The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (2 page)

“I need a sec,” I tell Teddy.

“I didn’t say we could stop!”

“I’m not
asking
.”

He’s panting when he halts to glare at me with those pale eyes of his. This demon-boy.

Behind him, the woods double and conflate. I brace myself against a tree, clear my head. I know what’s happening. I know I’ve just been vivified, created anew. I know Teddy’s got vials of my blood in his satchel.

I know all those things.

But I can’t intellectualize away the fact that I feel like my body, mind, and soul are bricks that have yet to be cemented together.

“Don’t give me that look,” I growl his way. “You’ve ruined everything.”

“Everything? You had nothing. What’s to ruin?”

“I was awake. After years in a coma, I was awake.”

“You’re not needed in California. I need you here. So does your mom.”

Teddy told me I had a purpose on Wormwood Island. Over the racing beep of my heart rate monitor and the slow drip of my IV, he said I should trust him, that my mom trusted him. My deceased mom. How could he know my mom?

“Why?” I ask him. “Why did you bring me back here?” And then I ask the question I should have been asking all along: “What don’t I know?”

“We could fill the world with what you don’t know.”

“Then start with the big stuff, Teddy. The life-and-death stuff.”

“We don’t have a moment to spare, Miss Merchant.” He goes for my arm again, but I jerk away. “You’re going to make this difficult?”

I hold his glare. “No more secrets. I’ll call my dad, tell him I’m being fed poison, and he’ll get me out of this coma faster than you can blink.”

“Don’t you realize Mephisto will bring you back? There’s no escape. He wants you here.”

“Why?”

“Naive little girl. Do you think he needs a reason for everything?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you’re going to waste time,” he says. Kneeling, he swings his satchel down and rummages through it.

I glimpse two of my vials.

“Just two?” I ask. “You took three vials of my blood.”

“I sank one into the earth by the dock. I needed to vivify you. I thought you understood: this island is enchanted.”

“You mean
cursed
.”

“
Enchanted
, Miss Merchant. Those with the power to vivify the dead have enchanted Wormwood Island such that the moment a bone or a strand of hair or a vial of blood touches any part of the island, that person returns to life in an immaculate version of their past body.”

“Yeah, I know. The escape plan you foiled was kinda based on that whole idea.”

“I am not gifted with the talent to vivify merely by touching a vial, so I had to connect your vial with the earth. Now.” He tugs a heap of navy, gray, and yellow clothes out of his satchel and shoves
them at me. Tall boots follow. It’s my Cania Christy uniform. “Put this on.”

“No.”

He looks up at me. His teeth are clenched. The kindness I thought I saw in him in my hospital room—the kindness that made me trust him for the faintest moment—has vanished like the dream it probably was. Only a monster would bring me back to this place, knowing what he knows about it. The vivified high-schoolers. The deaths narrowly escaped thanks to a devil’s trickery and outrageous sums paid by desperate parents. The cutthroat competition for a second life off this island, which is the reward given each year to one—
and only one
—valedictorian, the reward known as the Big V. I’m just a girl in a coma. I shouldn’t even be here.

I look at the uniform, held up to me like a peace offering when it’s anything but. I look at Teddy. My long, lanky, gray-skinned Guardian who seemed, until I woke to find him standing over my hospital bed, like just another Cania Christy garden-variety demon. Now I’m not sure.

“Put it on,” he repeats.

If my Cania education has taught me anything, it’s that you should never do something without getting something in return. That’s what Pilot taught me when he betrayed me. That’s the foundation on which Cania is built: tit for tat.

So I say, “One piece of clothing for one answer.”

“An exchange?”

I nod.

“Underclothes don’t count,” he says.

“Yes, they do.”

As he grumbles about the clock ticking, he pushes the ball of clothes into my hands and turns so I can drop my hospital gown; evidently, you vivify in the clothes you were last wearing.

After checking to be sure there’s no one around, I stand on the gown, rub most of the muck off my feet, and yank on my underwear, bra, and tights. I’m about to ask my first of three earned questions when Teddy whirls to face me again.

