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

by Paige McKenzie

  “Isn’t that the whole point of sitting in first class? You can have whatever you want, whenever you want it?”

  “I just like to be near the front of the plane so I’m the first to get on and the first to disembark.”

  If you ask me, that’s a total waste, but it doesn’t look like Aidan’s about to ask me.

  I settle into my window seat, shove my backpack beneath the seat in front of me, and watch the rest of the passengers board the plane. I can’t help noticing that they all look a lot more festive than we do. They’re headed down south for fun, to catch some rays and warmth, a respite from the winter chill. I’m pretty sure we’re the only two people here who aren’t about to go on vacation.

  Surely we won’t be working twenty-four hours a day, right? Maybe I’ll have time to work on my tan and get back some of the color that faded when we moved from Austin to Ridgemont. Mom would already be slathering sunscreen on her pale skin, even though we’re still hours from landing south of the border.

  “Where exactly are we going?” I ask Aidan as the plane ascends.

  “I’ve been working at a facility a couple of hours north of Mazatlan for many years now.”

  “A facility?” I echo. Aidan nods.

  “It’s called Llevar la Luz.” When he sees the blank look on my face—I don’t know much Spanish—he translates: “Bring the light.”

  “Why Mexico?” Maybe he hates the rain and the cold as much as I do. Maybe I get that from him. Can preferences be hereditary?

  “The warmth helps keep spirits under control,” he answers softly. “It’s easier to keep dark spirits at bay. There are a few spirits who are drawn to the warmth—fire demons, for example—but even they prefer the cold. They can hide more effectively in the cold.”

  “Why’s that?” My ears pop as the plane climbs higher and higher.

  “Think about it.”

  Is this what every conversation with Aidan is going to be like? Every time I have a question, he’ll get all teachery and try to make me figure it out myself? I’m more interested in answers than in lessons, but I guess I don’t have much choice.

  Finally I respond, “Because our temperatures drop when a spirit is near, so if we’re already cold it’s harder to notice the difference?”

  “Exactly,” Aidan nods. I guess that’s what he meant when he said he was bringing me someplace safe. Because I’m not exactly an expert at exorcising demons yet, I’ll be safer where there’s fewer of them and I can detect them more easily.

  “Additionally a warm environment is easier on luiseach than the cold. Makes it easier for us to recover after a spirit touches us.” I guess that means our preferences are kind of hereditary.

  “So there are other luiseach there? Other mentees like me?” The captain announces that he’s turned off the fasten-seatbelt sign.

  “No. Not like you.” Before I can ask what he means by that, he adds, “Llevar la Luz is where I’ve been conducting my research.”

  “What research?”

  Aidan pauses before answering. Maybe he’s worried the people on the plane around us might overhear and think he’s nuts. Maybe they’ll call Child Protective Services and send me back to Mom and Ridgemont before we’ve even begun, but then I remember what happened in the hospital parking lot and the look on Nolan’s face when I didn’t kiss him. I’m not entirely sure I want to go back. Not yet anyway.

  “The mission of luiseach is to maintain a balance between humans and spirits, between the light spirits and the dark. It has been our sacred duty for hundreds, thousands of years, since the very dawn of humanity.” He speaks as though he’s reciting words he’s said many times before.

  “Is this your tried-and-true mentoring speech?” I attempt a joke, but Aidan doesn’t seem to get it. Or, at least, he doesn’t crack a smile. “I mean, every time you have a new luiseach to train, do you say the same thing?” I try to laugh, but it’s no use. Jokes aren’t funny when you have to explain them.

  I’m not sure Aidan even knows what a joke is.

  We may have the same eyes, but that’s where our physical similarities end. He’s tall, so tall that his knees touch the seat in front of them, even in first class. I’ve got plenty of leg room; if only he could borrow some of mine. His hair is so dark it’s almost black, and his skin is paler than mine, without a single freckle marring it. He’s kind of perfect looking, like a statue or Clark Kent or something. I bet he’s never tripped. I bet he ties his shoelaces so tight that they never come undone.

