The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  “Is this some sort of skit?” she asks. “A performance art piece?”

  “I’m serious. Lives depend on it.”

  “Let me check your head for a bump.”

  I shove her away. “Molly, this is hard enough without you joking about it!”

  “Wait, aren’t you joking?”

  “You know what we’re dealing with here. You’ve been under Mephisto’s reign longer than any of us.”

  “‘Mephisto’s reign’?” She looks like something’s occurring to her. “Is this about that stupid demon-chick nonsense Dia mentioned months ago?”

  “You’re not listening,” I say and kick the box. She watches me like she’s just realized her patient has flown over the cuckoo’s nest. “Harper was serving me. And she had all these followers. But now she left me. And I need followers. But you’ve been so caught up in your little life, you’ve hardly even noticed what I’m going through. But I need you now. And if you could just start trading your devices for loyal followers—just have them agree to submit to you, and then you submit to me—I’m a nice leader—then I can rebuild my power and help…”—I hesitate to reveal Teddy’s mission for me—“…people.”

  She stares at me. “Followers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like on Twitter?”

  “Molly, come on!”

  “I think you might need a Xanax. Or, like, a psychotherapist.”

  “And you call me insensitive?”

  “What’s that got to do with—” She realizes I’m talking about my mom. “I didn’t mean that. Honestly. You have no idea how much I didn’t mean that.”

  “There’s no point in pretending we can be the lightest versions of ourselves and survive here, Mol. Being nice to other students? That’s the best you’re getting as an exchange? To what end?”

  “End? To no end. To, like, being-a-good-person end.”

  “It’s so naive! We’re living in Hell, and you’re singing kumbaya around the fire.”

  “This isn’t Hell. It’s Wormwood Island.”

  “Which your stupid family traded to known devils. Voilà! Hell.”

  She flinches. “Watch your mouth.”

  “Don’t warn me like you’re morally superior.”

  “‘Like’ I’m morally superior? There’s no doubt about it. I’m Gandhi compared to you. Mother Teresa. The pope. Look at yourself! You’re running around torturing teachers for God knows why.”

  I didn’t know she knew that. But I guess everyone does. So many people saw me attack Vale in the cafeteria.

  “Don’t think I don’t know why you’re acting so nuts,” she says.

  “Seriously, with the insults?”

  She darts to my desk, where she yanks open a drawer, shuffles through stuff, and finds the paper with the teachers’ names and their powers worked out. She wags the folded square at me.

  “You’re using them all to make Ben win the Big V. Hello? Anne, I was there with you the day you watched Eve and Kate get tortured. I saw you drinking it up like it was a lesson you’d be quizzed on. You’ve just destroyed Joie, and I’m sure you were behind Jack’s little breakdown, too.”

  She throws the note at me—and to both our surprise, it flies well. Its edge catches me in the eye. I fall to my bed, clutching at my face. She groans with what I guess is remorse.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have asked you to help me,” I mutter. “I knew you’d judge me.”

  “Anne.”

  “I don’t judge you for going through boyfriends like water.”

  “Um, you just judged me for it. And I’m hardly going through boyfriends! I’m just doing what anybody does. Just exploring. And experimenting. Maybe you should try it instead of fixating on Ben effing Zin as if he’s the only guy that could possibly be right for you.”

  “Why won’t you help me, Molly?”

  “Help you? With what?”

  “With building my legions.”

  She stomps to her side of the room and throws herself on her bed. Her voice is muffled when she growls, “You’re not a demon-chick!”

  “Except I am. I haven’t told you this because you’re so damn pious you’d never let me live it down, but I was a woman named Miss Saligia in another life.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “She’s the leader of the Seven Sinning Sisters, or she was before she agreed to come here for…well, the jury’s out on why she’s here. But she is. Inside of me. My soul is hers.”

  Slowly, inch by inch, Molly rolls to face me. Her face is ghost-white when she looks my way.

  “That’s where your soul comes from?” she asks. “Hell?”

  “Where I was a powerful goddess evidently.”

  “Hold on. Did Mephistopheles tell you that?”

  “Teddy told me. Dia confirmed it.”

  For a moment, she looks lost for words. Her face falls, and I think she might cry or throw up. Instead, she finds her voice—and her optimism.

  “But you’re Anne now!” she exclaims.

  “Barely.”

