“It isn’t safe.” He stamps at the ground like a racehorse just itching to start running. Like he has all this pent-up energy just waiting to get out.
“I thought the whole point of bringing me here is because it is safe.”
“Llevar la Luz is safe,” Lucio answers. “But outside our borders . . .”
“There’s a dangerous demon and another spirit on the verge of going dark,” I supply. Instinctively I reach for my back pocket, then remember I’m in my pajamas. The weapon is still tucked beneath my pillows. I feel kind of naked without it, so I fold my arms across my chest.
“Well, that too,” Lucio answers mysteriously.
“What do you mean?” I ask, but Lucio shakes his head, not willing to reveal any more. “Maybe we should take a day off,” I try. “Don’t luiseach get weekends off? Vacation days?”
“National holidays?” Lucio suggests. “Summer Fridays?”
“Exactly!”
“Come on.” Lucio grins, leading the way around the house. Much to my surprise, he doesn’t head for the front door. Instead, he keeps going, across the quad and behind the building where I nearly passed out a few hours ago.
Lucio leads me to a circle of benches behind the courtyard, set in the middle of an overgrown shady grove. Most the benches are overgrown with vines and covered in fallen leaves, but around one of the benches someone has made an effort to pull back the vines and clear a path. This place must have had a groundskeeper once, but now there’s only Lucio.
The spot looks cool and inviting, and in front of the bench is a jug of lemonade and two glasses. I scratch at my fresh mosquito bites—courtesy of early-morning phone calls in the jungle—and tug at my Care Bear T-shirt. I wonder how long Lucio’s been looking for me—the ice in the jug has melted down to almost nothing.
“What’s all this?” It’s the kind of thing that would make Ashley squeal with delight—a handsome boy setting up a lovely picnic for two.
“This is my favorite spot on all of Llevar la Luz,” Lucio answers. “When I was little, it was my go-to spot for a game of hide-and-seek.”
“Couldn’t they always find you if you hid in the same place every time?”
“No one ever seemed to catch on.”
I try to imagine what this place must have been like before the rift: a hive of activity, luiseach students and mentors and protectors scattered across the quad, scrambling from one building to the next. Luiseach children playing tag and hide-and-seek. Back then the buildings weren’t dilapidated. They were in such good shape that they practically shone in the sunlight, and hot water came right out of the tap. Each building had air conditioning turned up so high that, despite the heat outside, everyone wore sweaters to work, class, and wherever else they were going.
“I thought you might want to talk about what I said the other day. I’m sure you have questions. You know, about our species going extinct.”
“Oh that,” I joke. “I almost forgot about that.” Questions is an inadequate word for the thoughts running through my head. Questions are what you have in math class when a geometry proof doesn’t make sense. There should be a bigger word than questions that’s specially reserved for times like this.
Although I’m not sure anyone has ever experienced a time like this before.
“I followed Aidan to his lab this morning,” I confess. In this humidity the temperature barely drops when you go from sunshine to shade. But when Lucio sits on the bench, I drop down beside him. This bench is small, meant for two. It’s easy to imagine teenage luiseach-in-training meeting here for secret rendezvous when their mentors weren’t looking. Lucio and I sit so close that our knees touch. Through my mud-splattered pj pants I can feel the heat coming off his skin, but I don’t move to avoid it. It’s nice to be around a boy I can sit close to for a change. If Nolan were here, I’d be struggling to not get sick.
Seriously, Sunshine, I command myself, Stop comparing Nolan and Lucio! Now’s not the time for those kinds of thoughts anyway.
“Aidan thinks spirits need to learn to move on without luiseach help,” he replies.
I lean back and stare at the leaves on the tree branches above us. That’s why he wasn’t helping them. He was trying to force them to do it on their own. Trying to answer his own question: How will spirits move on when we’re no longer on this planet to help them?
A chill runs down my spine as I remember what I saw. What I felt. “He was torturing them,” I whisper.
“I know it’s hard to watch.” Another word that feels wrong. Chemistry tests are hard. This is . . . I don’t know what this is. “But if Aidan is right, it changes everything. It’s the first step in proving humans can learn to move on without us.”
“Because I’m the last luiseach,” I say softly. How I hate the sound of that.
Lucio nods. “If human spirits are capable of moving on by themselves, then your birth—and the lack of luiseach births since then—isn’t the calamity that Helena thinks it is.”
“Helena?”