I nod. My throat is so raw that speaking hurts.
“Wow. From where I stood, it looked like we were winning—the demon was on the run. But you knew what was going on inside that man? You felt what the demon was doing?”
I nod again, pressing myself up to stand. Lucio pulls at the bottom of his T-shirt until a piece of cloth rips off. He uses it to bind my hand, still bleeding from where the weapon cut me before it turned into a storm. I’m shaking. I can still feel the shadow of the demon’s hands all over me.
Suddenly I can’t keep myself from crying.
Lucio holds me as the sobs rattle me to my core. He strokes my hair and kisses my forehead.
Finally I feel strong enough to make a joke. “Is this what you had in mind when you said we’d be doing some real luiseach work today?”
Lucio laughs so hard that I can feel his chest shaking against my own. He drops his arms and laces his fingers through mine once more. We’re still holding hands when we emerge from the shack into the sunlight.
The air is thick with smoke, but not a single flame remains. The entire town is drenched. The storm cloud covered all of Lado Selva, extinguishing the fires. The townspeople cheer when they see Lucio and me. They might not know exactly what we are, but they know the darkness that blanketed their small town has vanished into thin air. Above us the sun beats down, as bright and hot as ever. The wet ground practically sizzles beneath our feet.
“How do you feel?” Lucio asks.
I look at him like he’s just asked me whether the sky is blue, a question with an answer so obvious, it’s hardly worth asking. Every muscle in my body hurts. It feels like enormous bruises are blossoming on my internal organs from the demon’s phantom grip. I’m covered in dirt and sweat, and my throat is raw from breathing in that hot, fiery air. Tears have dried on my face, and my clothes are stained with soot and ash. There’s an unconscious man lying on the floor of the shack behind us who will never fully understand what happened to him. Another man has been reunited with his family. I search the crowd until I see him: his hand is resting on his wife’s swollen belly, and a little girl is burying her head against his legs while a little boy wraps his arms around his father’s waist.
I turn to Lucio. “I feel”—I pause—“good,” I answer finally. Not just good: I feel like myself again. “How’s that possible?”
“Real luiseach work,” Lucio answers with a grin, like that explains everything. Which, I guess, it does. He pulls me toward the motorcycle.
“Wait!” I shout, turning to run back to the shack. There is a crowd of people in there now, attending to the man on the ground. I have to crawl between their legs to find what I almost left behind.
I slip the rusty knife back into my pocket where it belongs and run back outside.
“Can I ask you something?” I say before I swing my leg over trusty Clementine.
“’Course,” Lucio answers, fastening his helmet’s strap around his neck and handing me mine.
“Aidan’s research is all about humans moving on without us—and if most of them could, they would, right?” Lucio nods. “But Michael Weir’s spirit escaped Aidan’s lab and turned dark because he thought he had unfinished business here on Earth. And he’s not the only spirit in the world who feels like that—that his life got snuffed out too soon. What about the others who don’t want to move on?”
Lucio cocks his head to the side. “Aidan has theories for that too. He thinks that over time spirits might be able to linger without going dark.”
“But how much time?” My skin is still pink from exposure to the fire demon’s heat. “What if we’re extinct before that happens?”
“We’ll just have to eliminate all the dark spirits before we go.”
Yet another use for the word eliminate. Lucio makes it sound so simple.
Certain Powers
Nolan is so obviously heartsick that, under different circumstances, I might actually feel sorry for the boy. But instead, I keep my focus on using his weakness to my advantage. To his credit, I don’t think he’s the type to spill his secrets easily. Lucky for me, he is so tied up in knots over the girl that he can’t help himself.
“I’m supposed to be protecting her,” he moans miserably. “But I don’t even know where she is!”
I nod sympathetically. I know exactly where she is. I just can’t get there.
“But Victoria’s letter”—how I hate saying that woman’s name, even now—“said that it was your job to guard information. You can do that even when she’s thousands of miles away. I can help you.”