Pyxis: The Discovery (Pyxis Series) (3 page)

He lowered his eyes to the vicinity of my chin, then met my gaze with a tiny shrug.

“Oh … well, thanks,” I said, feeling lame. It was all I could do to stand there act like this was just a normal event in the course the life of Corinne Finley. I felt like I’d entered some alternate universe.

He bent down and kissed me. I could taste marshmallow on his lips. And, it was okay. I mean, Andy didn’t fumble or burp or try to jam his tongue down my throat or anything, but it felt nothing like it had with Mason.

We walked back to the beach and sat on the sand against one of the logs. A few other couples huddled up against the chilly air. Ang stood in a little circle with some girls, but her eyes followed Toby Ellison’s every move.

With Andy’s arm slung around my shoulders, we watched the fire, and I zoned out on the glow, trying to decide if I really could forget about Mason.

My phone buzzed with a text from Ang:
Ready to go?

I glanced toward Ang’s group and noticed Toby was gone. I suppressed a grin. No Toby, and Ang was suddenly ready to split.

I stood up and said a quick goodbye to Andy—I didn’t want him trying to kiss me in front of everybody—and met Ang at the table where we’d left our bags. She waited until we were picking our way up the dirt road in the dark before beginning her barrage.

“So? Did he kiss you? Did you make out? Do you like him?”

I laughed. “A little.”

“A little which? C’mon, I’m your best friend!” she wailed.

“A little … all of it,” I said, and then sighed. “It was okay. I mean, it was fun. But not, not like…” Not like Mason
.

“Oh. Yeah.”

We walked the rest of the way to the car in silence.

“Want to hear something weird?” Ang asked as she pulled onto the highway. “I swear there were a bunch of guys watching you all night. Like, really watching your every move.”

“Really? You make it sound seriously creepy. “Who?”

She named six different guys, including Jordan. A senior, three sophomores, and two juniors. I frowned and ran over the list of names in my head. They didn’t seem to have anything in common with each other, or with me for that matter, and yet … I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew something was there.

Ang dropped me off at ten until midnight. I tiptoed downstairs to my room, peeled off my smoky clothes, and pulled on boxer shorts and a t-shirt. I went online to see who’d posted pics from the cove, but there wasn’t much to look at. By the time I climbed into bed, it was well past midnight, and Bradley still wasn’t home. Typical.

Just as I began to drift into unconsciousness, my eyes popped open. I suddenly realized all the guys Ang named had been my bake sale customers. I was almost positive they’d all bought blue-frosted petits fours from me.

|| 4 ||

I LAY AWAKE FOR another half hour, going over the list of guys again and again, but couldn’t think of any
good
reason why they’d be connected or suddenly interested in me.

When my tired eyes finally closed, my dead grandmother stood before me. She held a glass bottle of white liquid, and pushed it at me.

“You must give this to Aunt Dorothy,” Grandma Doris said. Her blue eyes looked strained with urgency. “Corinne, focus.”

“Grandma Doris.” I felt a lump form in my throat. “I miss you so much. I—”

“There’s no
time
for that, dear. Listen to me. You must remember. Give Aunt Dorothy some of the liquid from this bottle.”

“But Aunt Dorothy is…” I tried to remember. There was something wrong with my Great-Aunt Dorothy, Grandma Doris’s twin sister, but I couldn’t quite remember what it was. “She’s gone … or sick. I don’t understand what you want me to do!”

“In the
pyxis
. The box.” Grandma Doris spoke slowly and clearly. “Get the white bottle. Aunt Dorothy needs some of the liquid in the white bottle. Now repeat it back to me.”

“The white bottle,” I said obediently. “I need to give the white liquid to Aunt Dorothy. But Grandma Doris, I—”

But even as I spoke, Grandma Doris faded, and the cove materialized before me. The bonfire blazed high into the night, but I stood alone on the beach. Twilight rainbows of every color raced across the sky, one after the other. The effect was dizzying.

A low rumbling echoed off the mountains, and trying to locate the source of the sound, I turned toward the lake. My breath caught at the sight of a dense, dirty-looking wall of fog billowing over the water toward me at an alarming speed. Panic surged through my veins as I imagined the fog overtaking me, filling my nose and ears, creeping into my lungs, soaking into my blood, and eating me from the inside out.

