The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  The house smells like body heat. Plum’s comment about twentieths sticks in my head as I leave the marble foyer, walk through a hall lined in actual fur—which must be one of Dia’s “upgrades”— and find myself in the library Molly and I once broke into. But it, like the hallway, has been transformed. Most of the books are gone, and erotic statues have taken their places on the shelves, with under-mount lights drawing the eye to them.

  He’s holding a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a corkscrew when he joins me in the library.

  “So why do you stay here on the weekends?” I ask him. “Don’t you want to go back to the underworld?”

  “Do you think I want to go back there?” He pops the cork. “Downstairs has its charms, but this is where beauty lives. Little wonder the heavens have kept this place so greedily for themselves. You forget how lovely this world is until you return to it. But when you do,”—he smiles wistfully—“you can forgive a soul for choosing life here.”

  Oh, God, is he talking about Saligia? The way he’s looking at me, there can be no denying it. But he doesn’t know I know. The last time I spoke with him, I had no clue about Saligia, a fact that seemed to stun and disappoint him.

  “How long will you stay?” I ask with a choked voice.

  “How long would you like me to?”

  If he only knew my and Teddy’s plan.

  “I’m asking because, if Wormwood Island is Mephisto’s now, why hasn’t he sent you home?”

  “You honestly think I was sent here? I chose to come. I’ve told you that.”

  I can’t believe Mephisto would just let him stay. But perhaps it’s as Ben said months ago; perhaps Mephisto wants Dia to babysit us while he works out a larger world-domination plan.

  He pours a glass. “Do you want to know why I chose this life?”

  Fearing he’s about to tell me about my past as Saligia and our connection in the underworld, I wuss out. I know I came here so he’d help me awaken Saligia. But now that that’s actually an option, I’m not sure I can handle it.

  “I actually don’t,” I say and, to take the edge off, accept a glass of wine from him, “because I’d like to keep your intentions a mystery. It might make for a better painting.”

  “Ah, yes, the matter of the portrait.”

  “But there is something I’d like to know.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  “Do you remember the…lust challenge? In the Scrutiny?”

  “I do.”

  “Were you aware it was happening?”

  He sets his glass down and nods. “Shall we recreate it?”

  Eventually we might have to, if that’s what it takes to wake Saligia. But not yet.

  “I was actually just wondering about what you said,” I stammer, “about not being able to ‘reveal anything’ to me about a superior devil. I assume you meant Mephisto.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, what can’t you reveal about him?”

  He laughs. “Why, Anne, how could I answer that? I can’t reveal it. That’s the whole point.”

  “But there’s something to reveal?”

  “Isn’t there always?”

  “Something with Mephisto? Is it why I’m here?”

  “You tell me why you’re here.”

  I sit before the easel he’s put out for me. He’s reorganized the library to look like the artist’s studio he set up for me in his office. The leather chaise, the white drop-sheets, the easel and stool, even the champagne stand filled with warm water. He sits across from me, watching me with his too dark, too large eyes. His irises are dark purple and big, as if his eyes are all pupil.

  The better to see you with, I think.

  His smile is too broad, and his lips are too full.

  The better to eat you with.

  I can’t help but look at him now and see someone buried deeper inside. Someone my soul once loved, even if I have no conscious recollection of our relationship. There’s definitely a connection.

  “I’d like to present the portrait to the whole school on graduation day, which will be the opening day of Cania College,” he tells me. “If we work exceptionally hard between now and then, we just might meet that deadline.”

  “Great. But before we begin,” I say, taking a deep breath and hoping this all works as I need it to, “you took a sketch of mine a few months ago.”

  He thinks about it. Then he flips through a large hard-cover scrapbook and pulls one out. “This?”

  My breath catches when I see that the sketch is not of Saligia; it’s my old sketch of Ben in his casket. His beautiful eyes are closed—I had no idea then how lovely they could be—and his face is peaceful in a seemingly endless sleep. I take a second to collect myself and, feeling protective of the ties that were only severed for Ben, roll the sketch up. I tuck it into my bag. That one’s going in the vault.

  “Where did you get that?” I ask.

