of our experiences, our memories, all of the love in our lives, couldn’t be contained by our mortal forms.

Competing emotions swelled in the center of my chest, and my body couldn’t seem to decide whether to cry for the pain and uncertainty or laugh for the love. I closed my eyes for a moment, and let the vertigo sweep through me.

Deep thoughts there, Pyxis,
Zane said. He drew me to him, one hand outstretched and holding mine, in an almost formal posture. My heart jumped at his closeness, and a shiver crept down my back. His voice in my mind lowered to a barely detectable wisp of words.
There are two full generations of power within you, one for your own, and one for the latent generation before yours. You have more within you than you know.
He paused and swallowed, and then his lips parted a little.
I want nothing more than to be there when you discover who you really are . . .

His words scared me and thrilled me all at once. I looked into his eyes and suddenly wished, too, that he could be the one to take this journey with me. I longed for the reassurance of his experience and knowledge. I was tired of flailing and worrying. How much easier all of this would be, if only. . . .

“Corinne, we’re here.” My dad’s voice came to me from a distance, and I squeezed my eyes shut, resisting. But I knew I must return to my body, to the world and my brother, who needed me.

Dad and I locked the van and walked in silence through the main entrance of the hospital.

|| 18 ||

THE BLEACH AND MEDICINE SMELL of the hospital was faint, but enough to bring a wave of dread that poured through me. I’d had enough of this smell when Bradley was sick the first time. Walking down the gray linoleum hallways was like a bad dream, a remnant of a memory I’d be happy to forget.

In a room, Brad lay hooked up to an IV, and Mom sat on the edge of a chair pulled close to his bed. He saw us first, and raised his fingers in greeting. He didn’t look unwell, aside from the dark rings under his eyes. I watched him over Mom’s shoulder as she embraced me.

As my parents talked about what the doctors did and didn’t know, I sat on the edge of Brad’s bed, next to his thigh. I gave him a tiny smile. “Hey, how’re you doing?”

“Okay.” His voice was soft, but not weak. “Trying to keep Mom from freaking the eff out.”

I nearly smiled, and I glanced over at my parents. When my gaze returned to Bradley, he’d closed his eyes. I hesitated a moment, and then I reached out with my mind, a tentative probe, down to his chest. I reached into his body the way I’d done with the black cloud in our first drill in the meadow. I searched for something, anything, that might let me know what to do or understand what was wrong with him. I closed my eyes and reached more energetically into the center of his chest, sensing something familiar. It was lodged just under the lower part of his rib cage, on the right side. It had the same putrid, malevolent feel as the dark fog. When I tried to probe it, Bradley drew a convulsive breath.

“Does it hurt?” I asked, quiet, so only he would hear.

He nodded, and his face pinched.

I pulled back a little, skirting the edges of the thing that did not want me manipulating it. I was tempted to try using a blend of influences, but what if I hurt him, instead? I tried to memorize the feel and vibration of the foreign presence within him. Maybe Aunt Dorothy could help me find some blooms in the meadow that could help him.

A willowy, blonde female doctor about my parents’ age came in and started talking to them about white blood cell counts. I formed a calming swirl of influences and pushed just a bit of it to Bradley, and he sighed a deep, slow breath.

Dad and I needed to get back to Tapestry because I had school in the morning and he had to open the café. We left a bag containing changes of clothes, books, a blanket, and a few other items for Mom and Bradley, and left them to drive home.

In the van, I texted an update to Ang, and she sent back a sweet, sympathetic message.

I think I can help him, but I’m afraid of hurting him,
I said to Mason.

So the cancer is back?

My breath caught in my throat.
Pretty sure. They’re going to do more tests.
A tear slid down my cheek, and I dabbed at it with my sleeve.

So sorry, Corinne. We will find a way to fight it.

It was late by the time we got back to Tapestry, and the house was too still that night without Mom and Bradley. Exhaustion rendered my mind numb and my limbs heavy and useless, but when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep.

Mason. . . ?
I whispered through our link. I didn’t want to wake him, but I longed for the comfort of his presence. When a minute or two passed and he didn’t respond, I figured he must be asleep.