  “You are. You need to be Anne. The Anne I met in September; the Anne that dated Ben and came crying back to our room on Christmas Eve, after he refused to fight. Be her again. Who you are.”

  With my one good eye, I stare out the window. The Anne she’s describing feels too far away.

  “Anne, search your soul.”

  My soul is where the problem is.

  “You’re actively destroying real people. Joie. Jack. Who knows who else?”

  “Only one person can win, Molly. So what if some dead kids have to die twice?”

  “You’re killing them.”

  “Hardly!”

  “Classic. Trust you to act like you’re not the biggest part of every single problem you create, Anne.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  Someone knocks on the door and asks us to keep it down. We shout at her to butt out.

  Molly’s teeth are clenched as she stares me down. “You know what it means.”

  “You blame me for your murder.”

  “Is there anyone else to blame?” she asks.

  “How about yourself? You pursued a friendship with me,” I remind her, pushing my finger into her chest. She smacks my hand. “Even knowing everything you knew—things I didn’t have a clue about— you came to my house. And, seriously, who writes their name in their shoes? Are you, like, four years old? Will the kids at preschool steal them? You didn’t even know anyone, so who exactly was going to steal your shoes?” Her eyes are cold as she takes in my rant. “And, my God, who would steal shoes? You’re on an island filled with the richest kids on Earth. They don’t want your hand-me-down sweat-boxes.”

  I am trying hard to keep Saligia down but wondering if I shouldn’t just let her out, just unleash her on Molly, with her smug little face.

  “Your grandpa served the devil just to make bank,” I fire. “And you won’t even help me now.”

  She plants her feet and takes a deep breath. I’m surprised she doesn’t come back at me with the obvious truth: my dad is serving the devil. Maybe not for money. But he’s doing the devil’s bidding.

  But instead she says, “You’d better leave before we say things you can’t come back from.”

  “This was my room first,” I state. “You leave.”

  She’s halfway down the hall, muttering about demons, scrunching a hastily packed duffel under her arm, when I lean out the doorway and shout after her.

  “Thanks for being such a great friend! Where do you think you’re going anyway? Your gramps doesn’t live here anymore!” I slam the door just as everyone else opens theirs. Then I open it again. “Oh, and the word is ‘grandpa’! What’re you, two? Grand. Pa.”

  I slam the door three times. Four times. Once more for good measure. And then I leave, too. I’m not sure if I’m going after Molly. I’m not sure what I’m doing. But I find myself, around twilight, sitting, shaking, in the chemistry lab. Of all places. I’ve been here for God knows ho
w long when I glance out the windows to see the black night sky.

  It’s just as dark in here.

  For light, I turn on the Bunsen burner in front of me and try not to spook myself with its eerie glow and the long shadows it casts.

  I run my fingers through the flames. The last time I played with fire, Ben Zin showed up. So I keep doing it even though I know he won’t come. Only when it starts to really hurt do I start to pull my hand away from the flame. But I stop myself.

  If demons are coaxed out by pain—or at least their powers are—then perhaps I can wake Gia by inflicting pain on this body we share. Perhaps she can help me understand how to give Harper and Pilot new lives. Then Harper will follow me again. And I’ll build my legions without Molly, who’d only judge me anyway.

  I slip my hand over the flame. And hold it in place.

  It takes a while, but I eventually feel it. The hurt. The sizzling of my own flesh. I grip my wrist to keep my hand in the fire, nearly biting half my tongue off the more my hand throbs.

  Okay, that’s the pain I needed.

  When Gia last surfaced, I felt anger. So behind my eyelids, I force myself to think of Ben and Garnet eating together. To remember his angry glare when he caught me watching them the other day. That works. Fury swells in my chest.

  Next, a little verbal coaxing: “Come,” I mimic Dia, “show yourself, Miss Saligia.”

  I squeeze my eyelids tighter. All I see is bright red throbbing behind my eyelids.

  “Come, Gia. Let’s work together. Help me.”

  But my burning, blistering hand won’t be ignored anymore. I yank it out of the flame and clasp it against my chest, biting hard on my lip to keep from crying out and steadying myself against the station table. I curl my whole body around my pulsating hand. I don’t dare look at the mess I’ve made of my skin; I just beg for it to heal fast. When low waves of relief start coursing through me, and my breath slows, I prepare to start again.

