The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl)

by Paige McKenzie

I say perhaps she knew that it would be.

  I suggest she may have been working for Aidan all along.

  I’ll make my way south and wait as close to the campus as possible. They can’t stay hidden inside forever.

  But before I leave that woman behind, she tells me that although the girl may be gone, her protector is still close by. And she offers to take me to him.

  So I choose to keep that woman close. And I choose to stay.

  For now.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Someplace Safe?

  I’m still not asleep when I hear a voice. “Not again,” I whisper to myself. The last time I heard a strange voice on my first night in a new place, it was the beginning of the test that turned my entire life upside down.

  I get out of bed. My every step results in creaks and groans, as though my small-person footfalls are shaking the house to its foundation. I tiptoe across the room and open the door the tiniest crack.

  I breathe a sigh of relief because the voice is one I recognize. It’s not a spirit or a demon; it’s just the sound of Aidan’s deep baritone.

  What has my life been reduced to that hearing my supernaturally empowered, long-lost birth father’s voice has become the most normal explanation available to me?

  But then another voice enters the conversation—duh, Sunshine, obviously Aidan was talking to someone—a voice I don’t recognize, though it’s almost as deep as Aidan’s, so I can tell it belongs to a male. At first the words sound like nothing but gibberish. The last time I heard a strange voice speaking words I couldn’t understand it was coming from my mother’s mouth when the demon possessed her. What kind of creature is downstairs with Aidan now?

  As the voices grow louder, I realize the second voice isn’t speaking some mystical dead language but rather Spanish. I’m able to pick up a very few random words I’ve heard before: dos, mañana, nunca.

  Nice one, Sunshine, you’re mistaking Spanish for mystical dead languages. Such a worldly girl you are. I sigh at just how much my life has changed since turning sixteen.

  I guess someone else is sleeping in one of the bedrooms downstairs. Someone who didn’t abandon Aidan when the others left, someone he hasn’t told me about yet. And apparently this someone is very upset about something because his voice is growing louder with each syllable.

  “Keep your voice down,” Aidan growls in English. “The girl is asleep upstairs.”

  I’m not asleep. Be as loud as you like.

  “I’m sorry,” the other voice answers, “but it’s hard to keep quiet when one of our spirits escaped days ago and I still can’t find it.”

  One of our spirits?

  “You’ll find it.”

  “And if I don’t in time?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Unlike whoever he’s talking to, Aidan doesn’t raise his voice. Which makes me want to run downstairs and shout, How can you be calm at a time like this? Because I know what happens to spirits who don’t move on in time. They turn dark, like the demon who nearly killed my mother.

  “A spirit shouldn’t be behaving like this,” the other voice argues. Aidan and his companion lapse back into Spanish, more words I don’t understand until finally I hear one of them say buenas noches, which even I know means good night.

  I listen to their footsteps creak across the hardwood on the first floor as they move across the room. Two doors click softly shut. Aidan and his friend, whoever he is, have gone to bed.

  I close my door. It’s so humid and hot in this room that I’ve long since flung the covers back. This old mattress isn’t nearly as soft as my mattress back in Ridgemont. I swear I could literally feel each individual spring digging into my back. The idea of lying back down isn’t exactly appealing.

  But I know I should at least try to get some sleep. I don’t know what Aidan has planned for me tomorrow, but I don’t think he’s the kind of teacher who’ll excuse you from class just for being tired. Especially on the first day.

  But first I drop to the ground and feel around in the dark until my hands hit the jeans I’d been wearing earlier. I dig the knife out of my back pocket and slide it beneath my pillow.

  Suddenly this supposed “someplace safe” doesn’t feel so safe after all.

  The sheets twist around my sweaty legs, the lingering dust now wet and sticking to my skin. I squeeze my eyes shut. Pretending to sleep is almost as good as the real thing, right? Much to my surprise, within a few minutes my eyelids grow heavy and my breaths grow deeper. Within seconds I’m asleep. I’m dreaming.