  Solemnly he explains, “As long as there have been humans living and dying on the Earth, there have been luiseach, guarding humanity and keeping the dark spirits from possessing them, forcing spirits to move on or destroying them altogether.”

  Thanks to Nolan’s research, I already know this. Grr . . . just thinking about Nolan makes my stomach hurt. But it’s impossible not to think of him because almost everything I understand about being a luiseach is thanks to him. “But because no luiseach has been born since me, the balance has been disrupted, right?”

  He nods. “This is an unprecedented time in luiseach history.”

  Score one for Sunshine. I go through my mental list and land on another question.

  “Your work—the work you and Victoria were doing—it was to restore the balance?”

  Again Aidan nods. “In a way, yes. Part of my research is to find a solution to the growing darkness. The imbalance.” Another question, another answer, even if he’s not exactly chatty about it.

  “Nolan said luiseach birth rates were dropping even before I was born. Do you know why?”

  “It takes two luiseach parents to make a luiseach child.”

  “I know,” I respond, and Aidan looks surprised.

  “Nolan,” I explain with a shrug, raising my eyebrow, even though saying his name out loud makes my stomach hurt even worse than thinking it.

  “Our gene pool was shrinking. There are only so many luiseach, and the human race grows more numerous every year.”

  I remember something Victoria said. She and Aidan had a falling out after she married a human and had a child. Was Aidan angry because she’d given up the chance to have a luiseach baby and instead had a human child, Anna—a child who could be killed by a demon? Maybe there were more luiseach like her, ones who couldn’t help falling in love with a human, luiseach who cared more about having a family than about producing children with powers.

  The question I want to ask next—the question I’ve wanted to ask since Aidan first showed up on my doorstep—sits like a stone in the back of my throat: Why did you abandon me? It’s like the words are trapped in there, stuck between my vocal chords, unable to get out.

  So I ask something else instead. “Why do I feel so warm around Nolan?”

  “He’s your protector,” Aidan explains. “When he’s near, the spirits that might touch you settle down a bit so your temperature doesn’t dip so low.”

  Before I can stop myself, I ask, “But then why can’t I touch him? I mean, I can touch him, but it makes me feel . . .” I bite my lip. I specifically didn’t want to ask Aidan this particular question. It’s way too private, but it’s also too late, because the words just flew out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  Aidan doesn’t answer right away, and I’m surprised to see that he looks flustered. He’s actually tugging at his collar, and for a second I think he’s going to loosen his tie. Maybe Aidan isn’t so different from normal fathers, uncomfortable with the idea of his teenage daughter dating someone. Ashley told me her dad could barely look at her for days after he came home early from work one night and saw her making out with her boyfriend Cory Cooper in their driveway.

  Not that Aidan is my father the way Ashley’s father is hers. He’s my mentor/father, and I’ve only known him for a few days. He’s not even human.

  Then again, neither am I.

  Finally Aidan responds. “Nolan is human and you’re luiseach.”

  “Victoria was married to a human.”


  “It’s complicated,” he says, then looks away, distracted. It takes me a second, but soon I feel it too. A man who passed away seconds ago.

  “Where did he come from?”

  “We’re over Northern California right now. Even though we’re airborne, for some of the spirits being set free from their bodies, we’re the closest luiseach. They can’t help being drawn to us.”

  I feel it when the spirit disappears. Aidan helped him move on without blinking an eye, too quickly for me to focus and see him. He looks like he barely felt anything at all, not the chill when the spirit arrived nor the peace when he left.

  Aidan folds his arms across his chest and closes his eyes. “I’m going to get some sleep before we land.”

  I watch him for a moment, expecting him to shift in his seat, settle into his sleep, but he doesn’t move. No one falls asleep that fast, right? But I know that it’s even harder to rouse a fake sleeper than a real sleeper if the faker is determined to keep his eyes closed. From the way Aidan is squeezing his shut, I can tell he’s more than a little determined.

