The Sacrifice of Sunshine Girl Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2017 by Paige McKenzie, Nick Hagen, Mercedes Rose, and Nancy Ohlin

  Illustrations © 2017 by Paige McKenzie

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address Weinstein Books, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10104.

  Published in the United States by Weinstein Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, a division of PBG Publishing, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. www.weinsteinbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this book.

  ISBN 978-1-60286-298-2 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-60286-299-9 (e-book)

  Published by Weinstein Books

  A member of the Perseus Books Group

  www.weinsteinbooks.com

  Weinstein Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  Editorial production by Marrathon Production Services. www.marrathoneditorial.com

  Book design by Jane Raese

  Set in 11-point Baskerville

  FIRST EDITION

  E3-20170226-JV-NF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  She Was Supposed to Die Today

  Chapter 1: My So-Called Death

  Chapter 2: The Attack of the Serpent-Demons

  Chapter 3: Blood and More Blood

  Chapter 4: Home Again

  Chapter 5: The Man in Black

  Chapter 6: All Roads Lead to Rome

  Chapter 7: The Nacho Cheese Sisterhood

  Chapter 8: Back to School

  Chapter 9: Spellbound

  Chapter 10: Sense and Sensibility and Spirits

  Cat and Mouse

  Chapter 11: The Color of Sunshine

  Chapter 12: Bye, Bye Birdie

  Chapter 13: The Telltale Suit

  Chapter 14: A Lie by Any Other Name

  The Book of Prophecy

  Chapter 15: More Questions

  Chapter 16: Demon Drama Detox

  Chapter 17: Kindred Spirits

  Chapter 18: A New Mentor

  Chapter 19: Bizarre Love Quadrangle

  Temptation

  Chapter 20: Hope

  Chapter 21: The Detour

  Chapter 22: Missing Anna

  Chapter 23: The New Luiseach in Town

  Chapter 24: The Gemini Moon

  Chapter 25: What Happened in Prague

  Chapter 26: Visions

  Chapter 27: Urgent News

  Chapter 28: Four Girls

  Chapter 29: Nolan’s Theory

  The Fifth Girl

  Chapter 30: Spycraft

  Chapter 31: Smoke

  Chapter 32: The Interrogation

  The Day of Reckoning

  Chapter 33: Plan B

  Chapter 34: The Return of the Man in Black

  Her Power Is Beyond What I Imagined

  Chapter 35: Carpe Diem

  Chapter 36: Guera Spirito

  Chapter 37: May Day

  At Last

  Chapter 38: Dress Shopping

  Chapter 39: Just for Tonight

  Chapter 40: The Spring Dance

  Chapter 41: Escape

  Chapter 42: The Penumbra of Darkness

  Chapter 43: The Sacrifice

  This Is Not How It Was Supposed to Happen

  Chapter 44: The End of the End

  Chapter 45: Good-byes

  Chapter 46: Eighteen Candles

  Also by Paige McKenzie (with Alyssa Sheinmel)

  Praise for the Sunshine Girl series

  For Nick, my wizard behind the curtain

  She Was Supposed to Die Today

  She was supposed to die today.

  The prophecy was unfolding as planned, on schedule, so elegantly. She had finally made the decision to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

  Then, just like that, she changed her mind, thanks to her boyfriend and his confounded map. The little halfling appeared and rescued her, completing the reversal.

  How very tedious.

  Still, today isn’t over yet. Even now, as she lies there surrounded by friends and family, my dark servants are rising out of the ground, preparing to soul terminate the humans. What grand theater it will be!

  At the end—at the very end, when the five-pointed star is completed—the world will be washed in fire and reborn as the new kingdom. My kingdom.

  And then I will convince my beloved to join me at my side. What a pair we will make—the ultimate combination of light, dark, and everything in between.

  But first, the girl. The prophecy. The party to end all parties.

  Let the carnage begin.

