The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  “Your mom’s really nice. You’re lucky,” Lucio says. He opens and closes his right hand, staring at the tattoo on the pointer finger that spells out his parents’ names. Argi and Jairo. “I don’t know a lot about my mom. I was only one when she and Papa were… when they died. I know she liked to ride horses and listen to opera and that turquoise was her favorite color. Her favorite gemstone too. She was a botanist who specialized in medicinal herbs. Papa was a scientist too—a microbiologist. He spoke five languages. He looked exactly like me, except taller and with a beard.”

  This is the most he’s ever said about his parents. If we weren’t in a moving car, I’d reach back and hug him immediately. Nolan probably would too.

  “My grandfather died last year. I was closer to him than anyone in the world. I still miss him every day. I can’t imagine how you must feel. I’m sorry,” Nolan says.

  Lucio nods and swipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Thanks, man.”

  We continue in silence. As we drive away from downtown the road becomes darker and more deserted. We pass an old, dilapidated gas station with a faded for sale or lease sign in front of it as well as a row of boarded-up houses. A rusted-out van lies on its side in the middle of what may have been a cornfield at one time.

  As I stare out at the desolate landscape, I think about Lucio’s parents. And Helena. I wish I could get her out of my head. She makes me feel an impossible, inexplicable mixture of anger and confusion and need. But why need? That’s the part I don’t understand. I have a mother, the best mother in the world. So why should I need Helena, especially considering who she is and what she’s done?

  She had Lucio’s mom and dad killed.

  She tried to kill me multiple times.

  She had an affair with a demon overlord who wants to destroy humanity and take over the universe.

  Still, something about our conversation last night shifted something inside of me. I’m not sure what it is. But it’s bothering me, niggling at my consciousness.

  My thoughts drift again to the photographs; the manila envelope containing them sits on my lap. Death and more death. If Nolan is right—and he usually is—then what am I supposed to believe? The subjects of the photographs are four dead girls on morgue tables. Who are probably luiseach. Who look to be about my age. And who have marks on their right wrists, like me. Granted, theirs are pentagrams and mine is—was—a spider-web pattern. But still.

  Why does Aidan have these photographs? And why did he keep them a secret from the rest of us?

  “There it is. Up ahead,” Nolan says suddenly.

  He clicks on his turn signal—not that there’s anyone around to see it—and swings onto a narrow gravel road called Danby Industrial Park Drive. We’ve arrived. The park seems to consist of twenty or so flat, windowless warehouses and storage units surrounded by a saggy chain-link fence.

  “He said it’s the last one on the service road,” Lucio pipes up. “Yup, there’s his car. See?”

  Aidan’s silver SUV is parked next to a large warehouse with no sign that stands at the end of the road. His seems to be the only car in this entire place.

  As Nolan parks next to the SUV I unstrap my seatbelt and pull out my phone. “I’m going to text him, let him know we’re here.”

  “Why don’t you hold off on that, since he’s expecting me to be alone?” Lucio suggests. “Let me go in first with the folders he wants, then you guys come when I give the signal. I may be able to get some information out of him about the photos just one on one.”

  “I guess so. Okay.” I put my phone back in my pocket. Even though Aidan is my dad, Lucio knows him way better than I do. In many ways Aidan is more Lucio’s dad than mine.

  Or is Lucio implying that Aidan may be inclined to confide in him about the four dead girls but not in me?

  Lucio glances at his watch. “It’s not seven yet, but I’m sure he won’t mind. I know he really wanted these file folders.”

  He slides out of the car, tucks the folders under his arm, and strides toward the warehouse door. Nolan and I exit the car too and hover by the side of the building. I’m holding the manila envelope.

  Lucio reaches the warehouse door, knocks, and opens it a crack. He pokes his head inside. “Aidan? Are you here? It’s Lucio—”

  A blood-curdling scream shatters the air.

  CHAPTER 31

  Smoke

  There’s another scream. Then another. And another. The screams are coming from inside the warehouse, and they sound like a man’s.

  My chest tightens. I can barely breathe.

