by K. C. Neal
“So if I could tap into that power and add it to my own . . . ” I said.
“Yes.” My grandmother began to smile, but then her eyebrows drew together. “Only, I don’t know how you go about doing that. In fact, I’m not really sure if this situation has ever existed before.”
“Grandma Doris, you know there are other convergences and unions in the world, right?”
Her nod seemed reluctant.
“Maybe a latent generation happened with one of them. Their convergences have been around much longer than ours.”
“It’s worth checking. But Corinne.” Her eyes widened a little as she regarded me. “You must be very careful when you interact with other unions.”
Corinne, we’re here. Mason’s voice whispered through my mind, and I jerked upright and blinked into the sunlight streaming in through the window across the small room.
|| 28 ||
“SO WE ALL KNOW what to do, right?” I looked from Mason to Angeline to Sophie. They nodded, and Sophie stifled a yawn against the back of her hand. I totally felt her pain. They’d returned to the hospital that morning to make the rounds with me, check on our patients, and reinforce everything we’d done for them the previous day. We’d all used our abilities more in the past twenty-four hours than we had since we’d gained them.
When we got back to my room at home, we ran over the plan to lure Harriet to the hypercosmic realm so we could trap her.
Ang lay on her side across my bed, her head pillowed on her hands. “She better show up tonight. I seriously don’t think I can handle the suspense if we have to do this night after night.”
“Or the lost sleep,” Mason said, and slouched deeper into my purple chair.
I glanced at my phone to double-check the date. “We have about a week until summer solstice,” I said. “We definitely need to get this done as soon as possible. The more time goes by, the more dangerous she’ll be.”
That night, Ang, Sophie, and I squeezed together on my bed like three enchiladas in a casserole dish, and Mason sprawled on the floor with blankets and a pillow. There was safety staying in the same room together.
We gave Ang and Sophie a half hour or so to fall asleep. Then Mason, the bait in our plan, entered the hypercosmic realm and wandered the cove alone, hoping to draw Harriet’s attention. I drifted into the sea of threads, allowing myself to be drawn to his thread of subconscious. I held the thread lightly, feeling for the change that would come if Harriet tried to influence him.
After a couple of hours, I told Mason we might as well call it a night.
For the next four days, the four of us spent our mornings in Danton. We realized that, as long as we kept visiting the patients and going through the same routine, it was at least enough to keep them from getting any worse. A few even got well enough to return home.
Mason and I entered the hypercosmic realm each night, but four nights in a row, our efforts met the same end as the first night.
The afternoon following our fifth unsuccessful attempt, Mason and I sat cross-legged on the floor of the tree house in his backyard. We each held triple-scoop cups of ice cream, which we’d decided we deserved after toughing it out through nearly a week of sleepless nights. I’d even ordered whipped cream and sprinkles on mine.
Just days away from the solstice, my powers literally pulsed through me. I’d learned to be careful. Even the slightest hint of a thought on my part could influence those around me. Just this morning, Dad and I had crossed paths in the kitchen for a few minutes before he left for work and I took off for Danton. I’d been thinking about how I wished I had enough money to buy my own car, and how that was even less likely now that I’d cut way back on my shifts at the café, and I looked up from my bagel to see my dad pulling out all the cash in his wallet, plus two credit cards. “I can write you a check for however much more you need for a car,” he’d said, sliding the pile of bills and cards toward me.
As if that wasn’t weird enough, I’d also discovered that I could flash back and forth between the two worlds so quickly, it was nearly like being in both places at once. I hadn’t decided whether that was really cool, or just extremely freaky.
“Can’t we just take her by surprise when she’s home watching soap operas or something?” Mason asked. He started on his second scoop. Blue bubblegum . . . Gross.
“No, if we try to capture her here in the physical world, she’ll just jump over to the dream world, where she can wreak all kinds of havoc while we’re standing here like idiots trying to tie her up or something,” I said. “We have to take her in the hypercosmic realm. And we have to surprise her and move in fast, or it won’t work. She’s gotta be scary-strong by now.”