  CHAPTER 1

  My So-Called Death

  Sunshine?

  The voice is insistent, piercing through my foggy brain haze.

  “Sunshine!”

  I blink. Gray light, a blurry figure. Figures—plural. My temples throb, and my mouth feels like a giant, yucky cotton ball. Prickly needles press painfully into the backs of my arms and legs. The air against my skin is a cold, clammy blanket.

  “Sunshine, are you all right? You hit your head and lost consciousness for a few minutes.”

  A face hovers over me. Several faces, actually. A tall, tall man in a fancy gray suit. A kind-looking woman in pastel nurse’s scrubs and clogs.

  And a cute guy in a brown leather jacket. He rakes his hand through his tousled, tawny hair and gives me a lopsided grin. “Sunshine,” he exhales. The way he says my name in that dreamy deep voice sets my heart aflutter.

  Wait. Sets my heart aflutter? What century is this? Am I having a retro dream?

  “Thank goodness you’re alive!” The nurse kneels down at my side and pushes back her long red curls. She touches my forehead tenderly; her vanilla lotion smell is familiar and comforting. “I can’t believe… we thought you were… I don’t know what I would have done if…” Her words unravel as she begins to tear up.

  I rub my eyes. Information floods my scrambled synapses. The nurse is my mom, Kat Griffith. My human mom.

  “Where’s the owl?” I ask her groggily.

  “What owl?” Mom asks, confused. Behind her the man in the suit squares his shoulders and gives a little cough. That’s Aidan, my not-human dad.

  “The owl that was here before,” I say. “With that girl?”

  And then it comes to me. I know that girl. She’s Anna Wilde, who is ten and dead and invisible to most people. The owl is her favorite stuffed toy.

  I tried to kill myself earlier, and Anna saved my life.

  I tear up too as I remember.

  “You’re okay now, Sunshine,” the leather jacket guy murmurs. Nolan, my brilliant and awesome boyfriend. No wonder my heart was set aflutter before.

  Nolan is wrong, though. I’m not okay, not really. Because I am a luiseach, an elite guardian angel-superhero who fights demons and helps the dead cross over to the other side.

  “Her heart rate is very elevated,” Mom says, pressing her cool fingers against my wrist.

  “That’s normal—for her,” Aidan replies.

  Other memories come rushing back. Earlier I learned that my very existence was going to jeopardize the future of the human race, civilization, the world as we know it. Major stuff.

  And so I split the ground open with my
special luiseach knife and plunged in like a sacrificial lamb.

  “Her pulse is starting to regulate,” Mom says.

  Aidan peers at his sleek steel watch. “That took a little more time than usual, but it’s understandable, given the circumstances.”

  Then everything went crazy, haywire, out of control. Just as I took that plunge, I learned that my death was going to make the situation much, much worse. So naturally, I decided to bail. But I couldn’t. I was falling into an abyss with no way to reverse or rewind—on top of which, a zillion demons were waiting for me down below.

  Thank goodness Anna appeared out of nowhere with her stuffed owl and pulled me to safety. Once we were aboveground and free and clear of the demons, she let go…

  My smile vanishes.

  The demons. They’re still down there.

  “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” I mutter under my breath. I hoist myself up on my elbows and try to stand up. My brain swirls with nausea and dizziness.

  “What do you think you’re doing, young lady?” Mom puts a firm but gentle hand on my chest. “You can’t move until I’m done checking your vitals! And we have no idea what sort of trauma your head, neck, and spine may have sustained…”

  “Mom, you need to help me up. There were demons down there, and—”

  “Demons?” Aidan interrupts sharply.

  “Aidan, can we close the ground back up? Like, immediately? I saw hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Dark spirits too. What if they try to climb out or fly out or trapeze-artist out or…” Fear is fueling me now, and I’m babbling at the speed of light. Aidan isn’t just my dad and my mentor—he’s also a super-big-deal luiseach. If anyone would know how to undo what I did, it’s him.