My heart pounding in my ears, I whipped around, desperate for some way to protect myself. I turned to the bonfire, thinking the heat of the flames might stave off the fog. But the fire ring was dark, and Mason stood in the center of it.

“Mason? When did you get back to—” I started to ask, but he grabbed my shoulder and pushed me behind him, shielding me with his body.

He held me with one arm and lifted the other arm, palm out. A burst of blue-white light swelled out from Mason’s hand, and for a second, I could make out the silhouette of a person in the fog before I squeezed my eyes shut against the painful intensity of the light. When I opened them, after-images bounced around in my vision. Both the fog and Mason were gone.

I tried to sit up in bed, groggy and struggling against the sheets twisted around me. I untangled myself and groped around for my pillow, which I’d pushed onto the floor. Nestled back in bed, I took a deep breath, and blew out slowly.

I knew it was just a dream, but it clung to me. My mouth felt gritty, as if I’d tasted the sooty fog, and the smell of Mason’s shampoo filled my nose.

There was something from my dreams I wanted to remember. Grandma Doris. What was it? Something about Aunt Dorothy. I closed my eyes, trying to force the memory back to the forefront of my mind, but it was no use.

I reached for my jacket, which was hanging on the back of my desk chair next to the bed, and pulled out the pinecone I’d picked up at the cove. I cupped it in my palms and inhaled its woody, resinous smell, and some of the tension melted from my body. Curled into a ball, with my blankets pulled tight around me, I stared at the window and waited for the gray light of daybreak.

* * *

When I woke up, my head felt like a balloon stuffed with dirty cotton balls. Still in my t-shirt and boxers, I sat on my bed against a wall of pillows and fired up my laptop. I wanted to check for updates about the bonfire last night, to see if anyone had said anything about me and Andy or posted any pictures. I browsed for several minutes and didn’t find anything of interest, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t messaged Mason. For all I knew, he might already think Andy and I were a couple.

I logged into my e-mail account, and saw a new message from Mason.

Hey Corinne, The project is going to finish ahead of schedule, so we’ll be coming home soon. I really wish you’d write back. I miss you. Mason

P.S. Had a strange dream about you last night. We were at the cove, but it was like something out of a Stephen King book.

No mention of me and Andy, but … Mason had had a dream about me and the cove? The image of him warding off the fog flashed through my mind, and a crawly sensation slithered up the back of my neck. He knew everyone would be hanging out at the cove this weekend, and that’s probably why he had a dream about it. It
had
to be coincidence.

He’d attached a photo of him and his family. I opened it and leaned closer to the screen. The Flints had spent the past few months in Africa, helping build wells for small villages. In the photo, it looked like they were standing in front of one of the wells they’d built. In the picture, he was nearly as tall as his dad. Up until a couple of years ago, Mason and I had always been about the same height. His face looked more angular than I remembered, too. He looked so much older than how I always pictured him. I wondered if I’d look different to him, too.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Mason coming back to Tapestry. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to think about it, actually.

I logged out of my email and went back to surfing for updates from Tapestry High students. Sophie’s profile featured a pic of herself draped over Hunter Smith, her current victim/boyfriend. I browsed the profiles of the guys Ang had listed last night.

I grabbed my phone and typed a text to Ang:
I remembered something last nite. All those guys u said were staring at me bought blue cakes at the bake sale. ???

Her response came a few seconds later:
Seriously? So weird! What did u put in those cakes anyway?

Ang was onto something; I actually had put something different in the petits fours.

My hands shook a little as I wrote back:
u have to come over here asap!

|| 5 ||

ANG AND I STARED at the wooden box in silence. The corners were worn and varnished, and dents and scratches betrayed rough handling. A swirly design with
PYXIS
engraved in old-fashioned, capital letters was embossed on the top. It looked harmless enough. But neither of us was especially eager to touch it.

“So, this was your grandmother’s?” Ang said, squinting at the box.

“Yeah, it was in a box with my name on it. There were two sheet-cake pans in there, too.”