“I know, I know,” Mason muttered into his ice cream cup. “Just wish there was a more direct way to deal with her.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, scraping the last of my strawberry ice cream onto my spoon. “When she finally shows up, what we’re going to do will be plenty direct.”
I watched him for a moment. He didn’t know about Zane’s prophecy, but did he feel a change between us? I set my cup down and jumped up, pacing the tree house to distract myself before I gave away something through our link.
Mason watched me walk three tiny steps, turn, walk another three tiny steps, turn, and repeat my route. “Whoa there, antsy much?” He laughed and showed his dimples.
I grinned, but didn’t stop. “Sorry, I can not sit still for more than, like, five minutes,” I said. I was a racehorse in a cage, seconds before the bell. It got worse every day.
Mason stood and caught my arm as I paced, and he pulled me against his chest, his arms curving around my waist. I stretched my arms around his neck, the curls of his hair tickling my hands.
He looked down at me and gave me a half smile. “Looks like you can be still for a minute.”
“I’ll give you half a minute,” I said. “Starting now.” I pressed my lips to his, and he squeezed me closer. For a glorious few seconds, I forgot about Harriet, the solstice, even the forces surging through me. But Zane’s ice-blue eyes flashed in my mind. I rested my palms on Mason’s chest, pushing gently. “I should get going.”
Mason nodded and shifted back, leaving a cold band across my back where his arms had rested. His brow wrinkled and he took a breath as if he wanted to ask me something. Then he let it out. “I’ll be over later,” he said, and then, “Wait, Corinne?”
I’d started to reach for the trap door that led to the tree house ladder. I pulled my hand back. “Yeah?”
“Is that other Shield—Zane—is he scaring you or something?”
My heart constricted. “Scaring me? No, why?”
Mason rubbed the back of his neck. “It seems like he’s been on your mind a lot. And he makes you nervous.”
I swallowed and shook my head. “No, he’s fine. He’s just been showing me some things that could help us.”
Mason dropped his arm and regarded me for a second, and I tried not to squirm under his gaze. “Just be careful. I can’t trust anyone who can bump me out of your head.”
I forced a smile that I hoped looked reassuring. “It’s okay. I know he wouldn’t hurt me.”
Back at home, I rearranged the shirts hanging in my closet and fretted over what Mason had said. And then I worried that he’d read my thoughts and know I was fretting. I finally covered my head with a pillow and managed to sleep for a couple of hours, and then I made a grilled cheese sandwich and spinach salad for dinner. There in the house alone, I could almost pretend that Mom was working a late shift and Bradley was out with his friends. Loneliness washed over me as I loaded my dishes in the dishwasher and headed down to my room.
I logged in to the message boards, hoping again that one of the other unions would know something about the songs in my dream. None of them did. Frustration and fatigue dragged at me. I set my laptop on my desk, turned on some music, and tried to relax.
My thoughts turned to Zane. Had he returned to the cove, hoping to run into me?
His prophecy about the two of us still haunted me—when I had time to think about anything other than my union, Harriet, my brother, and the other sick kids. I couldn’t keep living with the weight of what he’d said, just waiting around to see what would happen, and what it meant for me and Mason. Maybe after I’d dealt with Harriet.
The sixth night began like the five before it. One by one, the rest of my union arrived, and we all settled in for the night. I didn’t want to stress them out more by bringing it up, but we were down to our second-to-last chance. If we didn’t trap Harriet tonight, or tomorrow night . . . well, we were out of time.
After I’d drifted for what seemed like half the night, keeping my finger notched around Mason’s thread, I was just about to call it when something changed. Mason’s flow of energy surged for a moment, and then faded.
My heart lurching, I let go of the thread, and in a blink I stood near the water line at the cove.
Mason! I screamed, my head whipping around as I tried to look everywhere at once.
