“Nice owl,” I say awkwardly.
Victoria nods. “It was my daughter’s favorite.”
“That explains a lot,” I say breathlessly. I can’t remember the last time I walked into my room and found Dr. Hoo in the same position he’d been in when I left.
“Does it?” Victoria asks, her dark eyes bright and open wide.
“Anna Wilde was your daughter,” I begin slowly. “I think . . .” I pause, trying to figure out the right way to say it. I should have come here with more of a plan, a rehearsed speech, something. “I think she might be . . . I mean, there’s no easy way to say this, but . . .” I scratch my head, pressing my frizzball down as smoothly as possible, like I think messy hair is somehow disrespectful.
“I think she’s been visiting—I mean, not visiting, obviously, but staying—no, that’s not the right word. Ummm, she’s living—” Oh geez, did I just say she’s living? Golly, I’m doing this all wrong. The girl is dead. Her ghost might be inhabiting my house, but that’s not the same thing as living there. My gosh, what’s the right word for it? Maybe in all those books that disappeared from the professor’s office there was something that could help with this, an etiquette guide for ghostly conversations or something.
But then Victoria says it, the most obvious word of all: “My daughter is haunting you.”
“Not me, exactly. I mean, not just me. My mom too.” All of a sudden, I wish I had taken some tea. Then at least I’d have something to do with my hands. Now all I can do is press them onto my jeans. “How did you know?”
Victoria puts her teacup down on the tufted ottoman between us. She smiles sadly. “I knew it was you. Your eyes—”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand what my eyes have to do with anything,” I interrupt quietly.
“At first I thought maybe it was your boyfriend, Nolan—”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say quickly. For some reason, even now—especially now—it seems important to make that distinction.
“But then I saw your eyes, and it all made sense,” she continues, as though I hadn’t spoken.
“I’m sorry, but what makes sense?” I shake my head. If you ask me, nothing about any of this makes anything even resembling sense.
“I’m sure this is confusing for you. In the old days we lived together. We knew what to expect when we turned sixteen.”
“We?” I echo. A single butterfly takes flight in my belly, but it’s enough to make my hands shake in my lap. I resist the urge to sit on top of them. “What do you mean, we?”
She pauses and then says the word that sounded like gibberish not too long ago: “Luiseach.”
Holy majoly. I found one. A real-life luiseach. Is that why she saw death in even the most cheerful of art projects? Why she was always lurking and listening? Because she is a luiseach?
Or was it more than that? Maybe she was looking for something. For someone.
For me?
“Are you my mentor?” My mentor. It just came out, this tacit acknowledgment that I know I am what Nolan says I am. If I didn’t believe that I was a luiseach, I wouldn’t expect to have a mentor.
“No.” She smiles that same sad smile. “But your mentor has been watching you for a long time.”
Well, that’s creepy. I mean, the idea of someone watching me. Wait—it’s more than just creepy. It’s awful. “Well if she’s—or he’s—watching, why hasn’t he or she done anything to help? Why won’t he or she jump in and help my mom before things get worse?” Instead of husky and dry, now my voice sounds high pitched and shrill.
Victoria’s voice is perfectly calm when she answers. In fact, her voice has been calm since the instant I showed up on her doorstep, soft and almost melodic. “Your mentor is incredibly powerful, Sunshine, but he will not intercede at this time.” He. Now at least I know something about my mentor: he’s a man. “You see,” Victoria continues, “luiseach are kind of like guardian angels—”
“I know,” I interrupt, my voice trembling. “They protect humans from dark spirits,” I say it like I’ve said it a million times before. Like I haven’t denied that they exist, let alone that I might be one. “They all have a mentor and a protector, and they come of age at sixteen.”
For the first time today Victoria actually looks surprised, her eyes wide and her brow furrowed. “You know more than I expected,” she says slowly.
“Nolan. He’s been helping me. He’s good at research, that kind of thing.”
A knowing sort of smile crosses her face as she sits silently.
Okay, I know I’m in the middle of something here, but I have to just stop and complain for a second. I hate—hate—when grownups look at teenagers like that, like they think we’re involved in some kind of puppy love, and isn’t that the most adorable thing?
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say again, quietly this time.
“I believe you,” Victoria answers. She leans back in her chair. “Did Nolan’s research also reveal that all luiseach are tested by their mentors at sixteen? They can only begin their training once they’ve passed their tests.”
“Are you saying that this—everything that’s happening in my house—is some kind of test I’m supposed to pass?”
“Yes.”
I wrinkle my nose, just like Mom. “And my mentor won’t help me, because he wants to see how I’m going to handle this myself, right?” She nods. “Well then, can you help me, please?”
“It’s your test, Sunshine, not mine.”
“I promise I don’t care if your help means that I fail the test.” Doesn’t she understand that my mother is so much more important than whether or not I get to start luiseach training? “Can’t you just—I don’t know—throw your best luiseach magic at my mom?” I take a deep breath, trying to gather my thoughts. “It’s my mom. And she’s already hurt herself once. Just tell me what Anna wants. Please.”
