“So it’s like a familial kind of bond?” Nolan breaks in.
“Not exactly,” I say. “At least, not according to the professor’s notes. Sometimes the intensity of their connection can lead to romance.” Nolan can’t hide his discomfort: he presses his hands onto the table and tosses his hair away from his face and shifts in his chair.
“You’re sure the professor’s notes said romance?” he asks.
“Definitely,” I answer. “He made it sound really intense. Like protectors and their luiseach literally can’t keep their hands off each other.” I sigh wistfully, resting my chin on my palm. Nolan lifts his hand off the table, flexing and releasing it restlessly. “I have no idea what all of it means, but it sure sounds romantic, doesn’t it?”
Nolan leans back in his chair, raising his arms up like he’s given up. “I have never been this confused in my entire life,” he says miserably.
I blink innocently. “What do you mean? Because of the word luiseach? I’m sure I can find some sort of explanation for that word in Professor Jones’s notes. I just need to keep digging.”
“No,” Nolan answers. “I don’t mean because of the word luiseach.” He pronounces it correctly.
“Then what?” I ask.
Nolan takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. I sense the instant he decides to tell me everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Argi and Jairo
I spend every day in Aidan’s lab, every evening soaking in a tub of warm water, and every night tossing and turning with nightmares while Lucio is out hunting the missing spirit and Aidan is back to his lab to write about what happened during the day in his log.
“Does luiseach work always wear you out like this?” I ask Lucio as I take a bite of soggy cereal one morning. (It’s so humid here that Cheerios lose their crunch even before you add any milk.) I’m so hot that my skin itches, even though I know a world of cold waits for me in Aidan’s lab like a paranormally powered air conditioner.
He shakes his head. “Just the opposite, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, think about how you feel when you help a spirit move on.”
I sigh dramatically. “It’s been so long that I can barely remember.”
“Sure you can,” Lucio counters with a smile, and of course he’s right. Because helping a spirit move on usually feels wonderful.
“All luiseach gain strength from helping spirits move on.”
I nod. Luiseach literally means light-bringer; I never feel quite so much light as when a spirit has just passed through me to the other side. But now every day at Aidan’s lab I’m not just overwhelmed by spirits; I’m also resisting my instincts: all I want is to help them move on, and I can’t allow myself to so much as try. I feel like the least sunshine-y version of myself. I don’t know how Aidan has done this for so long, though I guess it explains why he seems to be the world’s most serious luiseach. It explains Victoria too: by the time I knew her, she had given up her powers and was unable to follow the instincts that had guided her since her sixteenth birthday—so she was a whole lot creepier than she was cheerful.
“After so many days of not helping spirits move on, I think my light is about to go out.”
Lucio smiles sympathetically. “I know it’s hard.” He drums his fingers on the table across from me. I watch the white tattoo dance on his finger as he moves.
“What does it say?” I ask finally.
“What does what say?”
“Your tattoo.” I point with my spoon. “I can tell that it’s words, but I don’t know what they are or what they mean.”
“They’re not really words,” Lucio explains. “They’re names.”
“Whose?”
“My parents.” He reaches his arm across the table and spreads his fingers so I can see. “Argi,” he says, tracing the letters on one side. “That’s my mother. And Jairo,” he adds, turning his hand. “That’s my dad.”
When he says the names out loud, I finally understand something that eluded me before now. How did I not put the pieces together sooner? If Nolan were here, he’d have figured it out ages ago.
Lucio said that his parents were killed for what they believed in, that luiseach on the other side of the rift were interrogating them for information. But Argi and Jairo kept their secret. And now I finally understand that their secret was me. They must have ventured outside the borders of Llevar la Luz, where Helena found them and overpowered them, trying to force them to reveal where I was. They died rather than give me up.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears springing to my eyes.