Read Alight The Peril for Free Online Page B

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.

|| 6 ||
    THE NEXT EVENING AFTER DINNER, Mason tried to help me with my thought-blocking. We sat cross-legged on the floor of his tree house, facing each other. This time, I imagined my thoughts