  His brow furrows as he glances over his shoulder. That’s when I notice the others standing nearby: my friends Ashley and Lucio… and Victoria, who is Anna’s mom… and Helena, who is my bio-mom, not that I like thinking about my genes being linked to her genes in any way whatsoever.

  Aidan reaches a hand in Helena’s direction. The two of them used to be a super-big-deal luiseach couple until they had a bad break-up—not your typical “we need to spend time apart and date other people” break-up, but a “one of us wants to kill our infant daughter for the greater good and the other totally doesn’t” break-up.

  That infant daughter was me. Helena tried to kill me again this morning, just before I tried to kill myself. Yup, it’s been a busy day.

  “The incantation,” Aidan says quickly, and Helena nods and joins his side. They confer in low voices. Lucio starts to follow Helena with an expression of pure rage… no one can blame him, considering that she had his parents executed sixteen years ago… but Aidan gives him a warning look, and he retreats with clenched fists.

  “Can someone please explain to me what’s going on?” Ashley bursts out. “First, the earth splits open, like, like, in the new Star Wars movie. Then Sunshine, you levitate… and thrash around, drop into a ginormous hole, fly back out, and crash-land in this Goth lady’s—” she gestures to Victoria “—front yard. Is this some sort of demented magic trick? Is this what people in Washington do to freak out the tourists?”

  I stand up slowly and peer around. This time Mom doesn’t try to stop me, although she does give me one of her extremely stern nurse-mom looks.

  Whoa. Ashley is right. Victoria’s yard looks postapocalyptic, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies postapocalyptic. (My literary idol Jane Austen is rolling over in her grave right now.) Jagged, gaping chasms crisscross the pine-needle-littered lawn. Chasms that I created with my luiseach knife. The dark, brooding evergreens don’t help. Neither do the dying spring flowers that are brittle and hoar-white with frost.

  I frown. There was something else here before. Someone else. A man in black. Where did he go? Did I imagine him?

  “Are you okay?” Nolan joins me at my side. I feel a rush of warmth as I always do when I’m with him—not just because I’m madly in love with him but because he’s my protector. Protectors have an instant radiator effect on their luiseach. (Every luiseach has a protector and a mentor.)

  “I’m okay. Well, ish. How about you?” I reply. That’s when I notice the cut on Nolan’s left temple, crusted with blood. Helena did that to him.

  “Are you all right?” I ask worriedly.

  “I’m fine. Your mom checked me out. Listen, Sunshine, today isn’t the way I imagined saying ‘welcome back’ to you after not seeing you for three months. Well, except for the part when we, um…”

  Kissed for the first time, I finish in my head. Said “I love you” to each other for the first time.

  He smiles shyly. I smile back.

  If only we were alone right now, but no. Just then Aidan and Helena sweep by us and position themselves in the center of the war-zone lawn. They look very serious and ceremonious. What are they up to? Can Helena even be trusted, after everything? They close their eyes, extend their palms upward, and begin chanting in unison—strange, ancient words.

  This must be the incantation Aidan mentioned. I don’t know what the words mean, yet a deep part of me recognizes them, reacts to their magic.

  “Excuse me a sec,” I say to Nolan. He nods, comprehending.

  I step forward and take my place to the left of Aidan, away from Helena. I begin to chant, my words mumbly and improvised at first, then clearer and more sure.

  Something reacts.

  A sudden frigid wind blasts across the yard and pushes against us. Wobbling, I dig my Chuck Taylors into the ground to steady myself. Aidan and Helena remain still as statues and continue chanting.

  The wind intensifies. Pine branches crack and tumble to the ground. An entire tree falls with an ominous thud. Slate tiles blow off the roof. A stone bird fountain splits in two.

  What is happening? Are we doing that?