My mind buzzed with silence.
|| 29 ||
“CORINNE!” MY HEART IN MY THROAT, I turned to face Sophie running toward me, stumbling a little in the soft sand, her auburn hair whipping into her face. Lips parted, eyes wide with alarm, probably the most flustered I’d ever seen her. “Where are they?”
“Mason is gone,” I said, running shaking hands through my hair. “I can’t feel our link.”
“Where’s Angeline?” Sophie said. She stopped beside me, breathing hard.
I reached out, searching for my link with my best friend. “Oh no,” I whispered. Terror burrowed a hole straight down through me. “I can’t reach her either.”
I couldn’t meet her gaze. Why had I thought my stupid little plan would work? How could I have been so naïve? Now Mason and Ang were gone, and I didn’t know where to find them. Fear and guilt surged through me in sickening waves. Bile rose in my throat, and for a second I thought I might vomit in the sand. Instead, I breathed the mountain air deep into my lungs, forcing calm.
I turned to Sophie. “Can you feel her at all through your link?”
She shook her head. Her eyes seemed to plead with me to give her an answer, a reason to feel less scared.
I licked my dry lips. “Okay. I don’t want to leave you, but I need to try reading their threads to see if I can figure out what happened to them. Wake up and wait for me in my room. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The faintest whuff of sand under her feet was the only sound at the cove as she disappeared before my eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on Angeline, and physical sensations melted away as I drifted into the sea of threads. When I opened my eyes a moment later, my best friend’s thread called to me. I grasped it gently in my fingers and wanted to recoil. It felt . . . not alive. No vibrations, no hum of memories and life. I let go.
I stuffed all thoughts, arriving at Mason’s thread a moment later. His thread gave me the same horrible sensation.
I sat up in my bed and faced Sophie. She sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, pulled into a compact ball. She was staring wide-eyed at something beside me.
I followed her gaze, and ice gripped my heart. Ang lay next to me on the bed, where she’d fallen asleep, her face still as death. A small cry caught in my throat as I leaned over and pressed my ear to her chest, fragments of pleading prayers racing through my mind. I heard the slow and steady thump of her pulse in my ear, and a small puff of air escaped my lips. I closed my eyes against the flood of tears piling up behind them.
“I already tried to wake them up,” Sophie said. “They’re alive.” She dragged her eyes to Mason’s still form on the floor. “But they won’t wake up.” She pulled her arms tighter around her legs, shrinking away.
I fumbled around until my hand closed over my phone, and absently noticed it was very early in the morning. I dialed.
“Aunt Dorothy,” I said, my voice cracking. “You have to come over here. It’s Ang and Mason.”
* * *
Later, after Aunt Dorothy left and the medics came and strapped my two best friends to boards and transported them away to the hospital in Danton, I sobbed. Heaving breaths wracked my body, and I hardly recognized the shuddering voice that accompanied each new wave of tears. I doubled over on my bed, unsure if I’d ever get up again.
After several minutes, some of the grief and guilt had worked itself out of me. Enough that I could dry my face, blow my nose, and dress myself. Aunt Dorothy was expecting me.
Sophie had driven home to get dressed. When she came back to pick me up, her puffy eyes and tear-streaked face told me she’d worked through her own little breakdown, too.
“We’re going to figure this out, Corinne. They’ll be okay,” she said. I must have looked pretty bad, too, if she was trying to reassure me. But there was no way to know that our friends would be okay.
I closed my eyes, and the images of my two best friends’ parents decided to haunt me. All four of them had arrived at nearly the same time, just a moment after the ambulances. Pure panicked grief stretched their faces into masks that hardly resembled the people I’d known for so many years.
Mason’s mother had let out a strangled cry and fallen into her husband’s arms. An inexplicable flash of anger whipped through me as I looked at her. Mason had practically raised himself, but now, in this moment, his parents showed up.
