|| 21 ||

I SPENT THE REST of the night searching for Harriet’s thread. I focused with feverish intensity on the image of her face in my mind, her pale green eyes and rasping, chill-inducing laugh. The smell of her apothecary shop. Surely, if Zane had warned me to be careful in the sea of strands, that meant they were prone to damage of some sort. I wanted to find Harriet’s and then. . . . What? Pull it until it stretched and broke free? Well, sure. Why not?

But my efforts yielded nothing. My feet failed to leave the sand. Finally, out of frustration, I woke up. Why hadn’t it worked?

A question began somewhere deep in my mind, and rose slowly, like a bubble released from the seafloor.

“Oh, duh!” I slapped my forehead. If we could just go into the hypercosmic realm and yank threads, why hadn’t Harriet done that to us already? Clearly there was some piece of this I was missing. I needed to talk to Zane. And if for some reason I couldn’t confront her in the hypercosmic realm, I’d just have to march down Main Street and find her the old-fashioned way.

I slept past my alarm the next morning and woke to my phone ringing. It was my dad, ready to drive to Danton. I quickly got dressed, brushed my teeth, and pulled my hair back into a ponytail.

Dad pulled up in the van, and we rode in companionable silence for most of the way. When we parked in the visitor lot at the hospital, I felt for the shape of the small vial through the thin fabric of my bag.

When we got to Brad’s room, Mom hugged Dad and then me, and I looked over her shoulder at my brother. Pale skin and dark circles under his eyes made him ghostly, and my heart ached for him. Dad said hello to Bradley, ruffling his hair like my brother was five years old, and made small talk for a few minutes. Then my parents pulled two chairs close together and talked with their heads bent toward each other. My gaze lit on the pitcher of water and plastic cup on the other side of Brad’s bed.

“How are you feeling?” I said, my voice low. I glanced at my parents, then slipped the glass vial from my bag.

“Been better. But you’re going to help me, right?” he said. I tried to hide my surprise. His eyes followed my hands as I pulled the lid from his water pitcher and quickly squeezed three droppers full of tincture into it.

“Aunt Dorothy helped me make this. Natural remedy. We figured it couldn’t hurt,” I said. I tucked the bottle back into my bag, then filled up his cup from the pitcher. “So how did you know I could help?”

The shadow of a mischievous smile crossed his face, and for a moment, he looked like the Bradley I always pictured in my mind. “I had a dream about Grandma Doris,” he said.

“Ah. I’ve had dreams about her, too. Really vivid ones.” I watched Bradley out of the corner of my eye for any sign that he suspected his dream was something more. But he just settled back against the pillows. I gestured to his cup. “Drink some, will ya? I need to go find Toby Ellison, but I’ll be back.”

I used the barest wash of green influence on my parents, told them I’d return in a few minutes, and walked out of Brad’s room to the nurse’s station. I told the nurse at the desk I was Toby’s stepsister, and pushed a bit of orange and green at her for good measure, and she pointed me toward Toby’s room.

I knocked on the door. “Toby? It’s Corinne Finley. I just wanted to say hi.”

“Come on in,” he called.

I stepped into Toby’s room and quickly scanned his body. An ugly mass like Brad’s was lodged at the base of the right lobe of his lungs. It seemed to be pressing against some other organ I couldn’t name. I made a mental note to look up some basic anatomy later.

I smiled. “I’m here visiting my brother. I told Angeline I’d check on you. How are you?”

“Better now that my fever is down.” He tried to look brave, but his eyelids drooped closed every few seconds. “I haven’t spent this much time in a hospital since I was a little kid.”

“Oh?” I said. “Were you sick a lot?”

“Yeah, I used to get pretty severe asthma. Really freaked out my parents. I still have attacks sometimes, but it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be.”

His lungs were his weak area.

“How’s Angeline?” he asked, his eyes lighting a little.

“Worried about you, but okay. She misses you a lot.”

“Tell her I miss her, too, and I hope she stays well.” His expression shifted from warm to troubled. “Seems like lots of people from our class are getting sick lately.”

I nodded, and pushed a small vortex of green at him, and his face relaxed into passivity.

“Where are your parents?” I asked. If possible, I hoped to avoid surprise interruptions while I was dropping murky green liquid into Toby’s water.

“Eating in the cafeteria.”

I chattered about school and Ang while I filled his water pitcher from the sink, dropped tincture into it, and then poured him a cup full and watched him drink.

“Hope you feel better soon, Toby,” I said, and I closed the door softly behind me.

When I turned, I spotted Genevieve and Hannah’s mothers down the hallway. One of them dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. My heart dipped. Sophie’s friends must have gotten worse.

I found each girl’s room and repeated the whole routine I’d just done with Toby. I had to use the influences on Genevieve’s mom and Hannah’s older sister, but I was able to deposit the rest of the tincture in the girls’ water pitchers. Hannah’s lower abdomen seemed to be affected, and I wondered if the location had to do with her multiple food allergies. Genevieve was different. Small pieces of the ugly black substance seemed to be lodged along her spine. I didn’t know anything about her health history, so I couldn’t guess why.

When I returned to Brad’s room, I found my brother asleep and my parents reviewing some bills at the small table in the corner.

“Just a few more minutes and we’ll take off,” Dad said to me, and then he bent over the papers again.

I mentally scanned my brother’s torso, hoping to find the tincture already had some effect. The mass definitely seemed smaller, and possibly less resistant. I probed it a little, and Brad stirred but didn’t wake. Maybe at my next visit, I’d be able to use the influences to shrink it more. If nothing else, I’d refill the glass vial from Aunt Dorothy’s jar and bring more tincture with me.

A deep, unexpected exhaustion overtook me on the way back to Tapestry, and I slept so soundly it took me a moment to recognize my surroundings when Dad pulled into our driveway. I was grateful for the rest because I planned to spend part of the night checking on Mason, Ang, and Sophie in the hypercosmic realm, and the other part trying to track down Zane. I wanted his take on my plan. It was time to stop Harriet.