  Something horrible is happening to Aidan.

  Is it Dubu?

  Lucio drops the folders and charges through the door, shouldering it open. Nolan and I run after him—will we get to Aidan in time?

  Inside the warehouse it’s practically pitch black. No windows, no lights, and the temperature is frigid, like the air conditioning has gone totally haywire. The noxious smells of turpentine and soot mingle incongruously with the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and butterscotch.

  Another scream, except this time it’s a girl screaming, not a man.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” the girl’s voice pleads. “I didn’t do anything! You’ve made a mistake. You’ve got the wrong person. Please let me go!”

  “One of you, call 9-1-1,” Lucio whispers to Nolan and me.

  “I’m on it,” I whisper back, trying to stay calm and not freak out. Where’s Aidan? Is he even alive?

  As I reach for my phone a small circle of light blinks in the darkness. Someone’s shining a flashlight on the girl’s face.

  She looks familiar. Long, dirty blond hair, high cheekbones streaked with soot. Designer clothes. Her eyes are squeezed shut as though in pain.

  “Please!” she cries out. For a split-second the flashlight illuminates a metallic flash of purple in her mouth.

  Purple braces?

  Tiffany Ramirez? From school, from my English class, from the spring dance committee?

  The flashlight shifts, and I can see that Tiffany is tied to a chair. Her wrists, legs, everything—she’s bound not just with rope but also irons and chains.

  “Tiffany!” I shout.

  The flashlight beam wobbles and dips, and suddenly I can make out the identity of Tiffany’s captor.

  My father.

  “Let her go!” I yell.

  “Aidan, what are you doing?” Lucio shouts at the same time.

  “Sir, this isn’t a good idea,” Nolan speaks up.

  Aidan’s head jerks in our direction. “Get out of here! All of you! Now!” he roars.

  “Is that you, Sunshine?” Tiffany squeaks in a high, terrified voice. “I’m so glad you’re here! Please, you have to do something! Call the police! This deranged person kidnapped me on my way home from school and—”

  “Don’t listen to her. She is not who she says she is,” Aidan cuts in sharply.

  He turns back to Tiffany and wraps his hands around her throat. She gasps and sputters and coughs.

  “I’m asking you one more time. When is it going to happen?”

  “We have to do something! He’s lost his mind!” I whisper frantically to Nolan and Lucio.

  “S-Sunshine, help meeeeeee!” Tiffany croaks.

  Nolan turns to Lucio. “Is Aidan’s behavior here consistent with what you’ve observed over the years at Llevar la Luz?”

  “Nope, not in the least. I have no clue what’s going down here. If this weren’t Aidan, I’d tackle him and pin him to the ground while the two of you freed the girl…”

  “But it’s not Aidan. Or it’s not the Aidan we know anyway. Something’s really, really wrong,” I insist.

  Just then Aidan begins speaking to Tiffany in a foreign language. Latin? Greek? He repeats the words over and over, louder and louder, as if reciting a chant.

  And then a horrifying thought flits through my brain. Is Aidan possessed? Can demons possess luiseach? I thought that wasn’t possible, but lately all sor
ts of impossible things seem to be happening.

  Do I need to perform an exorcism on my father?

  Aidan’s hands tighten around Tiffany’s throat.

  She laughs at him.

  At first her laugh is a girly giggle, the same one I’ve heard come out of her mouth lots of times in school. Then the laugh slowly descends, deepens into a low, guttural rumble.

  “When the five-pointed star is completed, the world will be washed in fire and be reborn as the kingdom of Dubu,” Tiffany growls in a baritone voice—a man’s voice. And then the voice switches back again to Tiffany’s. “Hey, Sunshine! Do you have a date for the dance yet?” she trills.

  Oh.

  Now I get it. Tiffany has been possessed by a demon. Not Aidan. Why didn’t I realize it sooner? That’s why we thought a man was screaming before.

