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

by Paige McKenzie

  Before we reach Aidan’s lab, I finally find my voice.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask. “How can I help them move on without actually . . . helping them move on?”

  Aidan turns to look at me. “I’m not sure,” he answers honestly. “Start by reaching out for them, one at a time. Try to communicate with them.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then, we’ll see.”

  We’ll see. Not exactly the certainty I’d been hoping for. I wanted Aidan to tell me he had a plan, to reassure me that no matter what happened, everything would be okay. To promise he’d get me out of there before my heart starts beating too quickly, before my temperature drops too low.

  Instead, he steps forward and opens the door.

  I get another glimpse of the lab (it seems like more of a research library) before the spirits hit me like a stiff breeze, as forceful as a slap against my skin. Once more, flashes of their lives and deaths spring up before my eyes. At least this time I’m prepared for the images filling my field of vision: a man throwing a ball for his beloved dog, a woman rocking her baby to sleep, a needle filled with the cancer treatment that stopped working, a man’s hand clutching his chest as his heart went into cardiac arrest.

  And again I hear their voices. Begging me for their freedom. Pleading with me to help them move on.

  Try to communicate with them.

  “I can’t help you!” I shout between chattering teeth. It’s the truth. Even if Aidan hadn’t told me not to help them move on, I’d be useless. There are so many of them and only one of me.

  “I’m sorry!” I shout as image after image flashes before me like a strobe light gone haywire. My legs feel like they’re made of jelly. How am I still standing upright? I become aware of pressure on my shoulders. Lucio must be holding me up from behind. When I slump against him, I feel that each of the muscles in his body is clenched. He’s fighting the urge to help these people move on.

  “Concentrate,” Aidan’s deep voice practically growls.

  “I’m trying,” I whisper. Tears are slipping out of my eyes. My face is so cold that the liquid freezes before it hits my chin.

  Please, the spirits plead. I can’t tell whether I’m speaking out loud or just in my head when I tell them I’m sorry.

  I would if I could.

  I’m supposed to be stronger.

  But maybe I just made them stronger.

  Strong enough to escape Aidan’s lab and turn dark.

  Strong enough to blanket the entire world in darkness.

  I was supposed to be a super-luiseach who could help spirit after spirit move on all at once, like some kind of mystical assembly line. Instead, I’m an experiment gone awry, just like the other luiseach thought.

  “You’ll never succeed if you can’t tune them out,” Aidan commands. It sounds like his teeth are clenched. Maybe he’s also fighting the urge to help these spirits move on. “Listen to only one of them at a time.”

  “I can’t,” I cry, gasping for breath.

  “Your ability to feel all of them at once weakens you. You can’t focus,” Aidan says firmly. “You must learn to control it. Everything but the task at hand should fade into the background.”

  I try to shout back at him, but I can’t. Because I can’t speak. I think my mouth has frozen shut. My heart is beating so fast that if it were hooked up to one of the machines in Mom’s hospital, instead of one beep after another, it would emit one long, endless wail. I close my eyes and imagine I hear it keening.

  No. Not imagine. I can hear it. A high-pitched wail that nearly drowns out every other sound.

  I don’t figure out what the sound is until Lucio drags me from the lab, slamming the door shut behind him. Aidan is shouting in protest, and even in my weakened state, I can tell that this is probably the first time Lucio has ever knowingly disobeyed him.

  “They were killing her!” Lucio shouts.

  My eyes are still closed. But now all I see is darkness.

  Aidan’s voice: “Don’t be absurd. You know as well as I know that they can’t kill her.”

  “Her body was going into shock,” Lucio counters. “She’s ice cold. We’re miles from the nearest hospital.”

  “And what would you have told the doctors? That despite the tropical climate, this girl managed to develop hypothermia?”

  It’s the kind of thing I would say, the kind of thing I have thought more than once: human doctors are useless for paranormal problems.

