But it’s not. Not unless I do this.
I reach into my back pocket and grab the knife. It’s become a torch and a thunderstorm for me before. I just hope it will become what I need now.
On the porch behind me Nolan begins to slump over, still weak from Helena’s torture. He leans heavily against a pillar, panting. Blood drips from the wound on the left side of his face. I’m aware of each individual drip, drip, drip as his blood lands onto the map now laying on the ground below him.
A thought flashes across Nolan’s face, and he leans down and draws a fifth circle on the map, using his blood that has pooled up below him. It looks like he’s tracing the circle right where we are on the map, in Ridgemont.
Lucio reaches out a hand to steady Nolan, slumped over the map. Lucio, who stayed by Aidan’s side. Whose parents died for the greater good.
I finally understand: They didn’t die just to keep me safe. They believed they were keeping the world safe, because they believed Aidan was right and Helena was wrong.
Saving the world is the greater good. Maybe it’s the greatest good there is.
Nolan’s tawny hair falls across his amber eyes, the way it always does when he’s figuring something out. With Ridgemont as the fifth circle, Nolan traces lines between the five circles on the map, using his blood-link ink. It looks like he’s drawing a star.
Suddenly he looks up, and I know he’s figured out what I’m about to do.
“No!” he shouts. He tries to run down the stairs, but in his current condition he isn’t fast enough.
I throw the knife onto the ground. The earth splits open at my feet, leaving an unbridgeable chasm between Nolan and me. Now he won’t be able to stop me.
The knife materializes against my sneakers. Its work isn’t done yet. I turn back to Mom. The ground shook as it opened up, and she’s fallen onto her hands and knees.
“Sunshine, what are you doing?”
“You said you’d support me no matter what.”
Her face twists with shock. Mom always understands what I’m talking about. “I can’t support this,” she counters, tears streaming down her face. I pick up the knife and throw it into the ground a second time.
Once more the ground opens up, this time on the other side of me. Now Mom can’t reach me either. I’m standing on an island all alone.
Standing next to her pretty blue car across the street, Ashley screams. Maybe she’s trying to make sense out of this—maybe she thinks it’s an earthquake or some kind of natural disaster, not a paranormal weapon at work. Everyone else knows better.
Aidan and Helena run onto the front porch, followed by Victoria, drawn by the sound of the earth breaking in two. Mom’s eyes go wide at the sight of my old art teacher—I never actually told her Victoria was still alive.
“Sunshine!” Aidan shouts. “What are you doing?” He looks nearly as horrified as Mom, his voice every bit as desperate.
Despite the space that divides me from everyone else, I’m suddenly, blissfully aware of all the love that surrounds me. It practically emanates from each of my friends and family, almost like how it feels when a spirit touches me. But instead of making me cold, this love envelopes me with warmth. Even Helena’s face—the face of the woman who wanted me eliminated for so many years—looks different. Except for our eyes, she looks more like my mirror image than ever.
Aidan was right about one thing: I feel everything. I never could hide my emotions. Mom always said I’d make a terrible gambler. Love is written all across my face. Love is all I feel.
What I do next comes as easily as water flowing downstream. I focus on the electricity in the air, on all the spirits surrounding us. Hundreds more join us within moments. This time their lives and their deaths don’t overwhelm me. This time my feelings are strong enough to overwhelm them. They feel what I’m feeling: love. Feeding off my emotions, the spirits spark a windstorm ten times stronger than what happened at Llevar la Luz, when all I could feel was anger.
The love I feel at this moment is so much more powerful than my rage was then.
The spirits and I work together. They swirl around me, lifting me. They raise me up above Mom, Nolan, Lucio, Aidan, Helena, Ashley, and Victoria, wonder written plainly on their faces. They shout as I go higher and higher, but the wind is so loud, I can’t make out the words they’re saying.
I won’t linger. There is no unfinished business waiting down there for me. Once the spirits have lifted me high enough, I begin to help them move on, sending them all my love.
I feel serene, just like the spirits releasing their bonds to Earth. Before, I struggled with helping multiple spirits move on because I repressed my emotions. But right now helping hundreds of spirits move on at once is as easy and natural as taking my next breath.
I’ve become a luiseach unlike any other.
The wind ceases, and there is a moment when everything is still. Time moves in slow motion as I begin to fall. Gravity starts pulling me down, down, down, and time slows. What happens to luiseach when we die? Nolan never came across that in his research. Do we move on, as humans do? Do we go dark if we linger too long?
I look down toward my friends and family, shouting my name: Lucio, with the tiniest hint of an accent; Ashley, high pitched and terrified (I hope someone will explain this to her when it’s over); Victoria, mournful and melodic; Helena, hoarse and surprised; Aidan, solemn and deep.
And Mom. She crawls toward the edge of the chasm, reaching out to me, but the space between us is too wide. Her voice doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before. She sounds like she’s outside of herself somehow, but not the way she was when the demon possessed her. This sound is unmistakably human. It’s the sound of anguish.
Then Nolan, clear as a bell.
He holds up the map so I can see it. I look at the lines he traced between the circles. The last circle around Ridgemont is the final point on a perfect five-pointed star.
“Someone was expecting another luiseach death in Ridgemont!” he shouts loud enough for me to hear. “Someone organized this!”
Lucio said the darkness was organized.
Out of the corner of my eye I see a gray-black blur in the distance. A man surrounded in shadow. I’ve seen him before. Seen his black coat and wide-brimmed hat. Seen his face. The face of the darkness.
He’s been watching all of this.
He’s been waiting for it.
He wants me to die here today.
My death will complete whatever powerful spell the darkness has been conjuring up. A spell that stretches the world over. I was wrong about all of this.
Suddenly, instead of peace, I’m filled with terror. Instead of falling in slow motion, I’m accelerating toward the ground rapidly. The fear of death consumes me. My ears ring as the pressure of making such a terrible mistake builds inside my head. I thought I was freeing the world of my burden on it, on everyone, but my death will only make things worse. The voices of the people I love fade, and suddenly I’m alone as I fall toward a mistake of my own making.
The chasm below me opens even wider, deeper into the earth. I look down. Swirling at the center of the chasm below me is a whirlpool of darkness. No, not just darkness. Dark spirits. Hundreds, thousands of demons are waiting for me down there.
Terrified, I close my eyes. In my mind’s eye I see an enormous white owl flying toward me. No, not flying: a little girl is throwing a stuffed animal up and down, laughing as its cotton wings flap back and forth in the breeze.
Her youthful voice calls my name, getting louder, following me down. But why? Anna can’t stop me from falling. She’s a spirit, nothing more than a presence beside me. She can’t take shape, can’t hang onto me, can’t pull my weight upward against gravity to save me.
I gasp as Anna’s ice-cold hands twine their fingers through mine.
And pull.
LOOK FOR BOOK THREE IN THE SERIES
The Haunting of Sunshine Girl
COMING 2017
Paige McKenzie, The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl)
The Awakening of Sunshine Girl (The Haunting of Sunshine Girl) Page 24