Alight: The Peril by Neal K.C

Author:Neal, K.C. [Neal, K.C.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: StoneHouse Ink
Published: 2012-09-11T16:00:00+00:00

|| 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.

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