The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  My beloved once called me a sadist. If by that she meant I enjoy causing the suffering of those who deserve to suffer, then yes, I am a sadist. I myself prefer the term “justice minded.” After all, I am merely restoring the balance that his ancestors and their followers destroyed so long ago, so unjustly, during the First War.

  In any case, I had the feeling she liked my sadism, understood it. She too is quite the sadist, even though she would never admit to it. We are two of a kind, both willing to do what must be done for the greater good. Which necessarily involves the suffering of others, of the wrongdoers—and also some innocents.

  Indeed, she may suffer when I finally soul terminate the girl. But her suffering will not last, as she too wants the girl dead.

  As for his suffering… that is another matter altogether.

  For that I plan to have a front-row seat.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Color of Sunshine

  Sunshine!” the barista guy calls out. “Your drinks are ready!”

  Nolan and I walk over to the counter to pick up our cappuccinos. We’re at the Dream Bean Coffee Shop, which opened up in downtown Ridgemont while I was in Mexico. It used to be a sad little Chinese takeout place sandwiched between the hardware store and the dry cleaner’s. Now it’s a trendy-looking café, or what passes for trendy in Ridgemont—paintings by local artists cover the pumpkin-colored walls, and a huge crystal chandelier hangs over a motley assortment of antique tables and chairs.

  “Is that a made-up name?” the barista guy asks as he hands me my mug.

  “No, it’s my real name.”

  “You’re like that actress, Moon Beam something.”

  I don’t explain to him that Mom named me Sunshine because I made her feel like she was in a perpetual state of sunshine. Which makes me wonder—what did Aidan and Helena originally call me? Did they make a list of cute baby names while I was growing in her belly, or were they too busy conducting scientific experiments in order to turn me into a mutant freak? I can’t imagine not being called Sunshine. Of course, I also can’t imagine not being Kat Griffith’s daughter, not growing up in our sunny little house in Austin. Especially as the alternative was probably a gravesite in the jungle surrounding Llevar la Luz.

  My phone beeps with a text.

  Are you okay? When are you coming home?

  This is, like, the twentieth text Mom has sent me today.

  Nolan and I just got to the coffee place.

  I’ll be home in about an hour.

  Be safe, Sunshine. Love you!

  Love you too, Mom!

  Nolan and I return to our table with our drinks and a banana-nut muffin to share. Sitting down, I reach for the muffin to split it in half, and Nolan does the same thing at the same time. His fingertips accidentally brush against mine.

  No queasiness. I smile and twine my fingers through his. He smiles back, then startles like a frightened rabbit and pulls away.

  “Sorry! I can’t. We can’t.”

  “But we’re just holding hands!” I point out.

  “Still.”

  Nolan is taking this new dating protocol thing way too seriously. It’s like we’re a couple in a Victorian novel—deeply in love but unable to show physical affection because of society’s rules, which would be kind of romantic except that it’s not. It’s frustrating. I waited a long time for us to act like a real boyfriend-girlfriend, and now I have to wait even longer. Ugh.

  I take a sip of my cappuccino. The espresso is strong, and the milky foam tickles my lips. “So, um… something weird happened in English today. Two weird things. No, make that three.”

  “Tell me. By the way, you have foam all over your chin.”

  “Oh!” I swipe at my chin with the back of my sleeve. “Okay, so first of all, Victoria is my new English teacher.”

  “Seriously?”

  I explain about “Ms. Warkomski” and her rocker get-up. “Ms. Chen just happened to have her babies yesterday, like a month early, and Victoria just happened to be the new sub.”

  “Wow.”

  “You don’t think Aidan actually… I mean, is he that powerful? Can he cast a spell to make babies be born early? That’s crazy, right?”

  “Knowing him, it’s entirely possible.”

  “True. Anyway, I think he wanted another bodyguard or whatever to keep an eye on me.”

  “Did you talk to Victoria after class?”

  “No. I tried, but she just winked and waved me away. I think she’s trying to stay… what’s that word?”

  “Incognito.”

