The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  But destiny is inescapable. I will teach her that. Perhaps it will be our first lesson.

  The weapon took longer to manifest than I would have liked. The girl simply couldn’t concentrate. Easily distracted by her concern for Katherine, for the boy—even for Victoria and Anna, whom she barely knew and couldn’t possibly have loved already. She needs a stronger will, a sharper focus. There will always be distractions; she has to resist such things. If she isn’t careful, they will become her greatest weakness.

  Perhaps that will be our second lesson.

  Today she helped her first spirit move on. She trusted her intuition long enough to allow the spirit to flow through her. She granted the spirit peace and, in so doing, found an instant of peace herself. I sensed the moment the spirit was released into the ether. I felt the smile on Sunshine’s face.

  She is ready. It is time for me to make my presence known.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Mentor Arrives

  The drive home from the hospital is (of course) foggy. Last night’s rain has all but washed away the snow. Only tiny patches of white remain. I lean my head against the window and stare at the homes we drive past. A shrunken snowman melts in someone’s front yard, looking pathetic and defeated.

  What exactly did I do back there? Did I help that woman . . . move on? It just felt natural, like Victoria said it would.

  Not just natural. It felt good. I liked helping her find peace. For an instant I was at peace too. For once, just like Victoria said, I didn’t feel awkward and clumsy and out of place. I felt like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Maybe Victoria was right: I’ve never fit in because being a luiseach was what I was supposed to be doing instead. If I give up my powers, does that mean I’ll never feel that kind of peace, that kind of right-ness, again?

  I wish I’d been there when Victoria passed. I wish hers was the spirit I helped move on.

  Maybe, finally freed from the confines of my house, Anna was with Victoria when she died. Maybe they’ll never have to be apart again.

  I really hope so.

  Finally the tears make their slow, sad descent across my cheeks.

  “Oh sweetie,” Mom says. “The doctors did all they could.”

  I nod, but the truth is, I’m not sure the doctors had a chance. They had no idea what they were really dealing with. They thought it was a woman who’d been submerged in rain and flood water. Not that it would have made much difference if they had known. It’s not like the hospital has a doctor who specializes in demonic injuries who could have saved the day if only we’d told them the truth about what happened last night.

  Shouldn’t my mentor be here by now? I hated this test, but I passed it. I got rid of the demon, saved my mother’s life, and protected Anna’s spirit. I’m ready to meet him, ready to make a deal, just like Victoria did. Ready to give up my powers, no matter how good it felt to use them this morning.

  Mom turns into the driveway. Through the fog I see Nolan sitting on our front porch. He doesn’t have his jacket—I’m wearing it, and I don’t plan on taking it off anytime soon—so he’s bundled up in a heather gray sweatshirt with a scarf, his breath coming out in puffs of steam. His blond hair peeks out from the corners of his gray hat, pulled down low over his amber eyes.

  “What’s he doing here?” I ask. His big Chrysler isn’t in the driveway; he must have walked here from his house.

  Trying to lighten the mood, Mom smiles. “Guess he just can’t stay away.”

  “It’s not like that,” I insist, but I’m blushing. Because maybe it’s not like that, but it’s also not entirely not not like that, and I’m pretty sure Mom can tell.

  I guess that’s the one good thing about her absence the past few months. She would have been teasing me about Nolan the whole time.

  Nolan stands up as I approach. He holds out a folded piece of paper.

  “What’s that?” I ask without taking it. From inside the house Oscar barks. Mom opens the front door, and he bounds out onto the porch, leaping for joy. I guess we’re not the only ones who are happy the demon is gone. Mom crouches down to pet him, and he starts covering her face with doggy kisses, his way of saying, I missed you I missed you I missed you.

  “Victoria asked me to give it to you.”

  “Victoria?” I echo. “When? Before last night?”

  “No,” Nolan shakes his head. “She stopped by my house this morning.”

  Mom turns from Oscar to us. “What?” she says, straightening up to stand.

  “You mean, her spirit visited you?” I say carefully, and Nolan looks at me like I’m crazy. Butterflies flutter gently in my stomach as I wait for his answer.

  “Of course not. Victoria dropped it off and told me to give it to you. Besides, if it were her spirit, I wouldn’t have been able to take the letter. I’m not the luiseach here—you are.”

  “What’s a luiseach?” Mom asks.

  Nolan and I exchange a look with a capital L, and the butterflies in my belly flap their wings harder. I shake my head. I know I can’t keep this a secret forever, but I’m just not ready to tell Mom yet. She’s a scientist, and it’s not going to be easy to convince her that her daughter is some kind of paranormal-guardian-angel thing. No way do I want to start arguing with her all over again. Not when I just got her back.

  “I’ll explain everything eventually,” I promise.

  “Does it have to do with all that creeptastic stuff you haven’t been able to stop talking about since we moved here?” she asks.

  “I never called it creeptastic, Mom. You did.”

  “What did you call it?”

  “I preferred just plain old creepy.”