  I turn from my mentor/father to stare out the window at the clouds floating beneath us, trying to ignore the nagging thought that’s running on a constant loop in my brain: if Aidan won’t even give me a straight answer about Nolan, then what’s he going to say when I finally do start asking some of the bigger questions?

  Why did you abandon me?

  Who is my birth mother?

  Where is my birth mother?

  Why isn’t she here with you—with me?

  I lean my forehead against the window and squeeze my eyes shut, pretending to sleep, determined not to open them until we get to Mexico.

  Another thing that Aidan and I have in common.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Llevar la Luz

  We land in Mazatlan and follow—or actually lead, given our place in first class—the plane’s other passengers to the customs line. This is my first time getting my passport stamped, and I can’t help feeling a little bit excited when the official-looking stamp presses down on the otherwise blank paper. I steal a glance at Aidan’s passport on the counter beside my own. It’s so covered in stamps that the customs officer has trouble finding a blank space to mark it. He finally smacks the stamp down directly on top of another one that looks like it’s in French. Aidan speaks to the official in perfect Spanish.

  At least I think it’s perfect. I don’t know enough Spanish to tell the difference.

  The airport is crowded and hot. I mean, it’s air conditioned, but no amount of artificial air can mask the heat that’s beating down on this building from all sides.

  We have to go through security again before they’ll let us outside. Our bags go through an X-ray conveyer belt just like they did at the airport in the states. I wonder whether they’ll notice the knife tucked away in my backpack. Maybe it will manifest as something else when the X-ray passes over it, disguising itself as a T-shirt or a book so security won’t notice it.

  An enormous black SUV with tinted windows is waiting for us in the parking lot. But unlike the car we left behind in Washington, this one is caked with dried mud in the wheel wells and along the bottom of the doors. I climb inside, trying to keep the bottom of my pants from rubbing against the dirt. We drive north along the coast for more than two hours. At first it looks like Mexico is the opposite of Ridgemont. Instead of gray, the world here is a collage of yellows and tans—sand and sun and not much in between. There are no towering Douglas firs to provide relief from the heat, no damp chill in the air to make me shiver.

  But then the landscape shifts, going from arid desert to dense jungle. Definitely nowhere near those resorts you see in tourism commercials.

  And it’s still damp. As in humid. As in I think the frizzball on top of my head might actually grow bigger here than it was in Washington.

  By the time Aidan stops the car, I have no idea where we are. Not that I’ve known where we’ve been from the moment we landed in Mazatlan, but now it feels like I know even less.

  About thirty minutes ago we steered away from the ocean and began to climb the hillside. The farther we drove, the more uneven the ground beneath the car became until we were bouncing up and down so hard that I thought my head would smack against the roof, even with my seatbelt supposedly strapping me in. The road looked like little more than a path someone had carved out of the rainforest. Suddenly Aidan makes a sharp left turn, and the trees all disappear as he pulls the car into a clearing at the center of a circle of huge buildings, every bit as tan as the dirt at our feet. The jungle around the buildings feels like it’s closing in, like whoever was in charge of holding it back has long since left his post.

  “Welcome to Llevar la Luz,” Aidan says as he hefts my duffle bag from the trunk of the car.

  “So this place is kind of like a university?” I look around. Each building is more ruined than the last: glass is missing from half the windows, stucco crumbling down their walls. It looks like something out of a movie about being trapped in an ancient fortress in the middle of nowhere.

  A horror movie. The kind you’re not supposed to watch before you go to sleep at night.

  Despite the heat, a chill in the air raises goosebumps on my arms and legs. Aidan was right about one thing: the drop in temperature is even more noticeable in the heat. Spirits are near. I look around like I think I’ll be able to see them. All that time I spent in Washington, longing for my old life in Texas, and now here I am closer to Texas than I’ve been in months—sure, a totally different part of Texas, but still Texas—and my life is even more different from what it was in Austin. Maybe it always will be.

