The building creaked in the wind as night settled, and my hair muffled Sam’s words. “I’m just worried that if we go too far into Menehem’s research, regardless of our intentions, someone will think we’re creating another Templedark.”
“Even our possessing his research will be too much for some people,” I whispered. “Maybe I have more friends now, but Meuric wasn’t alone in his feelings about newsouls. Not nearly.” Right off, I could think of five people who’d made their dislike clear, and lots more who just didn’t bother acknowledging me.
Sam nodded, his expression etched with frustration.
“I don’t want anyone to think I want another Templedark, but Menehem’s poison is the only thing I know that affects Janan. I just—I want a weapon, Sam. You gave me a knife when I told you someone followed me home one night. A knife won’t work against Janan. We only know one thing that affects him, and this is it. I want to understand how. I want to discover if maybe there’s another way I can protect myself.” I wanted to feel safe, but that would never happen in Heart, and I wouldn’t ask Sam to spend this lifetime in a dusty cabin just for me.
“Let’s go through the rest of Menehem’s research,” Sam said. “I’m sure he recorded videos and every possible variation in his results. Will that help?”
“It’s a start.”
4
WATCHERS
SAM WAS ALREADY sleeping on the sofa when the noise came, a soft shriek of wind that sent splinters of fear through my chest. I scrambled for the window.
Dusk had fallen, and the view from the window nearest my bed revealed only twin mountains against starlight, and lots of trees in between. Brittle leaves rushed in the wind, and I relaxed. Real wind. Real wind in a strange place. I didn’t know the sounds of this building like I knew those of Purple Rose Cottage. I wasn’t familiar with the particular way wind cut across the iron corner in the northeast, or which trees groaned. I didn’t know their voices.
The sound remained, but the branches, half-dressed with autumn, became motionless.
A square of light fell from my window onto the grass when Sam clicked on the nearest lamp. “What is it?” He stopped at the foot of the bed, yawning.
“They’re watching.” I grabbed my flashlight from the nightstand, gave the tube a few sharp twists, and shone the light toward the woods.
Shadows skittered away, yelping and whining, but they didn’t come closer. When I pulled the beam toward the lab again, the shadows relaxed and resumed their places at the tree line.
“Watching?” Sam touched my shoulder and peered out from behind me. “How many are there?”
“A lot.” I closed the window and pulled the shade. We were probably safe inside the iron building. Probably. “Do you think any of these are the same sylph that attacked me on my birthday?”
“I don’t know.” Sam clicked off the light. “If they are, why behave differently now?”
Mysteries and more mysteries.
The sylph didn’t leave that night, or the next, or the next. They never moved closer, never threatened or attacked, but they were always there. Watching.
Over the next few weeks, I learned why it had taken Menehem eighteen years to re-create and perfect the results of the first Templedark.
The process of creating and dispersing the poison was a complicated one. Sam and I watched video after video of Menehem explaining different theories and tests to the camera. The hundreds of combinations ran together until one finally gave the response Menehem had been looking for.
Sam and I sat curled on the sofa together, his arm around my shoulders. I had a notebook balanced on my knees so I could write down stray thoughts. The screen, which Menehem had hidden in a wall, showed a summer day with my father bustling about the yard with cans of aerosol poison, which he’d created using a machine in the back of the lab.
“Aerosol,” he explained to the camera for the hundredth time, “has proven to be the most effective delivery system. It allows the hormones to be both solid and suspended midair. For sylph, both corporeal and incorporeal, almost a paradox themselves, fighting them with a substance that behaves the same way seems the most logical.
“The problem has been finding just the right amount of each hormone and timing the exposure, but I believe that I’ve finally found a combination that will work. I started with…”
He droned on for a while, repeating many of the same things he’d said before. Then he ambled toward a large speaker by the building and flipped a switch. Music crackled and settled, and a haunting piano sonata flowed across the small field and toward the nearby creek. Music streamed toward the mountains, filling the entire area with melody.
As they’d done in nearly every other video, sylph appeared in the distance.
Shadows glided toward the speaker, writhing like flames. Tendrils of darkness shot out of them, like hands reaching for the sky. Under the familiar sounds of Sam’s piano playing, the sylph voices rose up to sing along.
I glanced at Sam. “Is that weird? That they like music so much?” As I had, Menehem seemed to have discovered their response to music by accident. Then he’d begun using it as a lure.
“Maybe. Who can tell with sylph?”
Perhaps they thought Menehem had captured one of their own. Would they have cared if Menehem had trapped another sylph?
On the screen, sylph drifted around the yard, ignoring the small canisters placed about. When there were nearly a dozen sylph singing along to the sonata, Menehem pressed another button.
The canisters spewed aerosol, hissing loudly. The sylph ignored it; if these were the same sylph as had been in previous videos, they were used to this part, too. The gas had never done anything to them.
This time, the sylph dropped.
Two or three at first. They twitched and seemed to glance around—how could they glance if they had no eyes?—and then sank into puddles of darkness.
Another sylph shimmered and fell. And another.
Soon, Menehem flicked off the speaker and the field was silent.
“I did it,” he said. “Finally, I did it!” Menehem jumped and whooped, giving me an odd sense of embarrassment for him.
Sam shifted uncomfortably, and I doodled roses in the margins of my notebook while we waited for Menehem to compose himself on the screen.
“It looks like they just fall asleep,” Sam said.
“The music draws them in, and the gas puts them to sleep.” I nodded and leaned forward as Menehem approached one of the sylph puddles. I almost felt bad for them, being experimented on. Sam was right. I didn’t want to hurt them—though these didn’t look like they were hurt, exactly.
Menehem knelt by the nearest sylph and pulled a device from his pocket. “Temperature is abnormally low for a sylph.” He stuck his hand into the sleeping sylph. “It’s warm, but not uncomfortable.”
My heart jumped and sped. “Sam.” Why would anyone put their hand inside a sylph?
“I see it.” He touched my hands, squeezed them. “They’re fine now. Healed completely, remember?”
I nodded, but the sensation of burning wasn’t something I’d ever be able to forget.
As we watched, a couple of sylph twitched and shifted in their sleep. Could sylph dream?