|| 5 ||

I ROLLED MY EYES and shook my head slowly. “Of course I am. This just keeps getting better.” I let out the most annoyed sigh I could muster. Then I composed myself and looked Aunt Dorothy right in the eyes. “Okay, so tell me how I’m going to lure Sophie over here.”

Aunt Dorothy nodded, and I realized she’d allowed me the last several minutes to get my mini tantrum out of my system. “This would be an appropriate time to use the influences.”

I perked up at the thought of using the pyxis influences on Sophie. At least I had that over her. I sipped my lemonade.

This wasn’t exactly how I had seen it going, but I knew with a certainty so deep it scared me that we needed to complete my pyramidal union. Since I’d linked with Mason, I’d been living with a sensation of absence and waiting, a constant nagging, itchy feeling at the back of my mind. I suspected it would dissipate as soon as I linked with my two Guardians. . . . Weird. I couldn’t remember at what point I’d started thinking of the Guardians as mine. But there it was. A distinct sense of possession. I wondered how Sophie would feel if she knew.

Sophie aside, I understood we needed to get moving.

“So, I can use any of the influences to get Sophie here?”

“Yes, at appropriate strengths, of course,” she said.

“Okay. How about if I try to get Ang and Sophie to come over on Saturday?” I looked at Mason to see if he agreed with the arrangement, and he nodded.

“Excellent,” she said. “Then the Guardians can perform their rite.”

My heart sank a few inches in my chest.

* * *

When I got home, I called Angeline and told her we’d both be brain-buddies with Sophie.

“Wait, I so did not sign up for this, Corinne!” Ang said it as though I had some say in the situation.

I groaned and lay back on my bed, my legs dangling over the side. “I know. Believe me, I couldn’t be less thrilled about this development.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. Run away to the mountains? Learn to live off the land?”

Ang sighed. “We could, but there aren’t any Skittles or egg salad sandwiches in the wilderness. And you know how I feel about going more than twenty-four hours without showering. That’s just gross.”

I groaned again. “We have to suck it up. This is the way things are.”

“How do you think she’s going to react?”

“Not well, I’m sure. But I get to use the influences on her.”

Ang giggled. “Can I be there when you do?”

“Of course. I definitely want a witness to that moment.”

“We’re going to be . . . stuck with each other.” The amusement evaporated from Ang’s voice. “I don’t know if I can deal with this. I mean, it’s not even that it’s Sophie. It’s the whole idea, being linked to someone that way forever. I feel way too young to have something this huge happening to me, you know?”

Anxiety stirred through my chest. “I know. Sometimes I feel like if I think about it too much my brain will start whirling like a Tasmanian devil, and then just . . . explode, or something.” I sat up and scooted over so I could rest my back against the wall. “But it’s not like no one’s ever been through this. Maybe we should ask Aunt Dorothy what it’s like. I mean, what it’s really like to be in this situation.”

“Yeah,” Ang’s voice brightened. “I’d like to hear her story anyway.”

I squinted, trying to imagine my grandmother and great-aunt as teenagers, new to their pyramidal union. I shook my head. “So, topic change,” I said. “What’s new in the Angeloby department?”

“Toby is sooo sweet, Corinne!” Ang’s voice took on a cooing tone that made me want to laugh and make barfing noises. “He came by and surprised me last night and took me for ice cream.”

“Aw, did you get a banana split and share it with two spoons?” I teased.

“Actually, yeah, that’s exactly what we did,” she said, and we both laughed.

Ang described the extreme adorableness of the flop of hair across his forehead, and how they’d made out in Toby’s car for, like, twenty minutes. When she’d run out of Toby anecdotes, we said goodnight and hung up.

Mason came over late that night when I couldn’t sleep and tried to cheer me up with stories from his time in Africa. I laughed in the right places, but couldn’t help thinking about how Ang and Sophie would have the same kind of link I had with Mason. There was something so intimate about being in syndesmo with someone else. With Ang getting involved with Toby and now she’d have such a close connection with Sophie . . . would I get squeezed over to the sidelines of her life? The larger part of me knew that was irrational, but I couldn’t help the anxious little twinges every time I thought of my best friend.

“You want to talk about Sophie at all?” Mason asked after I’d hardly reacted to his story about his dad losing his watch down one of the wells they’d built.

“Not really,” I said. “Sorry I’m such a buzz kill right now.”

“I don’t blame you. It sucks.”

“I’m sorry about my general state of crankiness, too. I know I haven’t been much fun.”

“Well, life hasn’t exactly been a Disney vacation lately,” Mason said. “But I understand that better than anyone.”

I rested my head against the hollow just below his shoulder, his arm warm around my back, and his heartbeat thumping in my ear. My thoughts turned from Sophie to Mason. On the surface, he and I looked like any high school boyfriend and girlfriend, but still, something clouded the space between us. I remembered Mason’s angry words when I’d used the red influence on him. Maybe it was the Sophie thing? It occurred to me that we’d never officially acknowledged any boyfriend/girlfriend status. But I couldn’t think of a way to bring it up without sounding extremely lame.