  “Well, I like creeptastic better.” Mom grins and I groan. I lean forward and wrap my arms around her. I inhale deeply, smelling the familiar combination of her perfume and shampoo. She rocks me back and forth like I’m a baby. Which, I guess—to her at least—I still am.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been myself lately,” Mom whispers into my hair. I shake my head, because she has nothing to be sorry for. None of this is her fault. My mentor did this to her—did this to us. Put my mother at risk, Victoria at risk, Anna’s spirit at risk—all just to test me.

  If he ever shows up, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind, as Mom would say. For the first time the expression sounds horrifying to me, needlessly graphic, like I’m literally going to split open my skull and offer up a chunk of my brain. This guy has messed with my mind enough; I’m not about to give him any free access to it.

  Mom lets me go. “I’ll let you and Nolan talk,” she says solemnly, stepping inside the house. Oscar trots along behind her.

  As soon as the front door is closed Nolan asks, “How could Victoria’s spirit have visited me anyway? She’d have had to be—”

  “Gone,” I finish for him, a lump rising in my throat once more. “We just came from the hospital. They told us she passed away early this morning.”

  I expect him to look devastated, but instead he calmly shakes his head. “Not possible. It was after ten when she rang my doorbell.”

  I feel shivers up and down my spine but not the same cold ones I felt in the hospital. These are shivers of something else. Understanding. I chew my bottom lip and pull the jacket’s leather sleeves down over my wrists, trying to work out what all of this means.

  “But . . . Victoria wasn’t a luiseach anymore,” I begin softly.

  Nolan understands what I’m thinking immediately. After all, he’s the one who told me: A luiseach’s spirit—unlike the spirits of mere mortals—cannot be taken, damaged, or destroyed by a ghost or a demon.

  “She gave up her powers,” he says slowly. “But she was still born luiseach.”

  She must have retained some of the qualities of being a luiseach despite what she gave up. After all, she saw Anna last night somehow. And her house was so warm and cozy, as though she had the power to keep spirits—and the chill th
at comes with them—away.

  “So the demon could hurt her,” I say, thinking out loud, “but not destroy her.”

  “She must have flatlined at the hospital,” Nolan surmises. “They declared her dead and sent her off to the morgue—”

  “And then, when no one was looking, she simply stood up and walked away,” I finish. The lump in my throat vanishes.

  “To my house so she could give me this.” He holds Victoria’s letter out in front of him. Carefully I take it from his hands. Nolan and I lower ourselves onto the front porch steps as I unfold the pages.

  Victoria’s handwriting is old fashioned, something out of another century. It looks like she must have written with an antique quill pen, the kind I’ve always wanted to find for myself.

  “Read it out loud,” Nolan says.

  “Dearest Sunshine,” I begin. “Congratulations. You’ve passed your test. I’m so glad I was able to play a small part in your success.”

  “A small part?” I interrupt myself. “I couldn’t have done it without her.”

  “Keep going,” Nolan urges.

  “Thank you for saving my daughter. Although memories of my husband continue to fade, the knowledge that my daughter will live in my heart forever will temper the pain of losing him. Finally, Anna has a chance to find peace.

  “Please thank Nolan for his aid. And help him understand his part in all of this.”

  “My part?” Nolan echoes. I keep reading.

  “I don’t think either of you has realized yet that Nolan is your protector. The two of you are inextricably connected for the rest of your lives.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nolan protests immediately, jumping to his feet. He begins pacing back and forth on the porch behind me. “I was useless last night. You’re the one who protected us, not the other way around.” He takes off his hat and runs his hands through his fine hair nervously; it sticks up almost straight with static electricity, making me smile. “I’m just a bookish teenager who likes doing research.”

  “And I’m just a dorky girl who likes shopping for vintage clothes,” I counter. “If I can be a luiseach, then you can be my protector.”

  Maybe this explains everything—the way that I’m warm when he’s near, the way the creepy feeling diminishes. It could be my body’s way of telling me to keep Nolan close.

  But then why does it feel so wrong when he gets too close? Why doesn’t it feel right to hug him, to hold his hand?

  I turn back to the letter, hoping that Victoria has explained, but there’s no mention of the way Nolan makes me feel. Instead, I read, “A protector doesn’t just protect his luiseach. He protects knowledge. Nolan, you will be responsible for helping Sunshine learn.” I look up at my friend again. “Sounds like you’re exactly what a protector is.”

  The knowing smile Victoria flashed when I talked about Nolan—it wasn’t because she was amused by our adorable puppy love; it was because she had just figured out he was my protector.

  I keep reading. “Please look after Anna while I’m gone—gone?” I ask, interrupting myself again. “Where? Why?”

  Nolan adds, “Why hasn’t Anna moved on? Now that the demon is gone, what’s stopping her?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer anxiously. If Anna hasn’t moved on, have I really passed the test? Wasn’t that part of it? I go back to the letter. “My daughter still has work to do in this world, but I hope all of us will be in each other’s presence again someday. For now know that your mentor—who was also my former mentor—will be pleased and proud to work with you.”

  “You and Victoria have the same mentor?” Nolan asks.

