The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  Nolan called earlier. He said that he and Lucio hadn’t gotten very far at the library but that they were going to try again tomorrow night.

  So many mysteries and so few answers.

  I have no idea what time it is when I finally pass out, exhausted from all my restless churning and cogitating. My REM-sleep-deprived brain immediately plunges into dream mode.

  In the dream it’s night, and I’m sitting alone on the bank of a big, still lake. The moon is high and silvery bright. Trees swish in the cool breeze. It’s magical and mysterious and quiet except for the steady hum of crickets and the occasional plaintive cry of a loon, a lone loon.

  The loon is way across the lake. After a while it begins to swim toward me in a straight line that perfectly bisects the round body of water. As it gets closer, I can make out its black head and tiny, piercing red eyes. Its wings are mottled black and white.

  The loon gets closer and closer… and then suddenly it begins to morph into some other creature. The dead yellow bird! Except that the bird isn’t dead—it’s alive. It tries to tell me something, but its beak is taped shut with black tape.

  Blood gushes out of the bird’s eyes…

  I wake up screaming and realize in horror that across the room Ashley’s mouth is taped shut with black tape too. I try to get up to help her, but my hands and feet are bound to the bed with heavy iron chains.

  At the same time I notice the spider-web marks have returned—not just on my wrist but all over. They pulse and multiply, pulse and multiply, pulse and multiply. I scream as they take over my entire body…

  But I’m not awake. I’m still in my dream. I can’t get out of my dream. My limbs feel heavy as lead, and my mind is thick and soupy and confused.

  Then the dream shifts, and the darkness is gone. The chains and marks are gone. Bright light floods my vision.

  Aidan and Helena are in a room. Where are they? Aidan is wearing a navy suit and matching tie that I don’t recognize, and Helena is wearing a long, lacey white dress and a silver ring with an unusual C-shaped design—some kind of symbol? Or a rune?

  “Does she know? What Markons are capable of?” Helena is asking.

  “No. And I’d like to keep it that way,” replies Aidan.

  “But he’s going to kill her. I thought you wanted to prevent that.”

  “I intend to kill him first.”

  “That means—”

  “Yes, I’m fully aware. There is no other option.”

  “But you can’t do it alone.”

  “I must.”

  Darkness. The bright light is gone. Aidan and Helena are gone.

  Then the darkness twists slowly like a surreal kaleidoscope. Browns and blacks and reds bleed into each other and form a muddled image of Dubu’s face.

  The muddled image sharpens into focus. Dubu is laughing.

  “Deditio,” he whispers in my ear.

  “No!” I hear Aidan shout from far away.

  “No!” I scream as Dubu wraps his six-fingered hands around my neck.

  Six fingers?

  I wake up in a tangle of sheets and cold sweat—this time for real. I reach under my pillow for my knife and hold it up to Dubu’s throat.

  But he isn’t there.

  It’s just my room, same as it was before. Ashley’s stretched out on the air mattress and murmuring about peep-toe pumps. The mint-green clock flashes 4:35 A.M. Almost time to wake up and get ready to train with Aidan.

  I reach up and touch Helena’s necklace. It’s still there—warm against my skin, then cooler, then cool.

  Did something activate it?

  Lex Luthor jumps off of the air mattress, slinks across the pink shag carpet, and leaps onto my bed. He blinks up at Dr. Hoo and hisses.

  I glance up.

  Dr. Hoo’s beak is taped shut with black tape.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Telltale Suit

  It’s still dark outside when I rush downstairs in my PJs and peer out the square glass pane. The ghost of the full moon hovers on the horizon. Fog blankets the dense grove of pine trees.

  I spot the familiar figure standing on the front porch reading a newspaper—a French-language newspaper.

  Tall. Unsmiling. A navy suit with a matching tie. Short, immaculately styled, almost-black hair.

  Just the person I needed.

  I open the door and wave Aidan in.

  “You need to see this!” I whisper frantically.

  “See what? Sunshine, you’re”—Aidan glances at his steel watch—“twenty minutes early for your training session.”