“Hey!” I hunch and cover myself with my balled-up uniform and boots. “This isn’t a peep show, dude.”

Ignoring me, he raises his hand and swirls it down as if he’s drawing a tornado in the air. I see a faint glimmer like a low-hanging
cloud. It begins over our heads and curls around our bodies. When his fingertips pass my shoulders, the sounds of the island—croaking frogs, distant barking sea lions, the omnipresent wash of waves— vanish as if they’ve been sealed out, leaving us in a vacuum of silence.

Now we can be honest
, he says. Actually, he doesn’t say it. His lips don’t even move.

“What the—” My voice is gone.

He shakes his head.
Don’t speak to me, Miss Merchant. Think to me
.

Think
to you?

We’re in a silencer. It’s a common spell for preventing others—

Oh, the joys of being surrounded by devils
.

—from overhearing a conversation. It gives voice to your private thoughts, but only for those within it. So, for God’s sake, don’t start fantasizing about Ebenezer Zin, that foolish boy who parades his eternal youth and beauty like—

Fine!
I cut his tirade short.
Where was I?

You’ve got three items on. So you’ve earned three questions
.

First: Who are you?

My demon name is Ted Rier. I’ve been living in the underworld for the last 150 years
.

Doesn’t seem long for a demon
.

Is that your second question?

Definitely not. Okay, you said something about my mom trusting you. But if you’re a demon, how could you know my mom? I saw her in my hospital room. She looked more like an angel than, like, a dark soul
.

You saw her?

Briefly
.

He pauses.
After she passed away, I met her soul
.

My stomach knots.
In Hell?

No, no, no
.

Well, don’t scare me like that!

That’s three questions. Put on your shirt to earn a fourth
.

I do.
Where did you meet her?

Outside the realm of what you can understand. The spirit realm is very different from what you know here. The best way I can answer that question, Miss Merchant, is to tell you this: I’ve been masquerading as a demon
.

I zip up my skirt and ask question five.
So you’re telling me you don’t actually play for the devils?

I do not. I’m what you might call a secret agent
.

I can’t help but smile.

Teddy scowls.
I amuse you?

The only secret agents I know are, y’know, made in Hollywood. Like James Bond
.

I don’t look the part?

My thoughts betray me:
Not even in Bizarro World
.

My sincere apologies, but the face and body you scorn are the visages that suit the tastes of Mephistopheles, whom I serve. I was once quite striking, I assure you. But physical beauty—

I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings…

—is hardly as interesting to Mephisto as the ways he can torture and manipulate a growing number of you simple-minded humans
.

Got it. Sorry
.

Which brings me to the point, if you can collect yourself for a minute
,
Miss Merchant
.

I’m not even laughing! I barely smiled
.

He glares at me.
To answer your fifth question, I met your mother in secret when I was convening with the rest of the benign spirits aligned in our mission
.

Which is… ?

Put on your cardigan
.

Oh, for the love of…
I hastily button the sweater.
What’s your mission?

Our
mission, Miss Merchant, is to stop the expansion of the underworld into this world
.

So just a small mission, then
.

Your mom specifically asked for you. She believes you can do this
.

I saw that coming. Taking a deep breath, I nod
. If it’s for my mom
.

Very good. Mephisto’s reach is growing, in spite of his recent humiliations at your hand and the subsequent loss of at least one of the Seven Sinning Sisters. Now is the perfect time to strike. Or it will be, when we’ve built up enough supporters and we get the right plan in place
.

Wait, who are the Seven Sinning Sisters?

He looks at the boots I hold, the last part of my uniform.

I tug them on.
There. Boots count as two
.

Boots count as one
.

There are two of them
.

They count as one
.

After what you’ve done to me, Teddy, I’d say you owe me as many answers as I want. They count as two
.

To my surprise, he relents.
Two. Fine. The Seven Sinning Sisters are Mephisto’s most powerful followers. They are seven beautiful dark goddesses, each one a keeper of one of the seven deadly sins. They’re behind everyday destruction, making them exceptionally valuable followers Downstairs and here on Earth
. He tilts his head.
And now you’ve got just one question left. Hurry up with it. We’re wasting precious time
.