“It’s not my daughter who’s causing your problems,” Victoria cuts in. “Well, not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
She takes a sip of her tea, swallowing slowly. “I made a deal,” she says softly, gazing into her teacup. “A deal to help my daughter move on.”
“I don’t understand. If you’re a luiseach, can’t you help her? I mean, isn’t that what luiseach do—usher spirits to the other side?”
Victoria shakes her head. “I failed her. She needed a stronger luiseach than me. So I gave up my powers. That was the price he required, and I was more than happy to oblige.”
“The price who required?” I ask.
Instead of answering, Victoria says, “First, I have to tell you how my daughter died.”
“You don’t have to,” I say softly. I interlace my fingers and rest them on my lap. I don’t want to make this poor woman relive what must have been the worst day of her life.
“Yes, I do,” Victoria holds up her hand. “You need to know that both Anna and my husband were murdered.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Possession
“I thought your husband had a heart attack.” I imagine how shocked he must have been when he saw his daughter, lifeless in her bathtub. It’d be enough to stop any parent’s heart from beating.
“It can look like a heart attack,” Victoria concedes.
“How can murder look like a heart attack?”
“Let me explain,” she says in her soft, melodic voice. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ll say,” I sigh, and Victoria smiles sadly once more. She pours some tea into a porcelain cup and hands it to me. I take a sip and listen to her story.
“I knew what I was from the moment I was born,” Victoria begins. “I looked forward to my sixteenth birthday. The instant I turned sixteen, I became aware of the spirits around me. I could sense them as no mortal could, interact with them as no mortal could. I couldn’t wait to pass my test and begin the job of helping them move on.”
I can’t imagine looking forward to a test like this.
Maybe j
ust once there was a luiseach who said, No, thank you. I’d rather not spend my life helping spirits and exorcising demons. I’d like to go to college, get a normal nine-to-five job, have health insurance and a 401K.
Maybe just once over the centuries, one luiseach said, No.
Victoria continues, “I passed my test with flying colors and began work with my mentor immediately. He started me out slow,” she explains. “At first I was just helping light spirits move on.”
“How could you tell if a spirit was light or not?”
“Spirits are drawn to us. The instant they leave their mortal bodies, a light spirit will seek us out, anxious to move on.”
“What if there isn’t a luiseach nearby when they die?”
“Distance isn’t quite the same thing in the spirit world as it is here in the physical one. A light spirit a thousand miles away would have been able to sense me back then, had I been the nearest luiseach. It would have been drawn to me as a moth to a flame.” She smiles, as though the memory of all the spirits she helped to move on is comforting to her.
“How do you do it—help them move on?”
Victoria cocks her head to the side. “It’s difficult to explain,” she begins. “You just sort of . . . feel it.” She pauses, then asks, “Tell me, Sunshine, have you spent most of your life among humans feeling somehow different, something other?”
“Not exactly,” I answer. “I mean, my mom and I are really close. I’ve gone to school just like everyone else, made friends.” Well, two friends, Ashley and then Nolan.
“Yes, but haven’t you ever felt like this life didn’t quite fit?”
I close my eyes, considering. I never fit in, if that’s what Victoria means. I don’t dress quite like everyone else, don’t read quite the same books or share quite the same hobbies. But lots of kids don’t fit in, right? Suddenly I think of Mom’s voice: You could trip over your own two feet. Is this why I was always such a klutz? Not because I was born clumsy, but because I simply didn’t fit in the day-to-day world?
I open my eyes. Victoria’s gaze is focused on my face, waiting patiently for me to answer.
“Maybe,” I admit finally, my voice not quite steady.
“Luiseach are meant to work with spirits. We can manage in the human world, even form powerful bonds with human friends and family, but the truth is, nothing will ever come quite as naturally to us as helping a spirit move from this world to the next. Just as a light spirit is drawn to you, you are compelled to receive it. Just as it longs to move on, you will feel an urge to help it on its journey.”
You don’t know what I will feel, I think but do not say. “What about dark spirits?”
“Dark spirits are a different story. Often they’re spirits that were taken too soon, lives that were snuffed out unexpectedly. They deny their natural instincts, fight against the pull toward the nearest luiseach. Instead, they hide from us. After a few years of training, after I’d helped thousands of light spirits move on, my mentor judged me ready for the next level of luiseach work—seeking out resistant spirits and forcing them to move on before they turned ever darker.”
“What do you mean darker?”
Softly, Victoria answers, “A spirit that lingers on Earth too long changes. It spends so much time fighting against its instincts that it shifts into something else entirely, bearing no resemblance to the human it once was. The spirit of the kindest human you ever met can turn into an evil creature over time. Such spirits endanger human lives, and it is a luiseach’s sacred mission to prevent this danger. These spirits are consumed by one thing and one thing only: gathering the strength they need to stay by any means necessary.”
“What does that mean?” I ask hoarsely, not entirely certain I want to know the answer.
Victoria shakes her head. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” She stops to sip some tea. “I have to finish telling you my own story. I excelled at my work,” she explains, a sad sort of pride in her voice. “It was what I was born to do. I was so good that my mentor finally decided to let me in on his real work—his secret undertaking. It required working long hours, travel, being away from my family, but it was thrilling.”