  The nightmare starts out innocently enough. There’s a beautiful woman standing over me, curly brown hair framing her lovely face, her tanned skin the color of honey. She smiles at me, and I smile back automatically. She coos in response, reaching her arms out to hold me.

  But then something in her face shifts. There’s something desperate in her eyes. She looks like the evil queen from a fairy tale, beautiful but dangerous. Her hands turn into fists, her eyes narrow, and it looks like she’s biting her tongue to keep from screaming out loud.

  I understand that whoever she is, this woman wants to hurt me.

  I open my mouth to scream, but the only sounds that escape are pitiful cries. I try to stand and run, but my muscles are too weak. My limbs won’t cooperate with the messages my brain is trying to send them. I look down, trying to figure out what’s wrong with my legs: Am I tied up? Are they broken and beaten?

  What I see is even more horrifying.

  They aren’t my legs at all. Or anyway they’re not the legs that I have now, the legs that trudged up the stairs of this strange and sad house a few hours ago. Instead, they’re the helpless, kicking legs of an infant who should be sleeping in a crib like the one across the hall instead of in this enormous old bed.

  I’m trapped in this small, vulnerable body. I wave my helpless baby arms around my head and try to speak, but my muscles and my brain aren’t developed enough to make words. I’m not strong enough to do anything but cry and moan and kick pathetically against the blanket the woman wraps tightly around me, covering my face as I try to breathe.

  When I finally wake up, my real-life teenage arms and legs are sore.

  So much for getting plenty of rest before the first day of training.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lucio

  The boy extends his hand in my direction. “Lucio,” he says. I find myself staring at the tattoos running down the sides of his right pointer finger, bright white against his caramel skin. From here they look like words written in a flowing, loopy script, but I can’t quite make out what they say.

  When I came downstairs in search of coffee, the last thing I expected to be confronted with was a strikingly handsome boy, a wide smile on his face, perched on top of the kitchen counter with his legs swinging back and forth over the edge. I wasn’t even expecting to be able to find the kitchen, but I did—after walking around in circles a few times.

  “Huh?” I answer dumbly. I may have slept some last night, but I don’t exactly feel rejuvenated this morning.

  “Lucio,” he repeats, hopping down from the counter, his tattooed hand still floating in the space between us. Still bleary eyed, I realize his must have been the voice I heard speaking with Aidan in the middle of the night. The voice was so deep that it never occurred to me he’d be so young—he looks only a few years older than I am. (Though if he’s a luiseach, who knows, right? He could be eighty for all I know.) His skin is the exact color of the milky cup of coffee I’d been hoping to find down here. He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts—though his T-shirt is red, while mine is bright blue with a flock of birds flying across it—but unlike me, his hair is wet from a recent shower and his breath smells like toothpaste. I cover my mouth to keep my morning breath from escaping.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “No, silly,” he laughs, then explains in the same perfect, barely accented English I heard him speak last night, “That’s my name. Lucio.”
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  “Oh.” I blush and reach out to shake his hand. He’s only a few inches taller than I am. Nothing like Aidan, who towers above me. “I’m Sunshine.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you also know where a girl can get a cup of coffee around here?” There might not be electricity on the first floor, but there is an enormous old gas stove in the corner with a kettle of water steaming on top. Lucio hands me a mug and pours in some hot water.

  “No coffee. Have some tea,” he says like it’s the same thing. He plops a tea bag into the mug and returns the kettle to the stove.

  “Not quite what I was looking for,” I answer, but I take a sip, suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m still dressed in the super-short shorts I slept in and that my hair is pulled into the messiest, frizziest bun in the history of hairstyles. I try to inconspicuously pull down on the legs of my shorts, making them a fraction of an inch longer, which I realize is pointless.

  “There’s milk in the icebox,” Lucio offers, gesturing to a cooler set in front of an enormous—but powerless—stainless-steel refrigerator. “I think it’s still good.”

