I understand that whoever she is, this woman wants to hurt me.
I open my mouth to scream, but the only sounds that escape are pitiful cries. I try to stand and run, but my muscles are too weak. My limbs won’t cooperate with the messages my brain is trying to send them. I look down, trying to figure out what’s wrong with my legs: Am I tied up? Are they broken and beaten?
What I see is even more horrifying.
They aren’t my legs at all. Or anyway they’re not the legs that I have now, the legs that trudged up the stairs of this strange and sad house a few hours ago. Instead, they’re the helpless, kicking legs of an infant who should be sleeping in a crib like the one across the hall instead of in this enormous old bed.
I’m trapped in this small, vulnerable body. I wave my helpless baby arms around my head and try to speak, but my muscles and my brain aren’t developed enough to make words. I’m not strong enough to do anything but cry and moan and kick pathetically against the blanket the woman wraps tightly around me, covering my face as I try to breathe.
When I finally wake up, my real-life teenage arms and legs are sore.
So much for getting plenty of rest before the first day of training.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lucio
The boy extends his hand in my direction. “Lucio,” he says. I find myself staring at the tattoos running down the sides of his right pointer finger, bright white against his caramel skin. From here they look like words written in a flowing, loopy script, but I can’t quite make out what they say.
When I came downstairs in search of coffee, the last thing I expected to be confronted with was a strikingly handsome boy, a wide smile on his face, perched on top of the kitchen counter with his legs swinging back and forth over the edge. I wasn’t even expecting to be able to find the kitchen, but I did—after walking around in circles a few times.
“Huh?” I answer dumbly. I may have slept some last night, but I don’t exactly feel rejuvenated this morning.
“Lucio,” he repeats, hopping down from the counter, his tattooed hand still floating in the space between us. Still bleary eyed, I realize his must have been the voice I heard speaking with Aidan in the middle of the night. The voice was so deep that it never occurred to me he’d be so young—he looks only a few years older than I am. (Though if he’s a luiseach, who knows, right? He could be eighty for all I know.) His skin is the exact color of the milky cup of coffee I’d been hoping to find down here. He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts—though his T-shirt is red, while mine is bright blue with a flock of birds flying across it—but unlike me, his hair is wet from a recent shower and his breath smells like toothpaste. I cover my mouth to keep my morning breath from escaping.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.”
“No, silly,” he laughs, then explains in the same perfect, barely accented English I heard him speak last night, “That’s my name. Lucio.”
“Oh.” I blush and reach out to shake his hand. He’s only a few inches taller than I am. Nothing like Aidan, who towers above me. “I’m Sunshine.”
“I know.”
“Do you also know where a girl can get a cup of coffee around here?” There might not be electricity on the first floor, but there is an enormous old gas stove in the corner with a kettle of water steaming on top. Lucio hands me a mug and pours in some hot water.
“No coffee. Have some tea,” he says like it’s the same thing. He plops a tea bag into the mug and returns the kettle to the stove.
“Not quite what I was looking for,” I answer, but I take a sip, suddenly very aware of the fact that I’m still dressed in the super-short shorts I slept in and that my hair is pulled into the messiest, frizziest bun in the history of hairstyles. I try to inconspicuously pull down on the legs of my shorts, making them a fraction of an inch longer, which I realize is pointless.
“There’s milk in the icebox,” Lucio offers, gesturing to a cooler set in front of an enormous—but powerless—stainless-steel refrigerator. “I think it’s still good.”
“You think?”
He shrugs, hopping back up onto the counter. He’s wearing shorts, and I can’t help but notice his muscular legs. I look away, feeling shy.