“What do you mean his real work? I thought helping spirits move on was what luiseach did.”
“It is what we do,” Victoria nods. “But in order for us to keep doing it, a balance needs to be restored. My mentor was investigating how to restore that balance.”
“Why was that a secret?”
“Not everyone in the luiseach community would have agreed with his theories on restoration.”
I try to remember everything Nolan told me about luiseach. It’s hereditary. They have mentors and protectors. They used to live in insular communities. Nothing about a balance. Unless . . .
“Wait,” I say suddenly. “Did your work have something to do with the rift? With the fact that fewer luiseach are being born?”
“Yes.”
“Nolan thinks that I’m the last luiseach to have been born.”
Victoria’s eyes widen. “Nolan is a smart boy.”
I bite my lip. Is she saying that Nolan is right—that no luiseach have been born since me? And if the rift is really about the low birth rates . . . “Wait—are you saying that I’m connected to the rift somehow?”
“All will be revealed in time,” Victoria responds and resumes her story. “Years after we began our work together my mentor and I had a falling out.”
“Why?”
“First, I fell in love with a human. I wasn’t the first luiseach to marry a mortal—with numbers dwindling, it was inevitable that it would happen from time to time. We settled here in Ridgemont, his hometown. After my daughter was born I had to beg my mentor to allow me to resume the work I’d been doing before.”
“Why? If you were so good at it, didn’t he want you back?”
“Well, this was the reason for our falling out. I’d promised him that I wouldn’t have a child.”
“Why not?”
“Any child I had with my husband would be human. It takes two luiseach parents to have a luiseach baby.”
“Lucky me,” I whisper to myself.
“But finally I convinced him to take me back. The work we’d been doing was too important for him to hold a grudge.”
“Did your husband know what you were?”
Victoria shakes her head, almost smiling at the memory. “No. He thought I was something of a traveling salesman. I didn’t lie, not exactly. I’d told him I traveled the world saving lives. He took it to mean I sold pharmaceutical products. I never corrected him. He wouldn’t have believed me if I had. He was a chemistry teacher. He believed in science, not in spirits.”
I nod with understanding. I know what it’s like to live with a nonbeliever.
“The winter my family was killed followed an autumn of record rains. Our street flooded; our neighbors’ home was destroyed. It wasn’t difficult for the demon to get inside—just follow the flow of the water and drift into our basement, then crawl up the rusty pipes and into our rooms.”
“The demon?” I echo. I know I shouldn’t be surprised that a demon is involved in all of this, but it still sends a flutter of butterflies through my belly.
Victoria nods. “A water demon.”
“There are different kinds of demons?” I ask, but even as I say it I know it makes sense: the mildewy smell in our house, the wet fingerprints on my checkers, the damp carpet beneath my feet.
We must have a water demon too.
“They’re not all that uncommon in this part of the world, though it’s believed they originated in the South American rain forest. They thrive in moist climates. It must have been living here for months before it decided it would use my husband to take my daughter’s life.”
Victoria pauses, taking a deep breath. I can tell she’s trying to swallow a lump in her throat. I lean forward and put my hand on her knee. This part of the story, at least, I understand completely. I know about the ways mothers and daughter
s love each other.
“The demon drove my husband to drown our daughter.”
“Your husband drowned Anna?” My voice is no louder than a whisper. I’m suddenly very glad that I blacked out the Water Works box on my Monopoly board. I wish I’d done it sooner.
“No,” Victoria answers firmly. “The demon drowned Anna. It just used my husband’s body to do it, as it is using your mother’s body now.”
I shake my head. I mean, my mother hasn’t exactly been herself lately—she’s been angry and distant—but I’ve never actually been scared of her. Whatever is doing this to her, I can’t believe it’s strong enough to compel her to kill me.
But then I remember, according to Nolan, a luiseach is safe from dark spirits. So if it’s a dark spirit that’s controlling my mother, it’s powerless to make her kill me.
“The police couldn’t detect signs of a struggle—the scratches on the tile around the tub, the bruises on her arms and neck were invisible to them.”
I close my eyes, imagining Anna’s neck ringed with a dark purple bruise.
I open them as Victoria says, “But that’s not the worst part.”
I can’t really imagine something worse than a demon forcing a loving parent to harm his own child. I’m not sure I want to hear what’s next, but I guess I don’t have a choice.
“When a human’s life is taken by a demon, his or her spirit is trapped in a world of anguish.”
“That’s why Anna can’t move on?”
“She’ll continue to be tormented until the demon is fully exorcised, ushered by a luiseach into the beyond. The demon follows her everywhere, always just a few steps behind.”
Wait, does that mean that the other spirit in my house is this demon, the creature who killed Anna and her father? I remember the sounds I heard coming from my mother’s mouth last night. It’s not just my house the demon is inhabiting.
“It’s inside my mother?” I can barely get the words out.
Slowly Victoria nods.
“And it’s my test to destroy it before it does to my mother what it did to your husband?” The words I don’t say are stuck in my throat, choking me: . . . before it kills her too.
The Haunting of Sunshine Girl Page 18