“Apologies for the blood,” she says, gesturing at Nolan’s forehead. “We had a bit of a scuffle before I could secure him. The boy seemed to think he had a chance at escape.” She smiles. Nolan struggles ever harder. Helena flicks her wrist, and Nolan stills as though an enormous weight is sitting on top of him. His face twists in pain.
I focus my energy on the spirit in the room to see him. His name was Ryan Michaelson, and he was a promising college football player with a real chance at going pro. Now his neck is twisted from a fatal football injury, bones bulging out of one side. He’s angry because his life was cut short.
“You’re using a spirit who doesn’t want to move on?” I ask, shocked by the cruelty of it. This is one lesson I wouldn’t want to learn.
“Only for a short while longer,” she answers, a fake sort of sweetness in her voice. “His strength is coming in handy at the moment. As soon as my task is complete, I will force it on.” For an instant her face relaxes: the circles under her eyes vanish, the tightness around her lips releases. With a start, I realize we have the same mouth.
But just as suddenly her features shift. She looks starving, like she hasn’t eaten for months, as parched as someone who hasn’t had anything but tiny little sips of water to keep herself alive for weeks at a time. She’s been manipulating this spirit for days to torture Nolan.
There’s something else in her face. Surprise.
Maybe she can’t quite believe the girl she’s been hunting for so many years just walked right into her clutches.
Or maybe she’s just surprised to see me all grown up. Maybe for all these years she’s been thinking of me as the baby she let go.
“Why don’t you offer our guest a seat?” Helena says to Victoria. Her voice sounds like no voice I’ve ever heard before, hoarse yet powerful. She sounds a thousand years older than she looks.
That’s the second time Helena referred to me as our guest, like she and Victoria have been living in this house together. But Victoria would never have willingly allowed Helena into her house, would never have just stood by while someone tortured Nolan.
Would she?
“Sit down, Sunshine.” Victoria nudges me toward the couch where I sat when she answered my questions just a few months ago.
I look at my protector, gasping for breath beneath the weight of the former football player, and then back at my old teacher, who looks perfectly normal. Well, as normal as she ever looked. She still has deep hollows beneath her eyes and the palest skin I’ve ever seen. But she doesn’t look any different from the way she looked the last time I saw her. She certainly doesn’t look like a prisoner. After all, prisoners don’t get to answer the front door.
Aidan said he and Lucio were the only two luiseach left who didn’t want me eliminated. Could he have possibly meant Victoria abandoned him too?
“How could you?” A lump rises in my throat, and I swallow it down, determined not to cry in front of Helena. “I thought you were on our side!”
Before Victoria can answer, Helena speaks. “She was. Until your father decided to use her daughter rather than save her when he designed your test. That’s just like him, you see, putting his little experiments above the lives of others.”
I can hardly argue with that. I’m furious at him for exactly the same thing.
“Please,” Helena says. “Sit down.”
I sit. There’s a plush ottoman in front of me, and Helena is standing on the other side, angled so I can’t quite make eye contact with Nolan. Keeping my eyes open, I concentrate on the angry spirit. I shiver as I reach out to him. Maybe if I can just get him to loosen his grip . . .
“Uh-uh-uh,” Helena wags her finger at me. Nolan groans as the spirit redoubles his efforts, every bit as strong as the body it left behind.
Helena squares her shoulders. Even though she’s small—like me—she seems like a wall between Ryan Michaelson and me. Between Nolan and me.
“Why are you hurting him?” I ask. “It’s me you want.”
“I needed him to take me to Llevar la Luz,” Helena answers, confirming that she’s known where I’ve been all along, every bit as calm and scientific as Aidan, even in dire circumstances. They must have made quite a team, barely breaking a sweat even as they took on demons. “I thought Nolan just needed a little persuading, but he’s been unusually resistant. Lucky for me, I don’t need to go to Llevar la Luz anymore.”
She gives the tiniest little nod, and Nolan groans again, this time in relief. I crane my neck so I can see his face. It looks like he isn’t in quite so much pain anymore. But Ryan Michaelson is still working for Helena, holding Nolan down. He can’t stand. And he certainly can’t run.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Helena continues politely, “how exactly did you know we were here?”
“I saw it.” No point in lying.
Helena looks just as surprised as she did when I walked into the room, but she quickly regains her composure, saying softly, “And you love him too much to let him suffer when you knew you could stop it.”