  “Yup, that’s it. It sounds like a coffee drink—‘I’ll have an incognito, please! With an extra espresso shot!’”

  Nolan grins. He is one of the few people on this planet who appreciates my super-dork sense of humor. “‘Incognito’ comes from the Latin word ‘incognitus,’ meaning ‘unknown.’ What’s the second thing?” he asks.

  “Huh?”

  “The second weird thing that happened in English.”

  “Oh right.”

  I take a bite of the banana-nut muffin and gather my thoughts. “There’s a new student in the class. Besides me, that is, although I’m not new so much as reinstated. His name is Bastian something.”

  “Yeah, I think he’s in a couple of my classes too.” Nolan nods. “Bastian Jansen.”

  “Yes, him! So we’re all listening to Victoria going on about Charles Dickens. The best of times, the worst of times, the French Revolution, blah, blah, blah. When we’re actually supposed to be discussing Jane Austen, which she eventually gets around to… anyway, all of a sudden this spirit shows up. A light spirit. Like, our age, which was so sad, especially because he committed suicide. I start to help him move on, but then I notice that… well, this is going to sound insane… but I notice that Bastian is reacting to the spirit too.”

  “Reacting how?”

  “Bastian was looking right at the spirit, and he seemed kind of… well, uncomfortable. Agitated.”

  Nolan considers this. “Is it possible that he just sensed the spirit? Humans do sometimes feel the presence of a spirit without actually being able to see it.”

  “Maybe, but… argh, I don’t know.”

  “It’s possible too that he knew the guy who died? Maybe they had some sort of connection? The spirit could have been reaching out to Bastian.”

  “I guess so. Maybe. But then the spirit moved on without me touching him.”

  “You’re becoming more powerful. You’re enabling spirits to move on without your help, which is what Aidan wanted, right?” Nolan cocks his head. “So what’s the third weird thing?”

  I hold out my right wrist, which is smooth and unmarred. “The spider-web thingy… during Victoria’s class it reappeared. In a slightly different pattern. Then when Wesley’s spirit moved on, it disappeared.”

  Nolan inspects the spot where the mark used to be. “That’s odd. Do you remember what the pattern looked like?”

  “Sort of?”

  “Can you draw it for me?”

  He slides his notebook and pen across the table as I make a quick sketch. He puts on his gold wire-rimmed glasses to study the sketch, then moves his lips soundlessly as he counts the lines.

  “It’s the same number of lines as before, except rearranged,” he says after a moment. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand either.”

  “I’ll look into it. Lucio and I are meeting at the library in”—he glances at his watch—“exactly forty-eight minutes. We have a lot of work to do on the subject of pentagrams, of course, but we’ll check out these other things too.”

  “Thank you!” I break off another piece of the muffin. “You mentioned before that you uncovered some stuff on pentagrams at the library yesterday? When you were there by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what did you find?”

  “Well, so pentagrams have a long and fascinating tradition in many cultures. Of course, first and foremost it’s a mathemati
cal shape, a five-pointed star. The word comes from the Greek: ‘pente,’ five, and ‘gramme,’ line. It is a simple star polygon—the simplest star polygon.”

  I nod, remembering my sophomore-year geometry. “Right.”

  “A pentagram consists of fifteen line segments and ten points.”

  “You mean five points.”

  “Five on the outer tips of the star and five on the pentagon that forms in the middle of the star. See?”

  “Nope, not really.”

  Nolan flips to a clean page in his notebook and begins sketching. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” he counts.

  “Okay, now I get it.”

  “Anyway, that’s the mathematical piece of it. The history of its symbolism is more interesting.”

  “Interesting how?”

  “Well, the normal pentagram has various meanings. The five senses, the five wounds of Jesus Christ, etcetera, etcetera. Some believe that the top point of the pentagram represents good because it’s the superiority of spirit over matter. Like the top point is the heavens and the lower four points are earth, air, fire, and water.” Nolan adds, “There are other meanings attached to the pentagram too. One creation myth relates it to Chronus, a serpentine god with three heads.”

  I think about the three nasty serpent-demons we encountered on Saturday. “Are his three heads all snake heads?”