  “Forget about that. Come upstairs—quietly, so you don’t wake Mom and Ashley. I think Dubu was here again.”

  “What?”

  “I think he did something to Dr. Hoo!”

  I close and lock the door behind Aidan and gesture for him to follow me up the stairs. But first he insists on searching the first floor of the house.

  “There is no one down here,” he says when he’s finished.

  “I know that. He’s gone. Come on, you need to see Dr. Hoo!”

  “Who or what is a Dr. Hoo?” Aidan whispers as we enter my very messy room, which is practically wall-to-wall with Ashley’s and my clothes. I wish I had at least made the bed, but “battlefield conditions,” as Mom would say, meaning you do what you can in the midst of chaos.

  Ashley’s still snoring and sleep-talking on the air mattress. Aidan glances around curiously, and I realize this is the first time he’s ever been in my real room, with my real stuff, as my temporary room at Llevar la Luz was pretty Spartan and austere and not me at all.

  “Dr. Hoo is my owl. My stuffed taxidermy owl. Dubu or some other dark superpower-overlord covered its beak with black tape. See?”

  “No, I don’t see.”

  I do a double-take. On the shelf above my desk Dr. Hoo’s beak is back to normal. There’s no sign of the black tape.

  Puzzled, I stand up on my desk chair and touch his beak. It’s perfectly smooth, not sticky-tacky as though it was all taped up a few minutes ago. Everything else appears to be undisturbed too: my glass unicorn figurines, my antique typewriter, my books, my Nikon F5.

  “But… but… it was just… Aidan, you have to believe me! I swear, the tape was there when I woke up!”

  “Explain, please.”

  Ashley stirs and yawns. I step off the chair, trying not to fall on my face in the process, and gesture for Aidan to follow me back downstairs.

  Once we’re on the porch again I plunge into the details. “I had this dream last night. Actually it was more like super-early this morning—like, just now. And it wasn’t just a dream, it was a nightmare. When I woke up, Lex Luthor—that’s my cat—was looking up at Dr. Hoo and acting all weird. Hissing. That’s when I saw the black tape on Dr. Hoo’s beak.”

  Aidan mulls this over. “Is it possible that this Dr. Hoo incident was part of your nightmare?”

  “No! I mean, I don’t think so. Although I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

  Aidan mulls some more. “I suggest that you get dressed. We can continue discussing this matter during our training exercises.”

  I look down. Good golly, I’m still in my Care Bear PJs and fuzzy slippers. How embarrassing is that? And then I remember Helena’s necklace. I forgot about it in all the chaos. I quickly reach up to make sure it’s hidden under my pajama top, out of Aidan’s sight. It is.

  “Be right back,” I mumble.

  “Of course. And please bring Dr. Hoot with you.”

  “You mean Dr. Hoo?”

  “Yes, Dr. Hoo.”

  Upstairs I grab some clothes and my Chuck Taylors from my closet and tiptoe to the bathroom, being careful not to disturb Ashley and Mom. I brush my teeth and wash my face simultaneously to save time, studying my reflection in the mirror—frizzball frizzier than usual, pale skin paler, black circles under my milky green cat eyes. (Even in the dim bathroom light my pupils don’t get big—they never get big.) Ashley told me yesterday we need a girls’ da
y at a spa, which sounded silly—mud wraps and papaya facials and getting massaged with hot rocks?—but maybe she’s right. Although honestly I’d settle for a good night’s sleep and a mini-vacation from luiseach duty.

  A few minutes later I’m back on the porch with Dr. Hoo tucked under one arm and a couple of granola bars for my pretraining breakfast.

  “May I see your owl specimen, please? I wish to inspect him.”

  I pat Dr. Hoo’s head and hand him over to Aidan. He takes him from me and runs a hand over his dusty white feathers.

  “Interesting,” he murmurs.

  “What’s interesting?”

  Aidan doesn’t answer but instead reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small silver device. It looks like something Mom might use at the hospital to examine patients.