  “I would’ve come up with something before I let her freeze to death!”

  It’s so hard to hear them that it sounds like this argument is happening miles away from me. Lucio folds me into his warm arms. I know he’s not taller than I am, but right now he feels like a giant. A strong, friendly giant. Like Fezzik in one of Mom’s favorite movies, The Princess Bride. When I get home, we’ll have a movie night. She’ll make popcorn, and we’ll watch that movie together, arguing over which of us is hogging the blanket just like we used to.

  The last time Mom made popcorn was on New Year’s Eve. When it wasn’t Mom making the popcorn at all but rather the water demon that had taken over her body.

  Maybe normal things like movie nights aren’t part of my life anymore.

  I’m aware of Lucio’s hands rubbing my arms, up and down, up and down, trying to heat up my icy skin. Eventually Aidan’s arms wrap around me alongside Lucio’s, and I feel my body begin to thaw.

  I open my eyes. That’s when I discover what that wailing sound was. My mouth wasn’t frozen shut after all. When I finally understand why Aidan and Lucio sounded like they were arguing from miles away: I was straining to hear them over the sound of my own voice.

  This whole time I’ve been screaming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Elimination

  “I’ll draw you a bath,” Lucio offers later. Draw you a bath. A phrase that doesn’t exist outside of old novels. Except, apparently it does for me.

  Lucio fills the tub in the bathroom on the second floor until it’s nearly overflowing with warm water.

  “You should let it cool down a little before you get in,” he says, lingering in the doorway. “Too much heat might be a shock to your system.”

  I nod. I haven’t said an actual sentence since we got back to the house. My throat is so hoarse from screaming that I’m not sure what I’ll sound like.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Lucio says, shifting from one foot to the other awkwardly, like he’s feeling shy.

  “Lucio?” I manage to croak before he walks away. He turns back to face me.

  “You said you’ve lived in Llevar la Luz all your life, right?”

  Slowly he nods. I think he knows what I’m getting at.

  “You would have been one year old,” I say finally.

  He nods again. “I remember the sound of them screaming,” he says.

  “The women?” I prompt. “When they miscarried?” Lucio hesitates, and I add, “I can handle it. I promise.”

  He takes a deep breath. “I’ve never heard anything like it since. Not until today,” he adds, gesturing to my neck. To the raw, red, exhausted throat beneath. “I crawled into the living room downstairs,” he continues. “My parents thought I was sleeping.” I imagine Lucio crawling, following the sound of arguing voices. Hiding behind one of the enormous antique chairs. “When my mom saw me crouched in a corner, she carried me back to my room, even though I kicked and screamed bloody murder.”

  I smile. “Sounds like you were a real angel.”

  “Let’s just say I had a strong sense of self from an early age.”

  “Right.”

  “But my mom never lost her patience with me, not even that night, with everything that was going on. She put me to bed and sang to me until I fell asleep.” He smiles softly at the memory, then swallows it away. “But I didn’t stay sleeping for long. That night I had a nightmare that would recur for weeks.”

  “What did you dream?”

  He doesn’t a
nswer right away, like he’s not sure he should tell me.

  “Say it,” I plead. Steam rises from the bathtub behind me.

  “I dreamed about Helena squeezing a tiny baby so tight, it was like she was squeezing the life out of her. I dreamed she was trying to kill you.”

  I shake my head. “Aidan said he was the one who offered to do it.”

  Lucio shrugs. “I know. But I was a baby. I probably heard one thing and imagined that I saw another, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyhow, I have to go.”

  I nod, knowing that in a few minutes I’ll hear the familiar roar of Lucio’s motorcycle, Clementine, taking off the way it does every day as he tracks the missing spirit.

  “Any luck?”

  Lucio shakes his head. “Not yet.”