The last cake we’d baked together was for my dad’s birthday. Coconut. Tears blurred my vision, and I took a deep breath and dug in my hoodie pocket for a tissue. Ang laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder while I dabbed at the corners of my eyes.

“Okay, I can’t take the suspense,” she said after a moment. She clasped her hands together at her chest. “Open it!”

I stepped forward and tipped back the lid. Six glass bottles filled the interior, each containing a deeply pigmented liquid. The age-clouded glass bottles had round, bulbous bases with skinny necks about an inch long, and snug-fitting glass stoppers were lodged in the tops. I’d discovered that the necks were designed to dispense only a drop of liquid at a time. The liquid was viscous, thicker than water but not quite as thick as pancake syrup.

“Ohh,” Ang whispered, as if the box held beautiful jewels. She stepped forward for a closer look.

I pulled out two bottles, one that contained liquid so inky-blue it was almost black, and one filled with a cloudy, opaque, yellow-orange solution the color of pollen. I set them on the counter, and we regarded them for a couple of seconds.

“I used these two to color the frosting. I just assumed they were homemade food dyes because they were with the cake pans.” I hesitated. That vague crawly feeling slithered over my scalp. “But I don’t remember my grandmother ever using them. I helped her bake all the time, and I’m sure we used food colorings. But not these ones.”

I looked over at Ang. Her eyes were so wide I could see the whites all the way around her green irises.

“Maybe … maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to use these,” I said.

“What do you think that word on the box means? Pyxis?”

“I don’t know. Let me get my laptop.” I hurried to the other end of the basement and into my room.

Ang made space on the counter, and I set my laptop next to the wooden box, powered it up, and did a search. “Um … it’s the name of some constellation.”

Ang frowned.

I went back to the search page and clicked a different link.

“Oh wait!” I said excitedly. “Another definition says it was an ancient Greek word for a box used to hold medicine.”

“Huh,” Ang said. “You think those are medicines?”

I shrugged.

I was tempted to ask my mom about the bottles. As a nurse, she might know something about what they were. But I was afraid she’d get too curious or want to take the box away. Or get really mad that I put mysterious substances into my petits fours. Mom was working late at the clinic in Danton, anyway. I probably wouldn’t see her until after my Saturday shift.

“I wish Grandma Doris was here. I bet she’d be able to tell us everything.”

My grandmother had passed away just six months before. She was no spring chicken, but she’d been in excellent health for her age, and her mind was sharp as a paring knife. The official cause of her death was a stroke. I knew things like that could happen suddenly to old people, but it just didn’t seem right that I could have been baking peach pies with her on Sunday afternoon, and Monday morning, she was gone.

“Your Great Aunt Dorothy wouldn’t be any help, right?” Ang asked.

I shook my head. “Not if she’s in the same condition she was in last time I saw her. She didn’t even know we were there.”

When Grandma Doris had her stroke, Dorothy had to be hospitalized, too. The doctors thought she’d probably suffered a stroke, like my grandmother. Maybe it was one of those weird twin things. Whatever it was, Dorothy never recovered, and my dad moved her into a retirement home in Danton.

“Well, maybe something will come to you. I gotta get the car back home, but I’ll text you later.” Ang gave me a hug and then left.

I sat down on the sofa with my laptop and did a search on my grandmother’s name. One of the first links was the official website for the town of Tapestry. It listed my grandmother as a founding member of the Tapestry Lake Conservation Society. I idly clicked some of the links for tourist information and the history of the town, looking for anything more about her or her twin sister.

When I got to a section about the McClintock murders in 1915, I tried to force my eyes past it, but curiosity got the best of me.

The year 1915 is a dark one in Tapestry’s past. On December 21
^st
, the night of the Winter Solstice, James McClintock, his wife Mary, and their four young children, Charles, Patrick, Rose, and Paul, were murdered in their home. The killer was never caught.

What the website didn’t say, but what every local knew, was that the massacre wasn’t the only memorable thing that happened in Tapestry in 1915. The local bank was robbed. Two churches burned down and a couple of people died in the fires. And a mysterious, typhoid-like illness killed several young children. The McClintock murders were like the grand finale to a string of horrible events that year.