Pyxis: The Discovery (Pyxis Series) by K.C. Neal Read Free Book Online Page A

Ang and sighed. “Seriously, he’s started breaking curfew, like, weekly, and never gets punished. It’s gotten to the point Mom lets him do whatever he wants. Dad’s not quite as bad, but he’s at the café all the time and doesn’t know half the stuff Bradley does.”
    “Well … I’m sure it’s hard, you know, when your kid almost dies.” She was going into Diplomatic Angeline mode, trying to be on my side, but at the same time letting me know that I was being a tiny bit unreasonable. She was pretty good at treading that line, actually. It was one of the things that made her such a great friend.
    “That was years ago.” I scrunched my mouth to one side. I really didn’t enjoy revisiting this stuff. I hated the whiney sound in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. “But it’s like … Mom just never went back to normal. Ever since Brad had cancer, it’s like he can do no wrong. And the fact that he got stuck in my grade just, I don’t know, rubs my face in it even more.”
    After Bradley went into remission, he started eighth grade over. And he had a strange sort of celebrity status. He already knew everyone in ninth grade, of course, but then he became friends with everyone in eighth grade— my class. I felt guilty for even thinking it, but it was like he came back to school and took over my territory.
    “But whatever,” I said, and shrugged. “It’s not like I can do anything about it. And I am glad he’s okay, even if he is a turd.”
    “Maybe you should give Brad one of the cookies,” Ang said, and giggled.
    I raised my eyebrows. “Or my parents.”
    We both busted up at the thought of my parents acting crazy because of some cookies. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe if we figured out what all those colored liquids did, there would be something in there to make my family go back to normal, like we were before Brad got sick.
    “We should probably stick with our original plan,” Ang said, still giggling.
    We measured and mixed ingredients in three different bowls. I let one drop of yellow fall into one bowl, and one drop of blue into another. The third bowl didn’t get any pyxis liquids because we wanted to have some regular cookies as controls in our experiment. Ang’s idea, of course.
    When they came out of the oven, we transferred them to three separate racks, careful not to let cookies from different batches even come close to touching each other. Once they’d cooled, we packaged them into three plastic storage containers, and I stashed them in my school bag.
    After school tomorrow, we’d choose our victims.

|| 10 ||
     
    THE NEXT DAY, MONDAY, Ang and I walked together from school to the café.
    “Poor, unsuspecting people,” Ang was saying. “They’re going to come in for coffee, but little do they know, they’ll get magic spell cookies.”
    “We don’t have to do this,” I said. I hoped she wouldn’t agree. I was dying to do this experiment.
    “No, I think we do.” Ang looked a little worried, but her voice was firm. “And at some point, we’ll have to figure out what the rest of those bottles do, too.”
    “I just hope it’s worth it, you know? It’s driving me crazy. I hardly think about anything besides the pyxis, and my dreams, and…” I almost added Harriet to the list, but I didn’t want to sound completely paranoid.
    The night before, I’d stayed up until nearly two in the morning with my laptop, scouring the internet for info about the bottles and Harriet Jensen. I’d even started Googling things like “blue liquid,” “yellow liquid,” and pictures of old bottles, hoping to find something . A couple of times I arrived back at the website with the morphing color blobs, and I’d spent several minutes methodically clicking on every inch of the page. I thought maybe there was a hidden button that would get me into the website.
    Last night, I also had an email from Mason.
    I’d really like to know why you’re asking such a strange question. No,