But you hear my every thought! No matter what question I think, that’ll be it
.

Suddenly, noises rush at me. I wiggle my jaw to pop my ears, and the low caws and sea lion moans that possess the island whoosh around us.

“Is that better?” Teddy asks.

I glimpse someone in the shadows. Both Teddy and I look in time to see Mr. Watso, dressed in fishing gear and looking 100 feet tall, sneer at us, growl a little, and trudge away. I haven’t seen him since the night his granddaughter Molly was cremated; he had to destroy her body because, if it remained on Wormwood Island, she would vivify—and Mr. Watso’s always seen the evil in letting a devil’s spell vivify the dead. The cremation happened the night after she was murdered—not for a crime, but for befriending me. Suffice it to say, I’ve made a lifetime enemy of Mr. Watso.

“Miss Merchant, we must hurry to campus.”

“Wait!” I’ve got to make this question worth it. But Teddy’s gritting his teeth like the world might end if I don’t spit out my next thought.

“Your question?”

“When I first came here, I—I didn’t wake up on the edge of the island. I was just suddenly at Gigi’s house, which is in the middle of the island. The first thing I really remember is waking up and getting dressed for school on my first day. But my head was clear. I knew everything I had to do, and I had this sense of where I’d come from and why I was here. I knew the name Cania Christy, and I knew Gigi. But, when I think about it, I don’t know how I could have known anything.” I look at him. “So how did that work?”

“
That’s
what you want to spend your last question on?”

“You rushed me!”

“You want to know
more
about vivification. You don’t want to know what’s become of Mephisto? Or who’s about to take control of Cania Christy?”

“There’s someone else in control?”

“You don’t want to know why your friend Molly allowed herself to be killed?” he continues in disbelief. “You don’t want to know if, after you destroyed the Stone boy’s vial, he’s gone Upstairs or Downstairs?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“You don’t want to know if Mr. Zin and his father are being punished for what the two of you did? You don’t want to know what punishment
you’ll
endure now that you’re back?”

God, I’ve really messed this up. There’s so much to know here, and it’s like I’m always a step behind. Teddy’s already glancing up-island, looking desperately through the trees toward something I know nothing about. So many secrets for such a small island.

“Just answer the question, Teddy,” I say in exasperation.

“I wasn’t there,” he reminds me, “but, as I understand it, you were vivified sometime in the early morning of your first day of school. Dr. Zin brought your vial to Gigi’s house, where Mephisto was waiting to vivify you and Star Wetpier was waiting to…” he hesitates, “rewrite your past. Your recent past.”

“Star Wetpier. The history teacher?”

“She’s a demon. Everyone who works here is either a punk— that’s what we call new lost souls—or a demon of some rank. Demons have powers, you see. Star’s gift is to rewrite the past. When you were in the initial fog of vivifying that day, she fed you details that kept you from questioning why you were here.”

“That’s a lot of work to get a coma victim into a snobby school for dead kids.”

“If you come with me, I’ll explain more.”

Teddy grabs me by the arm, and we’re running again. He tells me, in short gasps as we race to the road, what’s been happening in our absence. He knows because he’s bound to Mephisto, his master, who has brought him up to speed, like, telepathically or something.

“The underworld has been in an uproar since you and that Zin boy jumped off the cliff.” He charges on. “Mephisto has fallen from the status of devil to archdemon, which is still far above a demon but
is, nonetheless, below where he once was. He’s been removed from Cania Christy.”

“
What
?”

“Gone. Until he can prove himself again, which will require him to rebuild his legions, he cannot lead this school.”

“We’ve got a new headmaster?”

“Don’t be too excited,” he warns. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Prepare for madness on campus. Everyone’s arguing, switching sides,” Teddy explains. “Alliances are forming and breaking. It’s chaos. And, yes, it’s all your fault.” He barely pauses for emphasis. “The powerless punks, scheming succubae, darkest demons— everyone that served Mephisto is questioning him. Your escape was like nothing seen before. Many of Mephisto’s followers lost faith in him—”