“Yeah. What exactly is a syphon?” Sophie said. “I was never very clear on that.”
“It’s a psychic predator. Like a mara,” Sabine said, but I shook my head.
“Kinda. But not really. The way Lydia explained it to me was that something inside her is very sensitive to imbalance of any kind. Pain. Stress. Anger.” I glanced at Em to drive home my point. “And when a syphon feels an imbalance in someone near her, her body has an instinctive need to impose balance, by taking what someone else has too much of, or giving what they have too little of.”
“That’s how she helped you?” Nash said. “At Lakeside?”
“Yeah.” Lydia and I had met as patients in the mental health ward. She’d saved my life. “I needed to wail for one of the patients—for his soul. But I didn’t know I was a bean sidhe, and I didn’t know how to control the need to scream, so trying to bottle it up hurt. A lot. Lydia could feel that, so she took some of my pain. Just enough so that I could manage what was left.”
Em frowned. She looked scared now. “And what, this syphon ability comes with the body?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. When Avari possessed Alec and Sabine, their abilities came with their bodies.”
Sabine scowled at the reminder that she’d been possessed. She hated knowing that she’d been out of control of her own body, even for a short while.
“Is that what I’m doing?” Em’s voice rode the thin edge of panic. “I’m possessing Lydia? Like a hellion? Or like a ghost? Because I’m still dead?”
“Shhh!” Evidently oblivious to Em’s latest trauma, Sophie glanced around to make sure no one else in the quad was listening.
“No!” I sounded surer than I really was. Thank goodness. “You’re not a ghost.” Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about anyone else hearing me.
“There are no ghosts,” Luca added.
“Maybe I’m the first.” Em’s eyes were open so wide I was afraid they’d pop right out of her skull. “Maybe that’s all a ghost is—a disembodied soul taking up residence where it doesn’t belong. And I don’t belong here. I wasn’t meant to be a syphon. I don’t want to be a syphon.”
“You belong here.” I turned her by both shoulders so that she faced me. So I could look right into her eyes. “You belong here with us, no matter what it takes to make that happen. Even inhabiting someone else’s body. And anyway, her body may not be what carries the syphon abilities. It could be that bit of Lydia’s soul that got stuck in there with you.”
“That bit of her what?” Em slapped her own sternum with one hand. “There’s part of Lydia’s soul still in here?” she hissed. “When were you planning to tell me that?”
“Sorry.” I shrugged and tried to look as guilty as I felt. Which was a lot. “I’ve been kind of preoccupied with the police investigation into your death, and the funeral plans, and figuring out where you were going to live, and how to get you back into school. The soul thing just kind of slipped my mind.”
“It’s not that bad, Em,” Nash said, when nothing I’d said seemed to be helping. “Lydia was syphoning some of your pain when you died, and when Kaylee captured your soul, she got part of Lydia’s, too.”
“What happened to the rest of it?”
I took a deep breath. There was no good way to say the next part. “It kind of…”
“Got disintegrated,” Sabine finished, when I held on to the thought for too long. “Poof. Dissipated throughout all four corners of both the human- and the Netherworld, for as long as it takes to coalesce again.”
“Wait. Her soul will coalesce?”
Luca nodded. “From what my aunt’s told me—” his aunt Madeline was my boss at the reclamation department “—it will slowly pull itself back together. Until then…it’s like being in limbo. Floating. We don’t think that it hurts. We don’t think they’re even aware, when that happens.”
“So…Lydia will be back when her soul…congeals, or whatever?” Emma was breathing too fast now, and her face was turning red. “Is it reasonable to assume she’s going to want her body back when that happens? Are we going to have to share?” Her hands gripped the picnic table so tightly her fingers looked like they might snap. “Or is she just going to throw me out? Am I going to be a homeless ghost, Kaylee?”
“Em, it could be centuries before that happens. That’s not on the list of things we need to worry about immediately.”
“It could be centuries? So it might not be?”
“Okay, we need to focus on the positives.” Sophie laid both of her palms flat on the table. “That’s what we do in dance, when we place second. We don’t think about how second place is the first loser. We think about how many other teams we stomped into the dirt and how hard they’re probably crying.” She shrugged. “That always makes me feel better.”
For a moment, there was only silence while we stared at her. Even Luca looked a little…disturbed. But Sabine only shrugged. “Makes sense to me. And the positive side of this, if you ask me, is that now that you know what you are, you can learn how to control your abilities. Trust me, a little control makes all the difference.”
“I can control it?” Em looked almost hopeful.
I nodded. “Lydia could.” To some degree, anyway. “So, here’s what we know. What I think, anyway. At the funeral, you were fine when you were with us, because we knew you weren’t dead, so we weren’t as upset as the other mourners. But when your mom came over, you lost it because she was devastated by grief, and you took some of that from her. You calmed her down, at the expense of your own composure.”
“Okay…” Nash looked fascinated. “So, yesterday when you got all badass and hell-bent on revenge, you were probably taking a little of that from Kaylee. She’s been itching to make Avari pay since the day you died.”
Since before that. Since the day Avari tricked me into killing Alec. That’s when I’d started channeling my pain into anger—a much more useful emotion.
Luca frowned. “So then, whose anger was she syphoning today? Somebody must have been really pissed off, if the portion she took was strong enough to make her go off on you like that.”
Oh, shit. I hadn’t even thought about that. Em’s rage had a source, and considering how many hellions were known to frequent the Netherworld version of our school, chances were good that that anger wasn’t human in origin. Which meant that someone at Eastlake could be about to lose control.
Again.
5
“Where are you going?” Nash said when I stood, already pulling my phone from my pocket.
“To find whoever sent Em into anger overdrive before he explodes in someone’s face.” More violence was the last thing we needed at America’s most dangerous high school. Of its size. “You had chemistry before lunch, right?” I said, trying to remember her new schedule, and Em nodded. “Whose class?”
“Mr. Flannery.”
“Did anyone look angry in your chem class? Anyone lose his or her temper?”
Em shook her head. “Only me.”
“That just means that whoever it was did a good job of hiding his anger.” Which meant those around him would be completely unprepared when and if he snapped. “I gotta get a look at Mr. Flannery’s roll book before lunch is over. I’ll see you guys later.”
Before anyone could object, I