  “Library. Top floor.”

  For a half second, joy rushes like heroin through my veins. Joy at the possibility that Dia found this sketch recently, which could only mean that Ben had brought it into the library, which could possibly mean that he’s been thinking of me in spite of Kate and Eve’s curses.

  No sooner has joy raced through my system than a dull surge of dread replaces it. Ben shouldn’t be thinking of me. He needs to be with Garnet so he’ll win the Big V. And I need to help him win it, even if it means playing dirty—because, for everything I’ve promised Pilot and Harper, I’m not sure I can actually give anyone a new life. Pilot and Harper don’t need to know that; they just need to hope.

  “When?”

  “Dunno.” He shrugs. “Maybe around Christmas.”

  Relief is the final drug to sweep into and out of my system. He found the sketch when Ben and I were still together.

  “I was actually asking about the other sketch,” I say. “The one of Miss Saligia.”

  “You know her name?” He tilts his head. “How much do you know?”

  “That’s the thing around here. Just when I think I know something, I find out there are about a thousand other secrets hidden behind the first one.”

  “So you know you’re…?”

  “I know that, in another life, I was Gia. The girl you used to… date.”

  A delicious smile spreads across his face. Oh, I know why I dated him once. It’s never been a question of why anyone would be attracted to Dia. It’s only been a question of why I decided to give up everything to leave him and the underworld, and that question has been, thus far, not fully answered. Teddy said Gia wanted to kill Dia, but surely there had to be an easier way than reincarnating as some human chick.

  “So you know why I chose this life, too,” he says.

  Wait, he’s here for me?

  “You are Gia even now.” He pulls up another stool and sits across from me. I lean away. “I see her in everything you do. In the way you move like you’re gliding across a dance floor. In the way your hair can’t be tamed. In the shape of your beautiful curves. You’re back, aren’t you?”

  “Are you talking to me…or to Gia?”

  “When you left, Gia, I felt like my soul departed with you.”

  His gaze pushes into my chest, making my heart quicken. But it doesn’t feel like it did with Ben; I still lose focus and break out in a cold sweat when I glimpse Ben on campus. That’s not this. This quickening heartbeat can only be Gia awakening. Sticking with this plan is harder than it looks. So much energy is whirling inside my skin, behind my eyes, through my veins.

  “So you never really liked Ben, is that it?” he asks. “Did you miss me, Gia?”

  “You’re the one who said Ben and I were poorly matched.”

  “I didn’t want him in your life. And that worked out.”

  “Whatever. I hope he and Garnet enjoy their last months of life together.”

  “So you don’t think he’ll win the Big V?” he asks. When I shrug, he adds, “From what I hear, Garnet’s concerned that he’s so
adamantly opposed to you. Evidently he gets angry whenever she mentions you.”

  “Why the hell would she mention me?”

  “To test him, obviously.”

  I swirl a brush on my palm to loosen the bristles. Acting natural. Being natural. Not snooping. Not fishing for details. Not trying to figure out how I can change Garnet’s mind so she feels totally secure in Ben’s attraction to her. If Garnet doesn’t trust Ben’s love for her, she won’t fight for him the way I need her to.

  I need Garnet to trust Ben.

  I need to make her forget Ben and I were ever together.

  “Perhaps I’ll make the feats of strength harder than ever,” he says. “That should guarantee Ben won’t make it onto my short list. If destroying Ben will make you happy, I’ll do it.”

  Oh, crap. “What feats of strength?”

  “I’ve got about twenty seniors on my short list, and I seriously don’t know who’s got the chops to win. So I want to use some challenges to whittle the list down. Smart, right?”

  “Smart.”

  Smart? Not smart at all! Now Ben has to endure feats of strength? Like there’s not enough standing between him and life.

  “You know Ben well enough,” Dia says. “What is a feat of strength he couldn’t possibly overcome?”

  I tap the brush handle to my lips. “Reading,” I lie. “He’s a terrible reader.”

  “Oh, Gia, you haven’t lost your edge.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “Miss Saligia.”

  He stands. His thighs press against my leg.