  “You think?”

  He shrugs, hopping back up onto the counter. He’s wearing shorts, and I can’t help but notice his muscular legs. I look away, feeling shy.

  I blink and squeeze my mug, even though the water inside is so hot that it nearly burns me.

  The kitchen is enormous, covered in the same ceramic tile as the room I slept in last night. It’s not nearly as dark as the rest of the house; the window at the end of the room isn’t covered in curtains, so some light actually gets in from between the vines growing over it. Lucio sits on the marble counter in the center of the room, right next to a sink with a dripping faucet. A long, scratched wooden table sits beneath the window beyond the counter. This must have been where the servants sat, back when having servants was in fashion. I peer through a doorway at the other end of the room and see a richly carpeted dining room, complete with a gleaming mahogany table surrounded by at least a dozen chairs. But I quickly turn away and sit on one of the wobbly wooden chairs in the kitchen instead, blowing on my tea to cool it.

  “Good morning,” Aidan says formally as he walks into the room. I stand up quickly, like I think I’m supposed to come to attention in his presence, like he’s my drill sergeant and I’m his new recruit—in embarrassingly short shorts. For the first time since I met him (which isn’t that long, I know) he’s not wearing a suit. Instead, his khaki pants are perfectly pressed and his white button down is buttoned nearly to the top, and its sleeves are rolled up neatly above his elbows. I guess that’s his idea of casual wear. “I see you’ve met Lucio. He works with me, one of the few who didn’t leave our side.” Aidan confirms that Lucio is a luiseach like me. Well, not exactly like me. Lucio’s probably known he was a luiseach for a whole lot longer than a few months. “He’ll help us out a bit this morning, but he was up late last night.”

  So was I. So were you.

  “He’ll be going back to bed to get some rest soon.” The last part of the sentence is addressed to the other luiseach, not me. Like it’s part of a conversation they’ve had before. Like Aidan is worried Lucio isn’t getting enough rest.

  Lucio jumps back down from the counter and grabs a cup of tea. He adds milk and honey and hands it to Aidan like he’s done it a million times before. He clearly knows exactly what Aidan wants.

  “What’s he helping us out with exactly?” I don’t add that I heard them arguing last night. That I already have an idea of what kind of work keeps Lucio up late.

  “We have to start your training.”

  “Victoria’s note said I’d be resuming the work that you and she had been working on together?” Victoria’s note is the only explanation I have for what I’m doing here. I read it so many times that I practically memorized it before I left it with Nolan.

  Aidan shakes his head. “We have a lot of ground to cover first.”

  “But then . . .” I wrinkle my nose, just like Mom would, if she were here—boy, do I wish she were—“what am I doing here if I’m not helping with your work?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Aidan turns from me to Lucio. “I’m just going to check in at the lab before we get started. Can you take her to the playground?” Lucio nods. I get the idea that Aidan isn’t talking about an actual playground. Wherever he’s asking Lucio to take me probably won’t include swings and a slide and seesaws.

  Aidan turns back to me. “Get dressed. I’ll meet you there soon.” He turns on his heel. I get up and follow him.

  “Meet me where?” I don’t know if it’s the bad dreams or the conversation I overheard last night or the fact that Aidan is leaving me with this boy I don’t even know, but I suddenly feel completely helpless. Even if I wanted to leave, I couldn’t. We’re in the middle of the jungle. My cell phone doesn’t work in this house. If Aidan left me alone, I’d be completely trapped.

  I follow him out of the kitchen and around the stairs. “Promise you won’t abandon me in the middle of Mexico!” I joke, but not really. The house takes a deep breath as Aidan opens the enormous front door. Before I can stop myself, the next eight words just come flying out of my mouth, “Just like you abandoned me sixteen years ago?” If I were in a cartoon, I’d slap my hand over my mouth like I had no idea where that sentence came from.

  Aidan closes the door gently and turns around, furrowing his brow like I’ve just spoken Greek or something. Then again, maybe Aidan speaks Greek. He probably speaks everything.