  Aidan touches the device to Dr. Hoo’s black-speckled head and wings… then his legs… then all over.

  “Um… what are you doing?” I ask curiously.

  “I am trying to detect an energy signature.”

  “A what?”

  “As you know, the presence of a dark spirit or a demon can lower the temperature of the air, often quite dramatically. Although not always, as Helena and I have been discovering more and more. In any case, Markons have always been different. They have the ability to keep the temperature around them the same, if they wish. It is one of the many ways they have of masking their presence. However, one thing they are apparently unable to mask is the almost undetectable energy signature they leave behind. Helena’s cousin Dulcetta, who is a luiseach, of course, created a prototype of this instrument during the Renaissance. It is not unlike a Geiger counter.”

  “During the… Renaissance? Wasn’t that, like, five hundred years ago?”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  So Helena has some cousin who was alive during the Renaissance period. And the other day Helena and Aidan were talking about Ancient Rome as though they’d actually been there. Are luiseach really capable of living for hundreds, even thousands of years? Will I live that long too?

  That is, if I manage to avoid being the fifth point on the pentagram…

  Aidan shakes the silver device and waves it around Dr. Hoo again. The device emits a low, strange whirring sound, and I almost expect Dr. Hoo to hoot back.

  “What does that noise mean?”

  “The instrument is picking up a very faint energy signature.”

  A chill runs down my spine. I feel at once terrified and vindicated. “So now do you believe me that Dubu was here? Or maybe one of his Markon cohorts? How many Markons did you say there were?”

  Aidan tucks the device into his jacket pocket and checks his sleek steel watch. “Come with me. We are going to train down by the river today. You will learn how to control large bodies of water and also fight water demons more effectively. We will go in my car, and I will drop you off at your school afterward.”

  “But what about Dr. Hoo? And aren’t you going to answer my question? My questions?”

  “Bring the owl specimen with you. I would like to examine it further.”

  He turns and heads toward the street.

  I sigh. Are all fathers this secretive? And bossy? And all-around annoying?

  I grab my backpack from inside the house and close the door behind me. The morning sky is gray—what else is new?—and the air is damp and heavy with the smell of pine needles and moss. Munching on a granola bar, I hurry my steps to keep up with Aidan. My feet crunch on gravel as I half walk, half run down the long driveway.

  Aidan’s car is parked across the street. As usual, the other houses on our cul-de-sac show no signs of life—no kids waiting for the bus, no adults driving off to work. People do live in them, but Mom and I have yet to meet a single neighbor. Everyone seems to keep to themselves.

  As Aidan approaches the driver’s side door of his car he reaches into his pocket and extracts a key. Behind him, I stare at his broad back, at his navy suit.

  A troubling thought flits through my mind.

  He was wearing that exact same suit in my dream. A suit I’ve never seen before.

  Which means…

  “Aidan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Earlier this morning… were you with Helena? And did you guys have a conversation? About me, about Dubu?”

  Aidan turns around slowly and stares at me. “What did you say?”

  “I’m right, aren’t I? Because you and she were in my dream. Except that part of the dream wasn’t a dream. I just figured it out. You were wearing that suit. She was wearing a white dress and this artsy-looking silver ring with a design that looked like the letter C.”

  Aidan raises an eyebrow. “You saw all this?”

  “I saw and heard. Helena said… let’s see… she asked you if I knew what Markons were capable of. You said no and that you preferred to keep it that way. What did you mean by that?”

  “It is not important.”

  “And then she said something about—”

  But my words are drowned out by the loud screeching of tires. Aidan and I whirl around—just in time to see a red SUV speeding toward us.

  CHAPTER 14

  A Lie by Any Other Name

  Sunshine, look out!” Aidan shouts.

  As the red SUV bears down on us, tires screeching, Aidan dives toward me and pushes me out of the way. I tumble into the middle of the street, out of the car’s path, my right shoulder hitting the pavement, hard.