  “But it still hasn’t turned dark, right?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admits. Before I can say anything—and I was about to say something along the lines of What do you mean you’re not sure? Does the demon we saw have something to do with all this? Is it here to help turn the lost spirit dark?—Lucio says, “It looks like your bath is the right temperature now.” He gestures to the tub behind me. I glance at the still water and am suddenly aware of the ache in my muscles, more intense than anything I’ve felt before. I guess I never had to work as hard as I did today.

  “Thanks,” I say as Lucio closes the bathroom door behind him. I listen to his footsteps fade as he walks through the hallway and down the stairs. Then I undress and sink beneath the warm water until my own splashing is the only sound I can hear.

  It’s the first time I’ve taken a bath since I learned how Anna died.

  After my bath, I change into sweatpants and a sweatshirt I stole from Mom months ago. I grab the owl from the nursery and stick my head outside the open window in my bedroom. I try to concentrate. Try to focus. But instead of Anna, when I close my eyes, the same images I saw in Aidan’s lab play out in my mind’s eye.

  Aidan is right. I can’t focus. Because all I can see is the lives led by the spirits I couldn’t help.

  If I can’t even help the spirit of one little girl move on before she turns dark, how will I ever help all of them?

  I slam the window shut. Well, slam is a bit of an overstatement. My muscles are about as useful as rubber at the moment, so it’s more like I struggle to get the window about halfway shut and then give up, leaving the stuffed owl on the windowsill. Eliminate. Quietly I say the word out loud. Then again, louder this time. Helena isn’t the only one trying to eliminate something. Aidan wants to eliminate the need for luiseach. And he thinks I might be the key to that elimination. Just like The Last Luiseach and The Luiseach to End All Luiseach, it sounds like the name of a movie, a summer blockbuster: The Eliminator.

  Lucio carried me down the stairs from Aidan’s lab and out into the sunlight today. As we crossed the courtyard, Aidan said, “We’ll try again tomorrow.” My throat was so sore from screaming that I didn’t protest, even though I was literally too frozen in place to be useful in his lab today. If Aidan is wrong, then my . . . elimination could save the luiseach species so that they could go on protecting the human race like they have for millennia.

  I will try again tomorrow. Because if we can’t eliminate the need for luiseach in Aidan’s lab, then . . .

  I shake my head. Aidan will never let Helena eliminate me.

  Will he?

  Strange Words

  What a stroke of genius it was to invoke the name Abner Jones; the boy seems more than a little in awe of Aidan’s old friend. Each afternoon I come to the coffee shop on Main Street bearing news of another revelation from Professor Jones’s files. (No matter that I make them up as I go along.) Nolan takes frantic notes, hanging on my every word. He pretends his interest is just academic, like mine, and I pretend to believe him. I pretend that I don’t know that he’s trying to make sense of everything that’s happened to him since he met the girl he’s now tied to.

  I think the boy will be particularly excited about today’s discovery.

  “So,” I begin my lie, twirling my curly hair around my finger like I’m unsure of myself, “the university said they can’t find most of Professor Jones’s files anymore. His wife must have taken them when he died or something.”

  “Or something,” Nolan murmurs, trying to hide a knowing grin.

  “But they did manage to find a couple of boxes in their archives, and they let me take them. I think they were glad to get rid of them, honestly.” I pause and smile. Reminding him that other people don’t care about these things like we do is an opportunity to strengthen our bond. “Anyway, I keep coming across these words in Professor Jones’s files that I don’t understand.”

  “What kind of words?” Nolan asks. He shifts in his seat as though he knows what’s coming.

  “Well, it’s strange. I see the words mentor and protector—and obviously I recognize those words—but they’re always used in reference to a word I’ve never seen before: luiseach.” I pronounce the word incorrectly on purpose, pretending not to notice the way the extra syllables make Nolan squirm.

  “You’ve never heard that word before, have you?” I ask innocently.

  Nolan doesn’t answer, so I go on talking. “In one of the professor’s notebooks he writes that relationships between luiseach and their protectors are often incredibly intense. Like, their bond is stronger than the bond between parents and their children, between brothers and sisters.”