  It occurs to me that I should get Mom and Ashley out of there. But Nolan being Nolan, he knows exactly what I need and ushers the two of them toward the street. Mom protests; Ashley doesn’t protest at all and in fact is screeching hysterically about returning to Austin immediately.

  The earth is shaking now. The walls of the chasms start to close, inch by shuddering inch. The incantation is working. We are keeping the demon army at bay.

  I shutter my eyelids and go into a sort of trance. I chant faster and faster, the words tumbling over each other, my voice hoarse with urgency…

  Someone screams.

  My eyelids fly open. Oh, freak. Nearby, a humungous wild animal is crawling out of one of the chasms. It peers around hungrily and leaps onto its nearest prey: Victoria.

  I blink. It’s not a wild animal. It’s a demon. A serpent-demon.

  We are too late. They are coming for us.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Attack of the Serpent-Demons

  The attack has begun.

  The serpent-demon has a long, thick body with no arms or legs. Its green scales glow grotesquely in the wan light. Horns thrust out and curl backward from its head. Hissing and grinning, it proceeds to wrap itself around Victoria’s slim, fragile body. She flails at it, but it is too swift and strong. Plus, she can’t see it because she’s an ex-luiseach and doesn’t have luiseach powers anymore.

  Lucio rushes forward like a football player on steroids.

  “No!” Aidan commands him.

  Lucio stops in his tracks. He can’t see the creature either, even though he is a full-on, card-carrying luiseach. Not sure why. “But Aidan! Something’s happening to Victoria! We’ve got to—”

  Victoria screams again. The serpent-demon has coiled itself completely around her and is squeezing, squeezing. Its face is a breath away from her face.

  “Victoria, close your mouth!” Aidan orders her. She stares at him wildly but obeys, whimpering in terror; he was her mentor when she was a luiseach, so she listens to him.

  The creature laughs and flicks its tongue at the thin, hard line of Victoria’s lips, its yellow eyes gleaming. Victoria tries to pull away, but
it keeps flicking, flicking… and soon her mouth begins to open slowly, excruciatingly as though by force.

  Oh no. That’s how it will kill her. Not by squeezing her to death but by slipping into her mouth and down her throat. Once inside it will possess her and wipe out her soul. Stop the beating of her heart. After it is finished with her, the memory of her will fade in our minds, like she was never here.

  And then it will turn on the rest of us.

  I tip my face to the sky. Anna, where are you? Your mom needs you! But I can’t feel her spirit anywhere.

  Helena, who is no longer chanting, inspects her perfectly manicured nails. She has very small, dainty hands—for a murderer, that is. Or is it murderess?

  “What’s the plan, Aidan dearest?” she trills. Her tone is sarcastic but with a subtle undercurrent of anxiety. Has she never dealt with a demon onslaught before? Still, part of her probably wants to see Victoria suffer—after all, Victoria was a double agent for Aidan.

  “Continue with the incantation, Helena!” Aidan instructs her.

  “Why should I? Victoria did betray me, after all.”

  “We can discuss that later. We need to stop this now, not just for Victoria’s sake but for all our sakes. You know what will happen if…”

  Aidan doesn’t finish his sentence. He loosens his gunmetal gray tie and strides toward Victoria and the serpent-demon. Very James Bond of him. Sighing, Helena resumes chanting. So do I, although in Aidan’s absence I automatically move away from her. Lucio, ever protective, places himself between Helena and me. It must be taking every ounce of self-control for him not to go after Helena right here and now. But he wouldn’t disobey Aidan, and he knows what’s at stake.

  Aidan circles the creature, which is too busy demon–French-kissing Victoria to notice him. As I chant, I do a quick visual sweep of the perimeter. The chasms are closing, but not fast enough. I spot two more serpent-demons crawling out: one black, one red. There may be others. There will be others. Demons… dark spirits… an army of pure evil…

  The serpent-demon on Victoria finally detects Aidan’s presence. It whips its head around 180 degrees and bares its lethal fangs with a low, gurgling hiss.