  The SUV changes course quickly, tweaking left by 45 degrees, and guns toward me. Not Aidan… me. Adrenalin pumping through my veins, my instincts on hyper-alert, I roll away just in the nick of time. A shockwave of heat and noise and burning rubber hits me as the SUV passes within inches of my head.

  The car makes a hasty U-turn and comes after me again.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Aidan sprinting toward me. I leap to my feet, but I lose my balance on a dangling shoelace—stupid sneakers!—and stumble backward. The SUV is almost upon me now.

  Just then I feel Helena’s necklace grow hot against my skin.

  At the same instant—literally the same instant—the SUV careens out of control.

  The runaway car passes about six inches from where I’m lying on the ground. It hits the curb, spins out of control, and—crash!—slams into a massive pine tree.

  Broken glass, crunching metal. I’m still lying on the pavement, trying to stop my shaking and trembling and general freaking out. I reach for Dr. Hoo, who landed next to me, a little dirty but unharmed.

  “Dear God! Sunshine, are you all right?” Aidan is at my side.

  “I’m fine. Just a little rattled. And mad, gosh darn it! Let’s nab the driver!”

  Aidan grabs my hand, helps me to my feet, and we hurry over to the SUV. The front of the car is accordioned against the tree and smoke plumes from the engine. There are glass shards everywhere.

  We step carefully over the debris and peer inside the driver’s side window.

  There’s no one in the car.

  “Wait a sec. Did the person get away?” I ask, confused.

  Aidan shakes his head. “Impossible. I had my eyes on the car the entire time.”

  “Then how… who…”

  “What have you done to my vehicle?”

  A woman marches up to us, dressed in a housecoat and slippers. Her grayish-blond hair is done up in large pink curlers.

  “I’m calling the police! You thieves stole my car and destroyed it!” she yells, shaking a fist at us.

  Aidan steps forward and smiles. Aidan never smiles.

  “No, madam. That is not what happened at all. Someone did steal your car. But in making his escape, he drove off so quickly that he almost ran us over. He crashed into the tree and got away on foot.”

  Aidan’s voice is calm and soothing and hypnotic. The woman blinks at him, dazed.

  “Yes, that’s what must’ve happened. Sorry, I didn’t mean to jump to conclusions. I live over there in that raised ranch. My name’s Pa
tty Hillman.” She points to a sad-looking white house with faded brown shutters at the end of the cul-de-sac. A neighbor, finally.

  “Hi Patty. I’m Sunshine Griffith. My mom, Kat, and I live over there.” I wave Dr. Hoo in the direction of our house, which probably used to be white but is now a dingy gray. “And this is Aidan… um…” Wait, I don’t know his last name. Does he have a last name? “He’s my dad. He lives… um… out of state.”

  “You should go back to your home now. Your coffee is getting cold, and your cat, Petunia, is waiting for her breakfast,” Aidan tells Patty in the same calm, soothing, hypnotic voice. “I will call the police for you and file a report. A hired sedan will be here at nine to take you to your dentist’s appointment and then bring you home. Your own car will be returned to you by the end of the day, fully repaired.”

  “Why, thank you. That’s mighty kind of you,” Patty says, still sounding dazed. She turns around and walks mechanically back to her house.

  I gape at Aidan. “How did you do that? What did you do to her?”

  “I did what needed to be done.”

  “How did you know about her cat and her coffee and her dentist’s appointment and all that?”

  “Sunshine, that information was available to you as well. You simply chose not to receive it.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  But Aidan ignores my question. Again. Instead, he pulls the silver device out of his pocket and waves it at the passenger’s side window of the SUV.

  It makes the strange whirring sound—louder this time.

  “Dubu was here. Or at the very least, he touched this car recently. I believe that Markons have the ability to manipulate objects from a distance.”

  “But why would he try to run me over? So he can hurt me? Scare me? Send me a warning? He’s a demon, so it’s not like he can kill me,” I point out.

  A shadow crosses Aidan’s face.

  What is he not telling me?

  Then I remember his and Helena’s conversation, the one in my vision.

  Does she know? What Markons are capable of?