  “So it’s like a familial kind of bond?” Nolan breaks in.

  “Not exactly,” I say. “At least, not according to the professor’s notes. Sometimes the intensity of their connection can lead to romance.” Nolan can’t hide his discomfort: he presses his hands onto the table and tosses his hair away from his face and shifts in his chair.

  “You’re sure the professor’s notes said romance?” he asks.

  “Definitely,” I answer. “He made it sound really intense. Like protectors and their luiseach literally can’t keep their hands off each other.” I sigh wistfully, resting my chin on my palm. Nolan lifts his hand off the table, flexing and releasing it restlessly. “I have no idea what all of it means, but it sure sounds romantic, doesn’t it?”

  Nolan leans back in his chair, raising his arms up like he’s given up. “I have never been this confused in my entire life,” he says miserably.

  I blink innocently. “What do you mean? Because of the word luiseach? I’m sure I can find some sort of explanation for that word in Professor Jones’s notes. I just need to keep digging.”

  “No,” Nolan answers. “I don’t mean because of the word luiseach.” He pronounces it correctly.

  “Then what?” I ask.

  Nolan takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. I sense the instant he decides to tell me everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Argi and Jairo

  I spend every day in Aidan’s lab, every evening soaking in a tub of warm water, and every night tossing and turning with nightmares while Lucio is out hunting the missing spirit and Aidan is back to his lab to write about what happened during the day in his log.

  “Does luiseach work always wear you out like this?” I ask Lucio as I take a bite of soggy cereal one morning. (It’s so humid here that Cheerios lose their crunch even before you add any milk.) I’m so hot that my skin itches, even though I know a world of cold waits for me in Aidan’s lab like a paranormally powered air conditioner.

  He shakes his head. “Just the opposite, actually.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, think about how you feel when you help a spirit move on.”

  I sigh dramatically. “It’s been so long that I can barely remember.”

  “Sure you can,” Lucio counters with a smile, and of course he’s right. Because helping a spirit move on usually feels wonderful.

  “All luiseach gain strength from helping spirits move on.”

  I nod. Luiseach literally means light-bringer; I n
ever feel quite so much light as when a spirit has just passed through me to the other side. But now every day at Aidan’s lab I’m not just overwhelmed by spirits; I’m also resisting my instincts: all I want is to help them move on, and I can’t allow myself to so much as try. I feel like the least sunshine-y version of myself. I don’t know how Aidan has done this for so long, though I guess it explains why he seems to be the world’s most serious luiseach. It explains Victoria too: by the time I knew her, she had given up her powers and was unable to follow the instincts that had guided her since her sixteenth birthday—so she was a whole lot creepier than she was cheerful.

  “After so many days of not helping spirits move on, I think my light is about to go out.”

  Lucio smiles sympathetically. “I know it’s hard.” He drums his fingers on the table across from me. I watch the white tattoo dance on his finger as he moves.

  “What does it say?” I ask finally.

  “What does what say?”

  “Your tattoo.” I point with my spoon. “I can tell that it’s words, but I don’t know what they are or what they mean.”

  “They’re not really words,” Lucio explains. “They’re names.”

  “Whose?”

  “My parents.” He reaches his arm across the table and spreads his fingers so I can see. “Argi,” he says, tracing the letters on one side. “That’s my mother. And Jairo,” he adds, turning his hand. “That’s my dad.”

  When he says the names out loud, I finally understand something that eluded me before now. How did I not put the pieces together sooner? If Nolan were here, he’d have figured it out ages ago.

  Lucio said that his parents were killed for what they believed in, that luiseach on the other side of the rift were interrogating them for information. But Argi and Jairo kept their secret. And now I finally understand that their secret was me. They must have ventured outside the borders of Llevar la Luz, where Helena found them and overpowered them, trying to force them to reveal where I was. They died rather than give me up.