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

by Paige McKenzie

  When Aidan finally emerges into the sun, I hold my phone out in front of me so he can read what Nolan wrote.

  He looks every bit as uncomfortable as he did on the plane that day when I first asked him about Nolan. Now I know it had nothing to do with being a normal father, nervous about the idea of his teenage daughter dating. Now I know there’s nothing normal about it. It was just another secret he kept. A trick he played on me.

  “How could you?”

  “I limited your ability to touch anyone romantically.”

  “I know that,” I shake the phone for emphasis. “But why?”

  “I knew we would be apart for sixteen years. I couldn’t keep you from human relationships—with your mother, your friends. But I thought I might be able to keep you from falling in love.” Is that why I never felt sick when Lucio and I touched? Because all along, I had . . . stronger feelings for someone else?

  “What’s wrong with falling in love?” I’m still panting from running across the campus. Or maybe because I can’t stop crying. I stuff my phone into the back pocket of my shorts, right next to the rusty knife.

  For an instant Aidan looks sadder than I’ve ever seen him. Sadder than I’ve ever seen anyone. Sadder than Victoria looked when she told me about Anna and her husband. Sadder than Mom looked the day she let me leave.

  “You know what’s wrong with it,” Aidan says gently.

  I shake my head. What is this guy talking about?

  “I would have put the same measures in place between you and Katherine if I could have, but because you were a baby when she adopted you, I knew you needed to be touched, carried, held.”

  “Kat,” I correct through gritted teeth. Aidan keeps speaking as though I never said a word, but when he mentions her again he uses the correct name so I know he heard me.

  “And, of course, I needed you to bond with Kat to ensure that she would want to raise you.”

  I take a step back. I can’t stand the way he talks about my relationship with Mom—so . . . clinically, like it only existed to get me safely to my sixteenth birthday, when he could take over.

  I’ve never missed my mother so much in my entire life. And that’s counting the months when she was possessed by a demon.

  I lift what’s left of my hair off of my neck. It seems miraculous that back at home it’s still winter. Ridgemont is probably drenched in fog and covered in clouds so thick that not even a single ray of sunlight can break through. People are rushing to and from their cars, blowing on their hands to keep warm, wool hats pulled tightly over their heads. Maybe there’s snow on the ground.

  A cool breeze fills the air, drying my sweat. The spirits in Aidan’s lab can’t escape, but they’re making their nearby presence known. The breeze whips what’s left of my hair off my shoulders. I shiver.

  From the look on Aidan’s face, it’s obvious he notices the change in the air too. But I’m not about to let him change the subject.

  “My mother did more than raise me. She loved me, because that’s what good parents do.” The words I don’t say hang in the air between us. Kat is a good parent. Unlike Helena. Unlike you.

  “I know,” Aidan answers wearily. “I must admit, I was hoping you wouldn’t be quite as close as you are.”

  Why? I can’t even get the word out. Is everything all science and research to him?

  The answer hits me so suddenly that I stop crying and panting and sweating. I might stop breathing altogether for a few heartbeats. I just stand there in the breeze, stunned.

  This has nothing to do with Aidan’s certainty that he must be right. It has everything to do with the fact that Aidan knows he might be wrong. Aidan didn’t want me to get too attached to my humanity—to my life—because he knew that I might have to give it up.

  “Is this the real reason you didn’t want Nolan to come here?” All those times I asked Aidan why Nolan couldn’t be here—when I insisted that this work would be easier with my protector at my side—and Aidan told me this was work I had to do without my protector.

  Whether or not Nolan was my protector had nothing to do with it. Aidan just didn’t want me spending time with the boy I cared for.

  “You and Nolan would have bonded more deeply, working together here. It would only have made it harder for you.”

  I shake my head. “Do you really believe there’s a way to make it easy?”

  Aidan doesn’t answer.

  A lump rises in my throat, as big as a boulder. “So you’ll kill me too, if you have to?” The words come out as little more than a whisper, but from the look on Aidan’s face, I know he hears me.

  I take a few steps backward, blinking in the sunlight. This is like something out of a bad horror movie: the mad scientist lured the innocent girl into the desert, lulled her into a false sense of security, when secretly he had dastardly plans of his own.

  The breeze whips my hair into my eyes, brushing away my tears.

  “All this time, even when you told me you brought me here to protect me, you’ve also been prepared to kill me?” I wave my hands at the campus around us—the mansion behind me where Lucio is sitting alone, the trees swaying in the breeze, the lab in front of us, filled with spirits.

  This is why Aidan was so upset when I helped Estella move on. It was proof that he was wrong about me. I’m not some kind of magic key, the missing piece he just needed to slide into place so spirits could move on by themselves.

  “Your powers are different,” Aidan says finally. “Our experiments did change your abilities.”

  “Just not the way you needed them to,” I supply. Aidan doesn’t argue. And now a new unasked and unanswered question hangs in the air between us:

  Have you already made up your mind to do it?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Imprisoned

  I thought this campus was a fortress to protect me. But maybe all along it was meant to imprison me.