  And why isn’t Aidan exorcising the demon, like, immediately? It could kill Tiffany in a heartbeat. Not just kill her, but erase all traces of her permanently. Not even her parents will remember she ever existed…

  Quickly and carefully I weave through the darkness to the middle of the room where Aidan holds Tiffany and her demon prisoner. I can hear Lucio and Nolan right behind me.

  “Sunshine, I said, get out! You too, Lucio and Nolan!” Aidan yells.

  “No! Why aren’t you exorcising the demon? It’ll destroy her!” I scream.

  “This is not your business. Now, go!”

  Lucio and Nolan step forward and flank me on the right and left.

  “What’s the plan here?” Lucio whispers nervously. Aidan continues to chant at the Tiffany demon.

  “She’s obviously in a state of possession. If Aidan won’t perform an exorcism, I will.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? We don’t know what kind of demon it is,” Nolan points out quickly.

  “I know, but there’s no other option. Lucio, help me. Like we did in Mexico.”

  “Anything you need.”

  Lucio weaves his fingers through mine and squeezes my hand, giving me strength. He’s never exorcised a demon on his own. But he held my hand like this when I destroyed the fire demon in the village near Llevar la Luz and it worked—it was like he was passing double, triple, quadruple luiseach energy to me through his touch.

  Feeling stronger, braver, I close my eyes and focus on the creature inside of Tiffany. At first I can’t see it or even sense it. My vision sweeps through her organs—heart, liver, kidneys. Where is it?

  And then I find it. It’s a smoke demon. Ugh. No wonder I couldn’t discern it right away. Aidan told me once during a training session that smoke demons are notoriously elusive, difficult to detect.

  Aidan stops chanting. Clearly he’s realized what I’m up to.

  “Sunshine, I am ordering you to stop! I am not finished with it yet!”

  “Don’t listen to him, Sunshine! We’re friends, aren’t we? Practically best friends? You have to help me!” Tiffany pleads in her girly Tiffany voice.

  I tune them both out and concentrate, really concentrate so I don’t lose track of the demon. There. I latch on to it with my mind and follow its black, amorphous form seeping through Tiffany’s body like a poisonous fog.

  It reaches her trachea and begins filling it up. Then it travels to her right lung and begins filling that up too… and then her left lung…

  The reddish pink lung tissue sags and dilates and starts to turn black.

  Oh no. It plans to suffocate her from inside.

  I’ve never dealt with a smoke demon before. What should I do? But I can’t exactly take a break midexorcism and ask Nolan to look it up on the Internet: How to Defeat Smoke Demons.

  Maybe it’ll respond to a taunt?

  Let her go. It’s me you want to fight, not her. Or are you afraid of me?

  In response Tiffany—or rather, the demon—begins to laugh its guttural laugh again. Is it my imagination, or do I feel short of breath? I gasp, trying to suck in oxygen, but it’s like I’ve suddenly been transported to an impossibly high altitude.

  Lucio squeezes my hand again. “You’re okay. Breathe. You’ve got this.”

  I try to breathe. A little better, but still not enough. My connection to the demon is suffocating me somehow. I have to hurry and exorcise it. Otherwise…

  I feel Dubu’s necklace growing hot against my skin. Is it going to help me? But at the same moment a wave of energy hits me and makes me stumble backward. The demon? No, it’s not the demon. Aidan is reaching out to me, murmuring an incantation—a different incantation.

  But he’s not trying to help me—he’s trying to block the exorcism.

  So now I’m battling the demon and Aidan.

  Why is he so determined to keep the demon inside Tiffany?

  Obviously he’s lost his sanity. Or maybe a demon—another demon—possessed him after all?

  I close my eyes again and concentrate harder, visualize the toxic smoke creature inside of Tiffany. I lock my mind on to it.

  There. I have it. I focus harder, secure my hold on it. It groans and shrieks, trying to escape my mental hold. I search blindly for my luiseach knife—there it is, in my jeans pocket. I pull it out and will it to manifest.