  I hold my breath, waiting for another onslaught like the one I felt in the hospital parking lot, hoping Aidan will step in before I start having another spirit seizure. But the sensation doesn’t get stronger than the slight chill in the air, and my heart doesn’t start pounding like crazy.

  It’s as if something is holding these spirits back.

  I glance at Aidan, trying to decipher whether he’s doing something to keep the spirits from touching me, but if he is, it doesn’t show.

  “It was sort of like a university.” It feels like I asked that question hours ago. “My wife and I ran it.”

  “Your wife?” The hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and the stone full of unanswered questions lodged in my throat loosens. “You mean my mom, right?”

  Just saying the words my mom and meaning anyone other than Kat feels wrong, creepier than the creepiest of spirits. From now on I’m going to refer to her as my birth mother or Aidan’s wife.

  “Yes,” Aidan replies shortly, like the answer is so obvious that the question wasn’t really necessary. He drops his gaze and plays with his watch and then adjusts the cuffs of his shirt. Looks like his wife isn’t his favorite topic of conversation. “There are places like this across the globe,” he continues, waving his arm at the ruined buildings around us. I wonder whether those other places across the globe are in better condition than this one. “Most of them are just education centers, but this one became more of a lab over the years. It used to be populous with luiseach and mentor pairs, with a few protectors here to aid our work.”

  The fact that everyone must have left doesn’t need to be said aloud. The emptiness is clear in the dilapidated buildings, in the fact that Aidan’s is the only car in sight, in the way no one emerged to welcome us, in the sound of his voice echoing against the buildings across the courtyard.

  “Why did they all leave?”

  “As my experiments stalled, more and more of the luiseach who’d stood by my side left me.”

  “Including my birth mother?” I kind of regret asking this because when Aidan nods yes, it looks like his head weighs a million pounds.

  Wow. She broke his heart.

  He looks so sad that for a second I want to put my arms around him. Then I remember I’ve only known him a few days, and mentor/father or not, he’s still more or less a stranger
.

  So I turn away, trying to look anywhere but at him. It must have been beautiful here once. Directly in front of us is what must have been a glamorous mansion. An enormous wooden porch wraps around it, like the kind you see in movies about the Antebellum South. But the pillars on either side of the front door are covered in vines so thick that the cement is crumbling beneath the weight of the leaves. There are so many holes in the wood of the front stairs that someone propped a giant plank across them like a ramp. Is this where Aidan and his wife lived? Is this where I was born?

  The jungle is dense behind the house, growing up around it like it’s just biding its time before it takes over completely. We’re standing in what must have been a sort of courtyard, and across from the house in the other direction are three buildings, arranged in a half-moon, rounding out the yard’s almost-perfect circle.

  Nolan would love this place. He’s probably been thinking about going to college since before he started kindergarten. I’ll call him later and tell him every detail. He’ll start researching luiseach training facilities, trying to discover where on Earth the rest of them are. Maybe they’re in places as far-flung as Taiwan, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires, and Sydney. Maybe Nolan and I will start saving up so someday we can travel the world, seeing each and every one of them, the way other teenagers backpack from one famous landmark to another.

  That is, if Nolan will even take my call tonight. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, but all I can see is the look on his face as I told him how it felt when he touched me.

  I open my eyes. Beyond the three buildings across from the mansion, I can make out the shadows of even more structures between the trees. Maybe luiseach had to apply to come here just like normal people have to apply to college. Maybe applicants had to write essays about why this was the luiseach training facility that best matched the kind of luiseach they wanted to be when they grew up.

  Aidan lifts my bag over his shoulder and heads toward the dark mansion in front of us. I follow, adjusting the straps on my backpack. The house’s door is enormous, big enough for four people to walk through side by side, made of nearly black wood and covered in intricate carvings. As we get closer I can make out that almost all the carvings are different depictions of the sun. Bring the light indeed. There isn’t even a keyhole; whoever put this door in place wasn’t worried about normal things like locks and keys.