Asunder

“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?

Suddenly, the one Menehem had touched shot into the air, towering over the chemist. Grass sizzled, and the sylph shrieked so loud and high that Sam and I both covered our ears.

Other sylph awoke, equally enraged. Smoke billowed where they burned the grass. They converged on Menehem andAnd they seemed to think about it. Something passed among the sylph. Communication? I couldn’t tell. It was so fast, and they were still keening….

At once, all dozen sylph fled the area, leaving patches of scorched earth behind. Menehem slumped to the ground, an unused sylph egg rolling from his hand. He’d almost been killed.

He’d almost been burned alive, but the sylph decided not to do it.

“What…” I stared at the screen until Menehem soberly got up to declare this portion of the experiment finished. The video stopped. “Did he even realize the sylph chose not to kill him?”

“Hard to say with Menehem.” Sam switched to the next video but didn’t play it yet. “It didn’t last very long, what he did to the sylph. A few minutes at best.”

I checked one of Menehem’s diaries. “This says the initial dose was small. He eventually increased the doses, but they grew resistant.”

Sam nodded. “And the dose he gave to Janan?”

Oh. If it affected both sylph and Janan the same way, then it was logical to assume Janan would develop a tolerance, too. I checked Menehem’s notes, flipping several pages toward the end. “It was a massive dose. At least a hundred times larger than the biggest dose ever given to the sylph.”

“So what he did during Templedark won’t work again.”

I shook my head. “No, looking at the logs, the tolerance grew quickly and exponentially in sylph. If anything were to affect Janan again, it would have to be—I can’t even comprehend. There’d have to be a lot of it, and it would take months to make, even with that machine in the back doing all the work. The delivery would have to be unbelievably enormous.”

“Yeah.” Sam considered for a moment, then touched my wrist. “At least there’s something good in this.”

Was it bad? I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, let alone whether it was good or bad.

“Should anyone accuse you of wanting to attempt another Templedark, we have proof it isn’t possible.”

Newsouls were supposed to be impossible, yet I’d been born.

Getting into the temple should have been impossible, yet I’d been inside.

Poisoning Janan again wasn’t impossible. With a bigger dose and a bigger delivery system, it could be done. I just didn’t know how. Or whether I should.

Inside the temple, Meuric had hinted about something horrible happening on Soul Night: the spring equinox of the Year of Souls. That threat nipped at my thoughts.

“We still can’t tell anyone about the poison,” I said. “I don’t want the Council—or anyone—to know we came here and looked. They’ll assume the wrong thing. They’ll assume I’m like Menehem, and I’m not.”

“I know.” Sam lurched up from the couch and paced the room, shoulders and back stiff.

After a while of watching him walk ditches in the floor, I asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” He stopped and sighed. “No. Sorry.”

Sorry for saying yes when he didn’t mean it? Or sorry that he wasn’t okay? I waited for him to go on.

“I’ve never gotten involved in disputes. I don’t like them. Even in the beginning, I stayed away from conflict.” Emotions shifted over his face, and he looked at me. “I’m on your side, Ana. Every time.

Before, it was easy to stay out because I didn’t care. I just made music, and no one expected anything more from me. But with you, I do care.”

And by being with me, the controversial newsoul, his life had changed. What he’d been beforenotable for