  “I never abandoned you. I thought you understood that now. Go have some breakfast. We have a lot of work to do today.”

  The door slams shut behind him. We’ve gone from hardly knowing each other to father–teen daughter cliché pretty quickly.

  “Come on,” Lucio says. “Get dressed. It’s hard work, but Aidan’s a good teacher.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s my mentor too.”

  “He is?”

  Lucio laughs. “You see anyone else around here?” He raises his arms, indicating the otherwise empty house, empty buildings, empty campus. Aidan had no choice but to mentor Lucio. There was no one else left to teach him.

  I head for the stairs, “You’re the only other luiseach here, right?”

  Leaning against the curved metal banister at the foot of the stairs, Lucio nods. “I grew up here. My parents were on Aidan’s side until the day they died.” With his left hand he toys with the tattoo on his right hand, like he’s spinning an invisible ring on his finger.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. My birth father may be cold and scientific and my birth mother may be a complete mystery, but at least I’ve always had Kat. When I came close to losing her, it made me sadder and more scared than I’d ever been in my whole life. I can’t imagine how alone Lucio must feel.

  “It was nine years ago. I was eight.” He shrugs, but his shoulders look heavy. I do the math in my head: Lucio is seventeen years old. Which means he’s been an active luiseach for at least a year.

  “How did it happen?”

  Lucio doesn’t answer right away, and I open my mouth to apologize for asking—that’s none of your business, Sunshine!—but before I can speak, he says, “A demon took them.”

  I gasp. That means that their spirits were destroyed. That Lucio is destined to forget them. “I’m sorry,” I repeat softly.

  “Thanks.” Lucio runs his fingers over his scalp; his black hair is cropped very short. No chance of it falling across his eyes like Nolan’s does. “Now, get dressed. We should get to work.”

  “Right.” I take a few steps up the stairs and then freeze in my tracks. If Lucio is a luiseach, that means his parents were luiseach too. I turn around. “I thought luiseach couldn’t be killed by dark spirits.”

  Lucio bites his thick—Ashley would call it luscious, but just the thought makes me blush—lower lip. He squeezes his hands into fists at his sides, and I can see the muscles working up and down
his arms. “I didn’t know you knew that.”

  “Why did you lie to me?” I’m annoyed this boy I hardly know thinks it’s okay to lie to me.

  “I didn’t mean to lie. I just . . . it’s easier to believe they were killed by a dark spirit.”

  “Easier than what?”

  He takes a deep breath. “Easier than the fact that they were killed for what they believed in. The luiseach on the other side of the rift were interrogating my parents in search of”—he pauses—“of some precious information. When my parents didn’t crack under pressure, they were killed for keeping their secret.”

  I cover my mouth with my hand. “I’m sorry,” I say once more. I’ve known this guy for less than an hour, and I can’t seem to stop apologizing to him.

  “It’s okay,” Lucio says solemnly. “After my parents died, Aidan took me in. Over the years, when the others left, I stayed.” From the tone of his voice it’s obvious this boy really looks up to Aidan. “Go on.” He mercifully changes the subject. “Get dressed. Believe me, you want to get out there before it gets too hot, even if you’re planning on wearing those short shorts.”

  Instantly my face turns red and I turn away. Is he flirting with me? It’s not a practice I have much experience with. I decide not to overanalyze it and skip up the stairs, taking them two at a time, even though my legs are still tired from kicking and squirming all night long.

  I shudder as I remember my nightmare. I still have a lot to learn about the rift between the luiseach, but whoever’s on the other side, they must be truly evil if they killed that nice boy’s parents.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lesson One

  Lucio leads me into the jungle behind the house and up a muddy path on an even muddier hill. Enormous trees tower around us. I wonder how old they are.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, without turning around. “This is all still part of Llevar la Luz.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I pant at his back. It must be a million degrees out here, but Lucio has barely broken a sweat.