  “Actually no. He has a lion head, a bull head, and a human head. He supposedly placed seeds in five spots on Earth so he could create the cosmos—the universe.”

  “Huh.” I do a mental double-take. “Back up. Did you say normal pentagram? Is there such a thing as an abnormal pentagram?”

  “That’s where things get really interesting.” Nolan rotates his notebook a few degrees so the pentagram is tipped on its side. “See how there’s no more single top point that goes straight up but instead two top points that go sort of northeast and northwest? Occultists and others believe this type of reversed pentagram symbolizes evil—the triumph of matter over the heavens. Some even think the northeast and northwest points are the horns of a goat.”

  “Like a demonic goat, not a nice, cute farmy goat.”

  “Exactly.”

  We lapse into silence and sip our cappuccinos. An old jazz tune plays softly over the speakers—Billie Holiday is singing “Let’s Fall in Love.” At the next table a girl giggles and leans into the curve of her boyfriend’s neck; he holds her close and kisses the top of her head.

  Longing tugs at my heart, and for a moment I forget all about pentagrams. All I can think about is Nolan. I imagine leaning into the curve of his neck and Nolan holding me close and kissing the top of my head.

  Nolan is watching them too. “Soon,” he says quietly.

  “How soon?”

  “When I know you’re safe.”

  After we finish our coffees Nolan insists on driving me home on his way to the library. We don’t talk about dark spirits or demons or anything creepy-scary in the car, just silly stuff like the biology teacher’s new toupee and the ugly cat-puke color they painted the cafeteria walls over spring break. I also tell him about Tiffany Ramirez’s spring dance committee.

  “Yes,” Nolan says emphatically, turning onto my street.

  “Yes… what?”

  “Yes, I’ll go to the spring dance with you.”

  I blush, and my heart does a goofy, giddy somersault. “I didn’t realize I’d asked you.”

  “Fine, I’m asking you. We can go as friends…”

  “… unless you and Lucio have solved the pentagram puzzle and Aidan has caught Dubu and put him in demon jail or whatever. The dance is, like, a couple of weeks away. Then we can go as not-just-friends.”

  “Yes, okay. I’d like that.”

  When we reach my house he parks his car to walk me to the porch.

  “I’ll call you later?” he says.

  “Yes, please!”

  I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him lightly on the lips—quickly, before he can react.

  “That’s not very just-friends,” he chides me.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He gives me a little wave and walks back to his car.

  My heart is still doing goofy, giddy somersaults.

  Humming the Billie Holiday song, I turn and start to open the front door, but it’s locked. I thought Mom and Ashley were home—maybe they went grocery shopping for dinner stuff?

  I reach into my pocket for my key. There’s a movement behind me.

  “Nolan, did you forget something?” I say as I turn around.

  But Nolan isn’t there. No one is there. I glance around, suddenly panicked—could it be Dubu? But he’s not there either.

  Somewhere in the pine trees I see a movement. Is it Helena, who is supposed to be watching me between four and midnight?

  I hear a faint fluttering sound, like the sound of feathers. Then… silence.

  My gaze drops to the porch floor, where there’s a dead bird at my feet.

  It’s bright yellow.

  The color of sunshine.

  CHAPTER 12

  Bye, Bye Birdie

  I drop to my knees and look at the bird closely to make sure it’s really dead. It really is. Its eyes are black and dull. Its chest is eerily still.

  Was it the work of a neighborhood cat? But there are no neighborhood cats that I know of, and Lex Luthor is strictly indoors. The bird has no bite marks or scratches. There is no blood.

  I also don’t recognize this particular kind of bird. I’m not an expert, but it looks exotic, out of place. Mostly it’s just sparrows and blue jays and crows around here. This one is small and bright yellow with white-ringed eyes. Could it be someone’s missing pet? Did it escape from its cage and fly out the window?

  “What happened to you?” I ask the bird.

  One of its wings flutters. Good golly, it’s still alive!

  The porch swing creaks. Pine needles scuttle against my ankles. My blue owl scarf flaps against my face.

