Evil's Enemy

She turned sixteen today.
I watched it happen. Katherine, the woman who adopted her, baked
her a cake: carrot cake, a burnt sort of orange colour with white frosting
smothered over the top of it. A girl named Ashley came over to her house
with candles, which they lit despite the sweltering Texas heat. Then they
sang-Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you. Our kind don't
celebrate birthdays. Except, of course, for when one of us turns sixteen. Just
as she did today.
At precisely the time of her birth-7:12 p.m., Central Standard Time,
August 14-I sensed the change in the girl named Sunshine. I felt it the
instant the spirit touched her. Katherine had just set the cake down on the
table in front of her: sixteen-no, seventeen . . . why seventeen?-candles.
Sunshine grinned and pursed her lips, preparing to extinguish the flames.
But then an instant of hesitation, the smile disappearing from her eyes.
Of course, she hadn't a clue what she was feeling or why she was feeling
it. The moment the spirit touched her, her temperature dropped from
98.6 degrees Fahrenheit to 92.3; her heart rate jumped from 80 beats per
minute to 110. She pressed her palm to her forehead like a mother checking
for a fever. Perhaps she thought she was coming down with something: a cold, the flu-whatever it is that people suffer from. I recognized the culprit
immediately: a twenty-nine-year-old male who'd perished in a car accident
less than a mile away several weeks earlier, the blood on his wounds still
fresh, the glass from the wind shield still embedded in his face. Later, I
would help him move on myself: his wounds will heal, his skin will be
smooth. But for now I keep my focus on Sunshine.
I counted the seconds until her heart rate returned to normal: eleven.