Soul Screamers Volume Four: With All My Soul\Fearless\Niederwald\Last Request: 4 (7 page)

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I couldn’t think past my shock and the sting of her words. I’d never seen her so angry.

And I was
not
androgynous!

“Sabine?” Nash looked as confused as the rest of us. “Are you doing this?” He couldn’t be more specific without risking clueing Sophie in on the fact that Sabine was intentionally manipulating fears. Again.

“It’s not me.” The
mara
looked like she wanted to say more. “I can only mess with fear, and she doesn’t have any right now.
None.
This tastes like anger to me.”

“
No
fear?” I said, and Sabine shook her head.

No fear of not fitting in? Of standing out for all the wrong reasons? Of having bombed the math placement test? Of being sucked back into the Netherworld by the hellion who’d already killed her once? I’d never met anyone who had
no
fear.

“You bet your ass it’s anger.” Emma shoved her chemistry text into her bag. “What the hell do I have to be afraid of? I
should
be pissed off to be stuck in a second-rate body, in this stupid-ass school, without my own clothes, and my stuff, and my car. Whose brilliant idea was this, anyway? Yours?” The depth of anger in her gaze stunned me. And scared me a little. “Sounds like something you’d do. Another pathetic attempt to help that only makes shit worse.”

“Back off, Em.” Sabine stood, both palms planted firmly on the table. “This is the only warning you get. Kaylee may be skinny, and naive, and clueless more often than not, and borderline adulterous, but you’re
lucky
to have her as a friend. She saved your life.”

“Part of it, anyway,” Em mumbled. But she seemed a little calmer.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear Sabine just came to my defense. Sort of. “I’m not adulterous,” I said, for the record.

Sabine shrugged, still frowning at Em like she’d hardly heard me. “I said ‘borderline.’”

Nash put a hand on Sabine’s arm, and she sat. Reluctantly. Less than mollified by Em’s response. “Something’s wrong with her.”

“Yeah.” Emma huffed. “I just rattled off a whole
list
of what’s wrong with me.”

“Emotionally, she’s been kinda all over the place for the past two days,” I added, still reeling from her outburst.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Em demanded.

“You cried at the funeral.”

“Lots of people cry at funerals,” Luca pointed out, and when he said it aloud, it sounded perfectly reasonable. But it
wasn’t
reasonable, even if I couldn’t explain why.

“She was fine one minute, assessing the funeral she’d planned for herself. Then she was bawling and clinging to her mom.”

“Well, yeah. Her mom was crying.” Nash stuck a fry upright in a pool of ketchup, but it fell over. “Crying moms are contagious.”

But it was more than that... “Then, that afternoon, she got all angry and determined to dish out vengeance to Invidia, and that kind of came out of nowhere, too....”

“That wasn’t out of nowhere,” Sabine said around a bite of her burger. She swallowed, then continued, “You were feeling the vengeance, too, Kay. We
all
were.”

Yeah. And Em caught it from us—like it was contagious.

“Wait, when was that?” Sophie said, and I realized I’d said too much.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Em stood and people at the next table turned to stare until she noticed and sat again, glowering at them from a distance.

“Sorry,” I whispered, leaning toward the center of the table. “This just doesn’t make any sense. We’ve been friends since we were kids, and for more than ten years, I’ve been the one bouncing from one emotional extreme to the other—”

“That’s true,” Sophie interjected. “Kaylee’s never been incredibly stable.”

“Thanks.” I scowled at her. “Now stop helping. My point is that Em’s always been my rock. Steady. Even.
Nice.
” I turned to her so she’d know I wasn’t trying to leave her out of a discussion about her. “You’ve never blamed me for
anything.
Even things I deserved the blame for. And these are the same cafeteria hamburgers we’ve been choking down for three years—why are you just now mad about that? And what on earth did Jennifer Lamb do to deserve being called an idiot?”

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?
”

“Shh!” 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.

Chapter Five

“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 took off across the quad, headed for the corner of the building, texting Tod on the way. His shift at the hospital had just ended. With any luck, he’d have time to come help me deal with...whatever was about to go horribly wrong.

As soon as I was out of sight of the quad, I let myself fade from human sight, then blinked into Mr. Flannery’s first-floor chemistry lab. The room was empty, thank goodness, and his roll book was open on his desk, which was another stroke of luck in itself. Most of the other teachers had long ago switched to an electronic attendance and grade program. Fortunately, Mr. Flannery was nearly sixty and set in his ways. I’d once heard him complain to a colleague about how long it took him to enter the grades into the computer all at once, at the end of each term.

Still invisible, in case anyone came in, I flipped through his roll book to the third period page and scanned the list. Emily Cavanaugh had been penciled in at the bottom. Most of the students were juniors, which meant I knew nearly all of them. All but four had been in the quad with us—underclassmen usually got stuck eating inside on nice days.