  The bird isn’t alive—it’s just the wind blowing and stirring its feathers.

  Biting back my disappointment, I unravel my scarf and gently, carefully wrap its tiny body. I unlock the front door and bring the bundle inside.

  Mom and Ashley are cooking in the kitchen. A delicious, buttery, oniony smell fills the air.

  “Hey there, Sunshine State! I’m so glad you’re home!” Mom calls out. She wipes her hands on her faded brown Longhorns T-shirt and rushes up to hug me. She smells like butter and onions too. Ashley stands at the stove, frying little dumplings in a skillet, her long hair knotted back with a pink scrunchie.

  “Ashley’s teaching me how to make her grandmother’s pierogi recipe. How was your first day back? Did Aidan and Lucio keep you safe—and that woman too?” Mom refuses to say Helena’s name.

  “My first day was fine. Ish.” I don’t want to tell them about the Kirsten spirit or the Wesley spirit just yet. “I found a dead bird.”

  Mom frowns. “You mean at your school?”

  “No, on our front porch. Just now.”

  “What?”

  I hold out the scarf-covered bundle. Ashley turns off the stove and joins us. Lex Luthor trots into the kitchen, tail high, and sniffs curiously.

  “Aww.” Ashley makes a sad face when she sees the bird. “We should bury it in the backyard and give it a little funeral. Maybe plant some pretty flowers.”

  “That would be nice,” I agree. “I thought we might make posters and post them around the neighborhood. You know, in case this is someone’s pet.”

  “Totally! I can help with the posters.” Ashley reaches into her back pocket, pulls out her phone, and takes a picture.

  “I’ve never seen a bird like this before. I wonder what kind it is?” says Mom.

  “I don’t know, but maybe Nolan can find out. He’s good at stuff like that,” I reply.

  “Here, Sunny-G, text him our poster photo,” Ashley suggests.

  She sends me the photo, and
I quickly forward it to Nolan with a brief message about what happened. He texts back immediately and says he’ll check it out while he’s at the library with Lucio.

  After dinner Mom, Ashley, and I go to the backyard to bury the bird. It’s chilly out, like winter-coat chilly, and the sky swirls with twilight colors: lavender, pink, and gold.

  Mom puts the bird in an empty shoebox lined with an old shawl. I dig a hole under a Douglas fir tree, put the box in it, and cover it with dirt. Ashley finds a snowdrop plant near the chain-link fence that surrounds our property and transplants it next to the grave. The tiny white flowers droop forlornly. Then I stick a splintery piece of two-by-four in the ground on which I’ve scribbled the words “R.I.P. BIRD” in magic marker. Maybe I can make a nicer marker later.

  “Bye bye, birdie. We hope you have a nice life in birdie heaven,” Ashley says, blowing kisses at the grave.

  Mom says a little prayer. I close my eyes and try to sense the bird’s spirit. Can I help it cross over? I’ve never done that with a nonhuman spirit. But I don’t feel or see anything. Either I don’t have that ability or the bird is already gone.

  That night I lie in bed tossing and turning. Ashley is asleep on her air mattress. She’s definitely out because she’s snoring lightly and also muttering in her sleep—something about what to wear for the spring dance. (While we were getting into our PJs she saw Tiffany’s yellow flier sitting on my desk and immediately insisted we both join the spring dance committee plus go dress shopping together.) Lex Luthor is curled up at her feet. Oscar isn’t in the room; I think he got used to sleeping with Mom while I was away in Mexico.

  I glance at my mint-green clock radio: 2:12 A.M. Not a good time to be wide awake and staring up at the ceiling. I try counting sheep, then elephants, then brontosauruses, but none of that works. I run through my favorite passages from my favorite Victorian novels, but that doesn’t work either. My brain is buzzing and whirling with a million thoughts. The dead yellow bird. Dubu. The pentagram spell. The four mysterious luiseach deaths. Latoya. Mrs. Ostricher. Wesley. Kirsten. Helena and her council. My spider-web mark, which thankfully hasn’t returned, although I keep touching my right wrist and checking it for new creepy, bumpy lines.