I thought about entering the hypercosmic realm and losing myself in the sea of glowing filaments—maybe Zane would be there—but more than an escape, I really needed true rest.

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for another hour, thinking about what Mr. Sykes had said, about how people who are of weak mind or body are vulnerable. My brother’s body had been weakened by leukemia, and now some unknown evil had taken up residence inside him and brought on the return of his illness.

I really needed to talk to Aunt Dorothy ASAP.

* * *

The next morning, when I got to school, I found Angeline sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of our locker. She held her phone in both hands in front of her and stared at the overly buffed tiles with an expression so forlorn, I just wanted to sit next to her and pet her golden hair.

“Ang, what is it?” I dropped my bag and sat down in front of her.

“Toby,” she said. “He’s in the hospital. I’m sorry; I know Brad’s not doing well, but I’m just really worried about Toby, too.”

“What happened?” I scrunched my eyes, mirroring her worried expression.

“I don’t know. They think it’s some kind of bad virus. He’s running a really high temperature, and he’s got muscle spasms and doesn’t want to eat anything.”

I frowned. “Just out of nowhere?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just found out.” Her voice caught and she paused. “Apparently he woke up in the night and he was delirious from the fever.”

“It’s probably a bad case of the flu,” I said, but my stomach lurched. Was it really just a virus?

“This time of year? It’s not flu season. . . . It’s practically summer.”

“Well, yeah, but you can get the flu any time of year,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “I’ll go with you to visit him after school, if you want.”

She gave me a small, grateful smile, a bit of light returning to her eyes. I wanted to return her smile, but she’d see through it. I pretended to search for something in my bag, alarm swirling through my chest. No reason to scare her before I had any proof.

“Okay.” Ang combed her fingers through the ends of her hair. “Maybe he’ll be back home by this afternoon. Anything new about Bradley this morning?”

I shook my head. “Not so far. They’re putting a rush on all of his tests. But I’m going to talk to Aunt Dorothy later. I think I can help him, I just have to figure out how. I don’t want to do anything to make him worse.”

The first bell rang, and we both stood up.

“I want to go with you,” Ang said. “If I can visit Toby, we can go by there first, and then Aunt Dorothy’s.”

“ ‘Kay, I’ll catch up with you at lunch.” I gave her a quick hug, and we took off in opposite directions for first hour.

I worried my way through the rest of the morning, and spent part of lunch talking to Brad’s teachers to make sure they knew he was in the hospital. Not that I really needed to do it. Mom had already talked to one of the vice principals, and the Tapestry gossip mill would have taken care of it for us anyway, but I had this strange fear that people at school would forget about him or something. Kind of ironic, considering how his antics usually embarrassed me.

During fifth hour, the antsy energy buzzing through Tapestry High reached such a pitch even I noticed it when a couple of seniors raced down the main hallway in a stolen shopping cart. Right, we had only two weeks left until summer break. And only a little more than that until the solstice.

After school, Ang informed me we’d have to skip the visit with Toby after school because the doctor at the Tapestry clinic still hadn’t identified the illness, and he didn’t want to risk exposing more people. Ang bent over her phone for several minutes, composing another long text to Toby.

She looked up. “Think we should invite Sophie?”

Oh yeah, Sophie. “You’re right, we should.” I sighed, pulled out my phone, and texted Sophie. I shook my head. It seemed stupid to be texting when either I or Ang could talk to her through our links, but Sophie had been blocking me and unresponsive with Ang. Just like I expected, she wasn’t holding up her end of our deal. “But she can find her own way over.”

We stopped by Mason’s house to pick him up, and then were on our way to Aunt Dorothy’s.

When we arrived, Mr. Sykes was reclining in one of the club chairs in the living room, with his bad leg up on an ottoman and his cane hooked over the arm of the chair. Aunt Dorothy sat on the sofa holding a steaming mug of tea in both hands. Ang and I joined her, and Mason took the other club chair, where he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His “thinking pose,” as I’d come to call it.