  Just as I’m about to resist, I remind myself that this is the point. This is why I’m here. I need Dia to wake Gia up. If I can just think of Dia touching me the way I think of throwing myself down the stairs—an unpleasant means to a necessary end—then I can get through this. Not that he’s hard to take, visually. Not that his touch isn’t completely…well, it’s little wonder Luxuria made him the object of my lust.

  He takes my hand, wrestles the brush from it, and pulls it flat against his chest, just under the opening of his shirt.

  I can feel his heartbeat. He has a heartbeat. I wasn’t sure.

  “Look at me, Gia,” he says.

  My head feels light, like it’s filled with cotton. Aches have started coursing through my legs. My arms tingle. And a heat is rising in my chest, a fullness that makes my breath heavy. It’s working. It’s going to happen.

  “Gia,” he insists, “look at me.”

  “Wait.”

  “Miss Saligia, my love, I know you’re in there. I need to see you. I need to talk to you.”

  He lifts my other hand to his mouth, kisses my palm. Our eyes meet. His breath is as heavy as mine.

  “Good,” he says. “Yes. A little of Anne. A lot of Gia.”

  I refuse to tear myself away. Because it’s working. I let my hands roam his chest and up his neck, over his jaw, to his partly open, waiting mouth. He lightly bites the tip of my finger.

  Something’s about to happen. The thing I wanted to happen.

  “Show yourself to me, sweet Saligia.”

  I can feel her rising under my skin, tightening everything. I can feel her like I never have before. But I never expected her to feel so…hostile.

  “Gia, come back to me.”

  Everything goes dark until, all at once, a cyclone of color whips around me. It sends my head into swirls. It’s just color, and it’s just light, I tell myself. He groans. His sound triggers a reaction in my body that I’ve long been turned away from, the reaction Ben forced me to quash. He bites harder on my finger. Just as Teddy hinted: agony is an aphrodisiac.

  He presses my hand to his face and pulls me to standing. “Make me feel it.”

  With that, the whirlwind of light explodes like a star, bringing darkness like a black hole.

  I have no idea what happens. But something does. Instantly. And I find myself standing in a room that is quaking. In darkness that is slow to relight. In the aftermath of the fierce awakening of Miss Saligia.

  nineteen

  GIA

  THE WALLS ARE SHAKING, CONFLATING, AND I AM STANDING in the old Zin library with my hand still out, my arm straight as an arrow. I am standing in an eddy of broken easels, shredded canvas, sprayed paint, bent champagne stands, tattered drop cloths. I am vibrating with the power I once possessed and have just made real again. And I am looking at Dia, who is lying in a heap at the opposite end of the room.

  I pushed him there. I thrust him away.

  With strength greater than any I’ve ever felt.

  Turning in terror—no, in heart-thumping anticipation—I see Gia in the reflection of the pulsating windowpane behind me. She is looking over her shoulder, looking at me just as I am looking at her. At her tempestuous hair. At the tattered school uniform that clings for life to her ample form. And at the silvery, spectacular tail that swivels up and dances toward me; I reach for it, and it hurries into the curve of my hand. Like Skippy used to rush at Gigi. Like my own little pet.

  “Velvety,” I breathe as I stroke my tail.

  A dull itch runs over her back—my back—and I have only thought of taking my school blazer off when my tail does the job for me, pulling my collar back and down, sliding the jacket off.

  I expect to see two of them. But I see only one.

  “A wing,” I breathe.

  Though unpaired, this wing unfurls spectacularly. It is eight feet wide and beautifully detailed. It could be painted by beams of light that curve and radiate shimmers like sunlight in the reflection of a forest pool. As I breathe, it rises, flits, falls, and rises again over my right arm. Azure blue feathers ripple through it. Ribbons of silver glimmer in it.

  “Told you,” Dia groans. “Dia and Gia. Forever.”

  He is a distant profile on the windowpane. His clothes are torn, and he is grinning through a trickle of blood as he tries to get to his feet again.

  Trails of white light glide high above as the chandelier, which was swinging wildly, slows to a sway in the middle of the ceiling, from which it has dropped by at least ten feet.

  “More spirit than flesh,” I utter.