It seemed crazy that anything could keep us from being as close and in love as two people could be, like Toby and Ang. Mason and I had years of friendship, hundreds of moments of shared history. Heck, we had a psychic link. And still this space, or hesitation, or whatever it was kept us from falling completely into each other. Maybe it just took time to switch from friends to boyfriend and girlfriend.

I yawned. Mason’s legs twitched a little, and I realized he’d fallen asleep. I let my eyelids close. After a moment, the world seemed to tilt, and my feet sank into sand. The cove.

My heart in my throat, I turned in a half circle, vigilant for signs of the fog. Tiny ripples of water lapped against the beach with a sound as soft as a mother’s whispered, “shhh, shhh.” The dark circle of the fire pit stood empty. I doubted I’d ever be able to hang out around the bonfire again without seeing Bradley in the flames, black fog puffing from his lips as he begged me for help.

Corinne, over here, Mason’s voice whispered through my mind.

Straining to see in the dark, I scanned the beach.

Where? I asked, just as a swatch of beautiful aqua light danced a slow twirl across the night sky. By the light of the twilight rainbow, I spotted Mason near a stand of Ponderosa pines about twenty feet to my right.

As I began walking toward him, the ground beneath my feet changed and softened. Instead of scuffing over fine grains of sand, I pushed my legs through six inches of fluffy, cotton candy-like material. To my right, Tapestry Lake shimmered like gossamer. I looked harder and realized a body of water no longer occupied the space. Instead, the reservoir held an undulating sea of tiny threads that seemed to have their own faint source of illumination.

“Mason?” I called, my voice cracking with apprehension. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s okay. Just keep walking toward me.”

With each step, the temperature dropped, and the air took on an almost solid quality, like cold metal against my skin. I drew a sharp breath, half expecting there’d be no air to pull in.

I finally reached Mason and stopped before him, my teeth chattering so hard I doubted I could form coherent words.

Is this a dream like last time? Echoes of my fear during the vision of my brother ricocheted through me.

Yeah, a dream, but real at the same time. But not like last time. His crooked smile reminded me of a little kid who’d been sneaking candy before dinner. He stepped toward me and pulled me to his chest, circling his arms around me. The scent of his soap wafted past. My chattering and shaking subsided to occasional shivers. Mason didn’t even have goose bumps. His breath made opaque white clouds in the frigid air.

Why is it so stinking cold?

I think I might be, um, doing this, Mason said.

What? I pulled back a little and looked up at him, but shadows obscured his eyes.

Watch.

I turned, pressing my ear into the warmth of his chest, and looked out at the mass of glowing strands that used to be Tapestry Lake. Twilight rainbows began streaking upward like fireworks.

Blue . . . red . . . yellow . . . purple . . . Mason named the colors before each one appeared.

What are you doing? How are you doing it?

I think this is my dream, and you just got drawn into it.

I shook my head. That’s just . . . wow. So if you can control what’s going on here, can you maybe make it less cold?

Yeah, I probably could, but. . . . His arms tightened around me, and a flush spread through my body in spite of the cold. Then his arms loosened a bit, and he leaned back and tilted his head toward mine. I looked into his hazel eyes, and then noticed something looming over his right shoulder.

“Main and Wild Rose,” I whispered. It was the street sign. The corner where Mason had kissed me last winter, before he left for Africa. “You’re recreating that night, Winter Solstice Fest?”

He shrugged one shoulder, his eyes shining in the pale light. “Good memory. It was before . . . well, everything.”

Before I gave him the silent treatment . . . the dreams . . . the pyxis.

His face inched toward mine, so slowly I thought he’d never close the gap between us. Then his lips finally met mine, and I melted against him. His fingers slid up the back of my neck and tangled in my hair.

With a snap that left every muscle in my body pinging, I woke in my bed. I pushed myself up to sitting just as Mason did the same. We stared at each other in the nearly dark room. His hand caught mine, and he twined our fingers together. He drew me toward him, and meeting me halfway across the coverlet, he kissed me. When he moved away, he stared earnestly into my eyes.

“The stuff that happened after winter solstice, when you thought I was with Sophie, when we didn’t talk for months. It changed something for me and you, and I hate that,” he said. “Can things be right between us, now?”

Could it be that simple? I nodded in the dark, and his arms enveloped me in warmth.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, for a moment absorbed in the glow of Mason’s nearness and the dream or hallucination or whatever it was that we’d shared. But the glow gave way to a knot of worry. It was up to me to get Sophie to agree to come to Aunt Dorothy’s. And even if I could get her there, I couldn’t imagine trying to explain the pyxis, the pyramidal union, and getting her to understand and take it seriously. Even with the power of the pyxis influences.

Brushing a c-shaped curl of hair from Mason’s forehead, I watched his still face. A second later the curl fell back exactly like it was.

I needed to practice with the influences some more before I tried them on Sophie, and I imagined my great-aunt would disapprove of practicing on unsuspecting people. That left Mason. Or maybe Ang. I pulled my knees up to my chest, curling myself around the ball of doubt and uncertainty growing within me.

Two months, Aunt Dorothy had said. We had two months before summer solstice to pull everything together.