At Aunt Dorothy’s suggestion, I’d used the influences to help dampen the emotions of all four parents, and plant the thought that their children had probably caught something at the hospital and their comatose states were similar to symptoms of some of the others. My great-aunt managed to soothe them a bit more the old-fashioned way: soft, reassuring words. I’d never seen her so gentle, in fact.
I knew that when they got to the hospital, my friends would be diagnosed with the same mystery illness as the others. I wanted nothing more than to be with them right now, but Aunt Dorothy had convinced me that I needed to stay here and figure out what to do. So as my friends were strapped up and carried away, I frantically tried to bathe their bodies in white influence. But every time the thick layer of Harriet’s influence began to peel away a bit, it snapped back into place like a rubber band. All I could do was try to saturate them with white influence. Maybe it would just take some time. It could help them later, if I could just give them enough . . .
Sophie cleverly devised a one-Guardian net that she wrapped around each of them, a protective shroud.
I glanced over at her as we pulled into Aunt Dorothy’s driveway.
“How come Harriet didn’t get you?” I asked.
Sophie twisted the key and the Honda’s engine died. She looked at a spot on the floor near my feet. “I don’t know. She tried. Maybe because she’d taken me before, some part of my brain recognized what was happening so I could react.”
“But you shouldn’t have been able to resist her influences,” I said. “I mean, no one is really immune to them, not even me.” I thought back to what Sophie had done in my room. Guardians weren’t even supposed to be able to cast a free-standing net alone. What else could she do that I didn’t know about?
When she raised her eyes to meet mine, my eyebrows shot up. She could have bored through concrete with that expression. “I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt me,” she said, her voice deadly calm.
For the first time that day, I started to feel the faintest spark of something that possibly, with a little more encouragement, could become hope. As badly as I wanted my friends back, at least I had Sophie. And of the four of us, Sophie was the natural-born fighter.
We found my great-aunt and Mr. Sykes in the kitchen, sipping from steaming mugs. I poured tea for myself and Sophie. It seemed ridiculous to be standing around drinking tea at a time like this, but the warm liquid soothed me. I wrapped both hands around the mug, absorbing the heat.
“I have to find Harriet,” I said. “I tried to find her thread once, but it didn’t work.” I looked back and for
th between Aunt Dorothy and Mr. Sykes.
“Ah.” Mr. Sykes set down his mug. “That is probably because you do not know her true nature.”
I considered it for a moment. “I guess I don’t. When I tried, I was picturing the evil, snake-eyed Harriet who wants to suck the life out of me. But she wasn’t born that person. I don’t know who she really is, though. And I wouldn’t know how to figure it out.”
“No, you must confront her in this realm,” said Aunt Dorothy.
She was right. I’d done everything I could to avoid it, and hoped that Harriet didn’t have the strength or nerve to do any more damage. Brad and the others getting sick was horrible, but at least I’d been able to help them. Now, Harriet had Angeline and Mason in her clutches and seemingly beyond my ability to do anything for them. Reacting to her destruction and hoping for the best wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
“Well, she has to stay around here, right? Because she needs to be close to the convergence,” I said. I looked at Sophie. “I’m going to need your help.”
|| 30 ||
FINDING HARRIET’S ADDRESS TURNED OUT to be ridiculously simple. It was right there in the local phone book. Sophie went home so she could shower, change clothes, and grab something to eat. A couple of hours later, she returned and drove us to a small neighborhood on the other side of the marina and parked half a block away from a gray cottage with white trim and a tiny, neat front lawn. We regarded it in the peaceful light of the afternoon.
“That’s her lair, huh?” Sophie’s eyes narrowed.
“Let’s go check the shop, and if she’s not there we’ll come back here when it’s dark,” I said.
Sophie parked on Main Street near Harriet’s apothecary shop. Down the street, we saw a group of Tapestry High kids herd into the café. Andy Jones’s head bobbed above the rest.
“Soo, things didn’t work out with Andy, huh?” I said. I raised an eyebrow at Sophie and almost grinned.