  There’s a knock at my door. “Go away, Aidan!” I shout.

  “It’s not Aidan,” Lucio’s voice answers. He opens the door.

  “I didn’t say you could come in.”

  Lucio shrugs. “I know. But I thought you needed a friend. And I thought you might not admit it if I gave you the chance to answer.” He plops down on the unmade bed beside me, propping my pillows up behind him, stretching his strong legs out in front of him, folding his arms across his chest.

  I can’t even remember if I’ve ever seen Nolan’s bare arms. How do I have such strong feelings for a person whose forearms I’ve never seen? Lucio is right. I need a friend. I’m just not so sure that he is my friend. Not anymore.

  “Were you in on it too?” I ask.

  “In on what?”

  I stand up and start pacing again, as restless as a tiger in a cage. In on Aidan’s tricks to keep me from being with Nolan. In on keeping me here, on this campus, befriending me and distracting me, knowing all along that Aidan might do exactly what he claimed he was protecting me from.

  “You keep walking like that, you’re going to drill a hole in the floor,” Lucio says.

  I don’t smile, and I certainly don’t laugh. Doesn’t Lucio understand that being still is impossible right now? I don’t think I’ve ever had so much energy. I can’t stop my fingers from drumming against my thighs. My feet feel like they want to run away.

  “I hate Aidan,” I whisper. Hate tastes sour and bitter and cold, like the time I accidentally drank vinegar.

  Lucio gets off the bed and crosses the room, catching hold of me so I can’t pace anymore.

  “You don’t hate him,” he insists.

  I shake my head, tears slipping down my cheeks. Who knew anger could turn into sadness so quickly?

  “I do.”

  Aidan is just as bad as Helena. Worse! Helena may have wanted to eliminate me, but Aidan saved me only to control me, to hold me captive, to take me away from the people I love, to keep me at arm’s length just in case he needed to . . . I hate to even think it.

  At least Hel
ena was honest about what she was going to do to me.

  At least Helena didn’t try to get me to care about her, knowing all along that she still might kill me.

  I shake my head frantically. It doesn’t matter. Neither of them is really my parent. My only real parent is Kat. That fact has never felt more true than it does right now.

  “Aidan loves you.” Lucio reaches up to hold my head so I stop shaking it. “In his way.”

  “Well, then, that’s not a way I want to be loved.”

  Lucio drops his hands. “It’s not so bad,” he says. I bite my lip. Aidan is the only person Lucio has left to love him.

  “Haven’t you ever doubted him?” I ask finally. “Did you ever consider joining the others?”

  “You mean joining the luiseach who murdered my parents?”

  I take a few steps back, lifting my hand to cover my mouth as though I want to put the words I just said back inside. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  Lucio sits on the bed and pats the empty space beside him. I cross the room and sit.

  “I have thought about leaving,” he admits heavily. “After I passed my test, I thought I’m strong enough now.”

  “Strong enough for what?” I ask, even though I think I know the answer.

  “Strong enough to track down the luiseach who killed my parents and punish them for what they did.” He closes his eyes. “You can’t imagine how angry I was. Angry at Aidan for putting my parents in danger. Angry at my parents for staying with Aidan instead of having the good sense to join the other side of the rift before it was too late.” He opens his eyes and holds his gaze steady with mine. “Angry at you for being born and tearing all of us apart.” Lucio swallows hard. “So the day after I passed my test, I packed my bags and left this house before dawn. When I got outside, there was Aidan. Fully dressed in the middle of the night, leaning against Clementine like he didn’t have anywhere else to be.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I didn’t give him a chance to say much of anything at all. I started shouting, said I didn’t care that revenge went against everything we are—the light, the kindness, the forgiveness. We help all spirits move on—those who lived good lives and bad, without prejudice, you know?”

  No one ever told me that, but then no one ever had to. I’ve never come across a spirit I didn’t want to help move on.

  “I screamed that I was my parents’ son, and it was my job to exact justice. By the time I finally stopped shouting, my throat hurt and I was covered in sweat.”

  “I know the feeling.” I think of my outburst in the courtyard. “What did Aidan say when you finally gave him a chance to get a word in?”

  “He said that the luiseach on the other side believed what they believed as deeply as we believed what we did. They thought what they’d done was for the greater good too. So how could he hate them? He said he had never hated Helena, no matter how much she wanted to eliminate his child.” He pauses. “But he knew he couldn’t keep me from hating them, if that’s what I wanted. Then he got up and walked back into the house.”

  “He didn’t try to stop you?”

  Lucio shakes his head. “Nope. I thought for sure he’d block my way or lock me up or something. But he just stepped aside.”

  “And that was it?”

  Lucio smiles wryly. “Not quite. Before he went back inside the house, he reminded me that if I left Llevar la Luz, I wouldn’t live here anymore. Which meant that once I stepped foot off the property, I wouldn’t be able to come back without an express invitation from someone who did.”

  “He told you he wouldn’t invite you back?”

