Em frowned, and her gaze fell. She was thinking. Really thinking. “She…Well, she bumped my elbow and made me spill water all over our lab table. But she did apologize. And clean it up.” Her frown deepened. “I do hate those burgers, though. And you…” Her eyes widened. “Oh, Kay, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of that. None of this is your fault. You did save my life, and I am lucky to have you as a friend. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I was just so mad.”
But that was only partially true. She’d meant everything she’d said. I could see that in her eyes. She did hate living in Lydia’s body, and on some level she did blame me for that. But the part that made the churning in my stomach ease a little was the fact that Emma—the Em I’d known most of my life—would never admit that. She would go to her grave trying to spare my feelings.
Whatever was wrong with her, it was wearing off.
Luca cleared his throat and pushed his empty tray toward the center of the table. “You know, considering how common it really is, death is actually a strange process. Inhabiting someone else’s body is even stranger. Maybe something about her death or her occupation of someone else’s body has thrown her emotions out of balance.”
Balance.
“Oh, no…” I stared at the table and that sick feeling in my stomach grew to encompass my chest, too.
“What?” Em looked worried now. Everyone else looked curious. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s about balance.” Luca had no idea how right he was. “Lydia was a syphon. And now you’re in her body.”
“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