  I drink up the reflection of the woman I once was, the woman I could be. She is all things exaggerated. Her physical presence is too overpowering. Her curves are too sexy. The pierce of her fiery violet-colored stare is too stabbing. Her violent anger, directed at Dia, was too furious.

  And, as I quietly observe her—marvel at her and eventually condemn her for being, in fact, a demon—Gia vanishes in a soft whirl of purple sparkle, leaving me staring at the void she’s left. I’ve never been a dainty girl, but I suddenly feel small, deflated, frail. I long to see the majestic wing again, to see its pair; I long to hold my velvety tail. Her power is undeniable.

  Dia is tiptoeing through the tangled chaos toward me.

  Quickly, I mentally note the circumstances of her awakening so I can try to reproduce it later. I touched him, and he touched me, and he said that he wanted to see her and he wanted her to make him feel it—that classic line of his. But she didn’t waken gently; she exploded into the room. She shoved him as far away as she could. It’s as if she came not to love him but to fight him. As if the story of Dia + Gia Forever is a demon’s lie.

  So then it’s true what Teddy said. Gia wants to destroy Dia.

  “Why does she hate you?” I utter, still not looking away from the window, still hoping she’ll reappear.

  “That’s just the way you are. You’re a tease, and you know I like to play rough.”

  But it didn’t feel like that at all. In the brief moment in which I was one part Gia again, I felt her emotions, and they hardly endeared him to me.

  “She’s mad at you.”

  “I’d love her to return,” he says and turns my chin to look at him, “but I hate the idea of you leaving. I love seeing you, Anne.”

  I follow his gaze down. The buttons of my blouse and cardigan popped off when Gia appeared. I clutch my top closed.
r />   “I’m going to Gigi’s. I know where she left a bunch of her old sweaters.”

  Dia, still dazed by the reappearance of the underworld goddess he once loved, instead sends me to a storage room in the north wing of the house.

  “The Zins left a bunch of stuff here. Surely you can find something suitable,” he says. “Head upstairs, take a left, follow the hall to the end. I’ll be waiting down here for you.”

  “I should probably just go.” I got what I came for. Sort of.

  “Anne, this painting won’t paint itself.”

  So I dash up the curved staircase and drift left. And stop. I lean against the wall to catch my breath and marvel. I have to force myself to stand and walk again, to stop obsessing over the beautiful creature that had such astonishing strength. The beautiful creature I could be.

  “Get a sweater,” I remind myself.

  Walking through this house is like walking through my own home, not because it is familiar or warm but because it seems filled with spirits—those of two worlds: the underworld I am struggling to recall, and the one in which Ben and Dr. Zin were a relatively normal family. Spirits cling to the intricate fixtures; they whisper to me from behind potted aconite and hemlock plants; their unseen gazes follow me down the hall filled with Ben’s sculptures on plinths. And they are waiting for me outside the dark storage room at the end of the hall.

  “Abandon all hope,” they seem to whisper, “ye who enter here.”

  Am I a fool for playing with fire like this?

  No, I think. I need to do this. To help Ben, and then to help my mom.

  I open the door and flick on the light. I find boxes, crates, and small containers at the front of a vast room filled to breaking with the Zins’ furnishings, artwork, books, everything. I breathe in the musky scent of the space, knowing it’s nothing like Ben’s fragrance but loving the closeness I feel to him here, with his belongings under my trailing fingertips. Fingertips that were, only minutes ago, long, vicious, and relentless.

  In a box marked Ben’s Winter Sweaters, I find the familiar candy-and-musk-scented clothing Ben would have worn on the weekends or after school. Delicately, I lift a gray wool cardigan with patches on the elbows; I set it aside and pull out a beautiful black turtleneck that is Ben Zin. Each layer of sweater reveals a better layer below it. I slide on a green cashmere sweater, inhaling deeply as the soft material passes over my face. Delicious. But I can’t put the rest back—I can’t leave them all here. So the black turtleneck goes over the cashmere. A thickly ribbed sweater over that. I am fat with five layers when I button the gray cardigan over it all and, at last, hug myself, breathing in Ben as I do.