  “He didn’t have to.” He runs his hands over his scalp, a gesture I’ve come to recognize as a sign that he’s thinking about what to say next. “Llevar la Luz is the only home I’ve ever known. And Aidan is the only parent I’ve got left. And that morning, after Aidan left me alone, I sat on my motorcycle—a gift from Aidan and named by him—and watched the sunrise. I realized that as homes and adopted parents go, I didn’t have it that bad. I had a man who wanted me to turn my back on hate, to stay here and continue the research that he believed could save the world.”

  “Do you believe it too?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lucio answers honestly. “But Aidan does. And that’s enough.”

  I bite my lip. “I’m not so sure he believes it anymore. Not after what happened today.”

  Lucio nods. “Maybe not,” he concedes. “But I still believe in him.”

  He reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes, but for once his touch isn’t reassuring. How can it be, when he pretty much admitted that Aidan might be planning to eliminate me too?

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, leaning away from him. “I think I want to be alone.”

  Lucio nods. “I’ll be around if you need me,” he offers.

  “I know,” I answer. I try to smile, but my jaw muscles aren’t cooperating. “Thanks.”

  As soon as the door clicks shut behind him, I take my phone from my back pocket. Nolan’s e-mail is still up on the screen, waiting for me to finish reading it. I scroll all the way down to the last paragraph.

  I’m coming to get you, Sunshine. It’ll take me a while to make the drive down there—Google Maps says 34 hours, plus some time for traffic and pit stops—but just sit tight and wait for me. We’ll figure this out together. There has to be a way to undo what Aidan did.

  How does he know where I am? I don’t even know exactly where I am. But then again Nolan is pretty much a genius. If he could find out what Aidan did, then finding out where I am was probably a piece of cake.

  And luckily I did invite him to come here. Not just in the message I left him but pretty much every day since I arrived here, I’ve been silently begging him to join me.

  He must not be mad at me. You don’t go on a quest to rescue someone you’re angry with.

  Suddenly I feel like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting for her prince to storm the castle and rescue her. But unlike Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel or Cinderella, I’m not content to sit around waiting. I have to do something.

  I practically bounce to my feet, the tile cracking beneath me. I start packing, turning the messy pile of clothes on the floor into a messy pile of clothes in my duffle bag. I plug in my phone so it can actually finish charging. I go across the hall and grab my toothbrush and toothpaste from the bathroom. I lift the stuffed owl from the floor and hold it, staring into its blank, glassy eyes. Once I get back to Ridgemont, I’ll be able to focus all of my energy on pulling Anna toward me and helping her move on.

  “I’ll name you Dr. Hoo, the sequel,” I whisper as I stuff the toy into my already overstuffed bag.

  It’s not stealing. It was meant to be mine all along.

  Once my duffle is completely packed, I sit on the edge of the bed, listening for the sound of a car entering the courtyard below. Nolan drives his grandfather’s old enormous beat-up navy blue Chrysler. It practically moans every time he accelerates and shudders when it shifts into park. I’ll definitely be able to hear him coming.

  I’ll run out the door before Aidan can stop me. A great escape. And unlike Lucio, I don’t care if I never get invited back.

  Nolan could be more than halfway here by now. Sit tight. I doubt anyone in the whole world has ever sat as tight as I’m sitting right now. My legs are crossed and my arms are folded, and it feels like every single muscle in my body is clenched in anticipation, ready to spring into action the instant Nolan arrives, to run out the door so quickly that Aidan won’t be able to stop me. I uncurl myself long enough to look down at my phone and read the last two sentences of Nolan’s e-mail one more time.

  We’ll figure this out together. There has to be a way to undo what Aidan did.

  Does that mean he loves me too?

  Fury

  “I don’t think you should come with me.”

  We’re standing outside the coffee shop. My eyes narrow reflexively. I force myself to behave as tho
ugh Nolan’s words don’t make my blood boil. “Why not?” I play with the hem of my sweatshirt. I can’t wait until this facade is over and I can go back to dressing in my own clothes again. These mass-produced clothes are functional, but they have no history, not like the vintage clothes I usually favor. The threads in this shirt, these jeans, these shoes might have been stitched just a few days before I bought them. They have no history.

  “Because she’s never met you, and because I don’t know what kind of shape she’s going to be in when I find her. And because. . . .”

  He trails off, but his meaning is clear: because I don’t want to show up with another girl when I’m trying to rescue the girl I really want to be with.

  Teenagers are infuriating.

  “Nolan,” I begin, pretending the strain in my voice is because it’s cold out here rather than the true reason: I’m shaking with fury, “I really think I should come with you. You don’t know what it’s going to be like when you get there. You don’t know how Aidan is going to react to seeing you.”

  Now it’s Nolan’s eyes that narrow. “I never told you his name.”

  “What?”

  “I never told you Sunshine’s mentor’s name.”

  Inwardly I curse. How could I make such an amateur mistake?

  “Helena,” Nolan prompts, “How did you know his name?”

  I try to look nonchalant. “It must have been in one of the professor’s files.”

  Nolan shakes his head. “Even if Aidan was mentioned in the professor’s files, there couldn’t have been anything linking him to Sunshine. You couldn’t know he was Sunshine’s mentor.”