  I can feel Aidan trying desperately to stop me with the force of his mind, to pry the knife out of my grip. But he can’t. The knife trembles in my hand and glows silver-blue for a split second, then flies up into the air and blinks into nothingness… and rematerializes as a hurricane-like gale of wind, whistling and screaming and slamming against the walls of the warehouse. It gusts at Tiffany and knocks her over along with the chair she’s bound to. Its force is so powerful that Tiffany’s hair stands on end while her skin ripples as though it might fly right off of her bones.

  “Sunshine!”

  I can’t tell who’s shouting my name. The wind continues to pummel Tiffany’s body.

  Let. Her. Go, I command the demon.

  Just then a long plume of black smoke blows out of Tiffany’s mouth and immediately dissipates in the wind. Gone. Vanished.

  Seconds later the wind stops and everything’s still. My knife blinks back into existence and clatters to the concrete floor.

  I flop down next to it, exhausted, gasping for breath. Lucio’s still holding my hand. Nolan kneels beside me and takes my other hand. I can feel the necklace growing cooler against my throat.

  Footsteps. Aidan is standing over me, staring down. I brace myself and wait for the shouting, the rebukes, the rage at my disobedience.

  But… nothing.

  Instead, my father looks… defeated. Not just defeated.

  Stunned.

  Was he not expecting me to best him?

  CHAPTER 32

  The Interrogation

  Aidan drives me home in his silver SUV while Nolan and Lucio take Tiffany back to her house in Nolan’s car.

  “She will have no memory of this when she wakes up. I also made sure to use her mobile phone to text her mother earlier, saying she was at a friend’s house and would not be home until late,” Aidan informs me as he turns onto my street.

  “Why?” I repeat for the millionth time. He has yet to explain why he wouldn’t exorcise Tiffany—and not just that, but why he tried to block my efforts to do so.

  Aidan parks the car in front of my house and cuts the engine. In the darkness I can make out a glimmer of light through the thick stand of pine trees. I picture Mom, Ashley, Oscar, and Lex Luthor inside, and I can hardly wait to be with them, put this horrible day behind me, nestle into my cozy life. As cozy as it can be, anyway, given the rest of it—the pentagram spell, Dubu, photographs of dead girls, smoke demons… everything.

  Aidan drums his fingers against the wheel. He still won’t answer my question—my questions.

  “She could have died. Or worse. That demon could have destroyed her soul and erased any trace of her from people’s memories. For-e-ver,” I emphasize.

  “Point taken. But she is fine. She will probably have an unpleasant headache for a few days,
but that is it.”

  That’s it?

  “Okay, so I’ll ask you again. Why?”

  “Because.” Aidan sighs and turns to me. “There is every sign that the darkness is not just growing but escalating—rapidly, exponentially. You know about the mall arson and the other violent occurrences in Ridgemont. The same thing is happening all around the world. There have been disturbing climatological and celestial changes as well. Temperature averages are dropping everywhere, quite dramatically… and the other night there was a rare lunar phenomenon—”

  “The Gemini Moon,” I cut in.

  “How did you know about that?” he asks, surprised.

  “I know a lot of things.” Your lineage… my lineage… Helena’s affair with Dubu… Dubu’s son Selarion… Dubu’s personal vendetta against you… the First War… the Second War, I say silently to myself. “But the stuff you’re saying, it still doesn’t explain why you did what you did—and didn’t do—back there.”

  “Since arriving in Ridgemont, Helena, the council members, and I have been busy exorcising multiple demons. Yesterday I was about to exorcise a demon that had possessed an elderly man when he—the man, the demon—let slip a piece of information about Dubu. This gave me the idea to interrogate him. Unfortunately the man…”

  Aidan stops.

  “He died? The demon killed him before you could get your precious intelligence?”

  “He did not die. He was about to go into cardiac arrest. I exorcised the demon immediately and rushed the man to the emergency room. He is recovering now.”

  “That’s sick!”

  “It was necessary, Sunshine. For the greater good.”

  “Now you sound like Helena!” I say angrily.

  “Nevertheless. The information I got from the man led me to another demon. The one who had possessed your friend Tiffany. I was in the process of interrogating her when the three of you interrupted.”