Page 188 of Victorious

“Now,” he said stepping around the remains. He sank back into his seat and took up the notepad. “Let’s get to know you, Sydney. Tell me how your power works.”

Syd said nothing. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the mound that had been a person seconds before, the bloodstained shards of glass glittering amid the ash.

“I can’t do that,” she whispered.

“Are you certain?”

She nodded.

“Have you tried?”

She hadn’t. It had never occurred to her. Their powers were obviously different. And yet. She remembered what happened when she’d tried and failed to resurrect small animals, when there hadn’t been enough. How they collapsed like Helena. Remembered all the times she’d run her fingers over Dol’s fur. Felt the thread humming between them. The same thread she’d used to bring him, and Victor, and Serena back. Thought about what might have happened, if she had reached out, and tried to take hold of it again, undo what she had—

“Sydney,” pressed the therapist, his tone gentle, but firm.

She swallowed. “I don’t control the people I bring back.”

It was true—she didn’t control them, not like that. But she thought of Dol. The way he trailed behind her. The way he watched and followed. Thought of Victor, coming to her rescue. Thought of Serena, parroting the pleas she’d thrown into the dark. To find, and fix, and protect.

“How does it work, for you?”

She hesitated, torn between the urge to tell him nothing, and the knowledge that she was buying time. Time to find a way out of this room and EON. Time for Victor to save her. Time for her to save herself.

“It’s not a secret, Sydney. I know what you can do. But I’d like to hear it in your words.”

She dug her nails into the chair.

“I reach in and pull them back.”

“Is it hard?”

“Not if they just died. And they’re still whole. And it’s the first time. But if there isn’t much, or they’ve been dead a long time, or I’ve already brought them back—”

“You can do it more than once?” interjected Dr. Gray. Sydney bobbed her head. His eyes kindled with even sharper interest. “Go on.”

She shrugged, chewing her cheek. “EOs are harder,” she admitted. “I guess because they’ve died before. They tend to come back—”

“Different,” offered Dr. Gray, at the same time she said, “Broken.”

He nodded. “Is that what happened to Victor?” Sydney only scowled. Sensing that road was a dead end, he changed course. “What about your sister?”

She flinched.

“It really is remarkable,” he said, “that you were able to bring her back after so long and with so little. It’s impressive, to say the least.”

“I guess,” she murmured. He saw the hesitation and latched on to it.

“You kept her bones for years. Why wait to bring her back?”

“I wasn’t strong enough.” Syd said it too fast, the answer clearly primed. She bit her lip. Sighed, and said, “The last time I saw my sister, she saved my life. But before that, she almost killed me.” She rubbed her arm, the small scar hidden by her shirt, bitterness welling up like bile. “She’s how Eli found me. She helped him, knowing what he’d do.”

Dr. Gray frowned behind his spectacles. “Why would she do that?”

That was the million-dollar question. The one that had plagued Sydney all these years.

“I don’t know.”

She’d tried for years to tell herself that Eli somehow got inside Serena’s head, but mind control was her sister’s power, not his. Which meant she believed it. Believed that they were monsters. They were broken. They were dead.