  “Apparently,” I answer, trying to remember everything she told me about him. For the first few years they worked together she only helped light spirits move on. That doesn’t sound so bad. I wouldn’t mind that, I think, remembering the way it felt this morning. I might even like it.

  But if that’s the case, why did my test involve a dark spirit—not just a dark spirit, but a demon? I turn back to the letter.

  “Together you and he will resume the work that he and I had been doing.”

  I drop the note onto our damp front steps like it’s hot. Now I’m the one pacing back and forth.

  Resume the work they’d been doing? I press my fingers into my forehead. Victoria said that they weren’t doing normal luiseach work. That he had a secret project to restore the balance. What balance? And why do I have to dive right into the secret work when Victoria had years of training first? What’s the rush with me?

  I purse my lips and concentrate. Victoria also said that I was descended from two of the most powerful luiseach in history, that Nolan was right—I was the last luiseach to be born. That my birth father abandoned me for my own protection . . .

  All of this has to be connected somehow, right?

  I look at Nolan, certain that he knows there are about a zillion questions dancing around my brain.

  But I won’t need any of the answers. Not if I strike a deal and give up my powers like I planned. But . . . what if my mentor says no? What if I’m somehow, I don’t know, necessary? And if I am, how can I refuse when there is so much at stake?

  “Sunshine?” Nolan asks. “Are you okay?” He smiles faintly, like he knows the question sounds ridiculous right now.

  I open my mouth, positive that Nolan—my protector—can help me fit all these puzzle pieces together. But before I can say a word a fancy black car turns into our long driveway, shiny even in the fog. The chain-link fence around the yard shakes when the car rolls past it, years of rust falling onto the patchy grass. The car moves at a snail’s pace, like someone has magically set the world on slow motion. The car’s windows are tinted dark, and I can’t see who’s inside. The car eases to a stop just behind our own—which is not nearly as clean or bright—and its engine fades into silence as the driver pulls the key from the ignition.

  Without meaning to, I hold my breath, waiting to see who will emerge from the driver’s side door. The world is still in slow-mo when a tall, slender man steps out of the car. He’s dressed in a dark suit, a perfectly knotted gunmetal-gray tie tight around his neck. He doesn’t smile as he walks up the driveway toward us.

  As he gets closer I gasp. Nolan looks from the stranger to me, trying to figure out what’s wrong, but I can only shake my head and point.

  The stranger’s eyes are a milky, light kind of green, the pupils small, despite the fact that it’s a dim, cloudy day. No one has eyes like that. Almost no one. They look like cat’s eyes.

  They look exactly like mine.

  Acknowledgments

  From the very start The Haunting of Sunshine Girl has been an adventure. And as with most great adventures, it’s not something I could have done all alone. So many wonderful people have been part of Sunshine’s journey so far, and I am tremendously grateful to them all. Go Team Sunshine!

  For starters, thanks to Nick Hagen—the idea man from the very beginning and the driving force behind making Sunshine’s world bigger and better. And then even bigger and even better than that. (And Nick asked me to thank his wife, Nikki, on his behalf!)

  Thanks to the rad Alyssa Sheinmel for bringing Sunshine’s voice and world so vividly to the page. (Alyssa asked that I send her thanks to her friends and family, especially JP Gravitt.)

  Thanks to the incomparable Mollie Glick for believing in Sunshine, in Nick, and in me. She saw the potential in this project from the start and knew how to take us exactly where we’d dreamed of going. (And Alyssa says to tell you thanks for inviting her to join the team!) Thanks to everyone at Foundry, especially Jessica Regel and Emily Brown.

  Great, big, enormous gratitude to the folks at Weinstein: Amanda Murray, Georgina Levitt, Kathleen Schmidt, and, of course, Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Thank you all for your amazing and overwhelming faith in and support of this project.

  Thanks to Cindy Eagan for her enthusiasm, kindness, and editorial savvy. Thank you to David Davoli, Christine Marra, and Levy Morosha
n.

  Thanks to my wonderful family: Papa and Gamma and Greta, for helping in so many ways. To my brother and sister—two of my favorite writers—for all the inspiration. To Daddy, . And a special shout-out to my mum for being with me every step of the way.

  Most of all, thanks to all of the amazing Sunshiners out there. Without you, Sunshine’s adventures—and mine right along with her—wouldn’t be possible.

  The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl

  OCTOBER 2015

  Sunshine may have

  passed her test . . .

  but her adventures are

  far from over.

  Sunshine’s luiseach powers are fully awakened and spirits follow her everywhere. Hoping to get her supernatural abilities under control, she agrees to begin work with her mentor in his eerie lab in the Texas desert. But his work is more terrifying—and, yes, even creepier—than she ever could have imagined. Thousands of miles from Kat and Nolan, Sunshine feels utterly alone—until she befriends another young luiseach, Lucio. But can she trust him? Can anything—her father’s work, her friendship with Lucio, even Nolan’s careful research—prepare Sunshine to face the sinister woman who haunts her dreams, to finally learn the truth about the rift that threatens the future of the luiseach and the human race . . . and the deadly part she may play in it?