  I reach for the Bunsen burner—and that’s when I see her.

  Standing in the shadows no more than a foot from me, Hiltop watches me.

  I scream at the sight of her.

  Her normally lifeless eyes burn an unnaturally bright gold in the light of the Bunsen’s flame. Without shifting her glare away, she shuts off the gas, and the flame goes out, turning her eyes dark again. Her long face is lit only by silvery moonlight through the windows.

  “Always playing with fire.” Her voice trails out of her like hot smoke blowing between her clenched teeth. “So you want to bring her here? You want to shed this skin that is Anne Merchant and have a glimpse of what lies beneath?”

  “I’ve already seen—”

  Hiltop strikes me with the back of her hand, leaving my words dangling in the air. The blow sends me reeling into a wall of test tubes. The top shelves collapse over me, and glass rains down, shattering against the travertine floor. I brace myself to keep from falling into it. I taste blood on my lip, trickling from my nose. I shake off the shock and, my chest heaving, stare my tiny tormenter down.

  “I guess that wasn’t enough,” she says, clenching and unclenching the fist she struck me with. “Come on, Gia. Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  She raises her hand, hooked like a claw, and stretches it toward me, bringing the points of her fingertips together. I gasp when I look down: my shirt is bunched as if it’s in her grip, but she’s still feet away. My heels slide out from under me. I clamber at the shelves; she yanks me out of reach. My feet leave the floor. Without even touching me, Hiltop lifts me until I could stand on the countertops. And here she suspends me, watching in simple pleasure as I try to snarl down at her but can barely muster more than a terrified grimace.

  “Tough girl,” she says mockingly. “You used to be so impressive, Gia. You could do this without a thought.” She wags her hand, and I fly back and forth. “And now you are reduced to this thing I could snap in two.”

  “But you won’t,” I retaliate. Desperate. Clutching at straws. “You won’t because I’m the child you almost had. I’m your creation.”

  Her expression softens, and, in her distraction, she lets me drop—but catches me a half foot above the floor.

  “Dia told you, did he? Dare I ask what you did to wrangle it out of him?” She lowers me the rest of the way to the floor. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I’ve never been interested in your sexual exploits.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  Her tone sends shivers down my spine—not because it is threatening but because it is not. It’s protective. It’s the sort of tone my dad and mom used countless times.

  “You are my creation,” she confirms. She folds her hands on the countertop and, with the most placid expression, watches me straighten up. “You were my muse in the underworld. And you are my muse in this world. You are, have been, and always will be my one true creation.”

  “I’m not yours,” I say, feeling my parents slipping away from me.

  Now I wish I’d let her throw me down, pummel me, do whatever she wants to. Just to keep my parents close to me, to keep her from saying things that will separate me from them.

  “You wouldn’t be here were it not for me. When that is the case, that makes me your creator, does it not? Put in your terms, Miss Merchant: your mother was the paint, your father was the brush, your soul was the canvas—and I was the artist who pulled it all together. Thus, I am your creator.”

  “I’m Anne Merchant. That’s all I care about. Who I am now, in this life.”

  “That’s all you care about?” Hiltop’s knowing gaze drops to the Bunsen burner. “Seems to me you’re curious about the hundreds and hundreds of years you spent in the underworld. Those years in which you adored me. I turned you from a mere succubus to the most feared of all women. A true goddess of the dark.”

  I busy myself with my bleeding nose, with the glass at my feet, with anything but her.

  “You were and are my masterpiece,” she says.

  “You’re nothing to me. I don’t even know you.”

  “But you did. You loved me, and I let you go. I let you run along and find yourself in this world, a world you’ve loved as much as I have.”

  “You didn’t let me do anything.”

  “Just as a parent lets her daughter go off to college to find herself, I let you go. All in. No memories of your past life. Human, through and through. I let you come here, Saligia, and choose your path. I let you be a blank slate, knowing, all the while, that all roads would naturally lead you back to me. And they did.”

  The open door is beyond her. I’m not sure she’ll let me leave this lab without a fight, and, unless Gia appears, I won’t survive a battle with her.

  “I gave to you in ways I’ve never done before or since. I gave unconditionally to you, without asking anything in return, and elevated you to a standing no lost soul had ever achieved.”

  “Do you expect gratitude?”

  “Just respect. I, the Great Exchanger, asked for nothing when it came to you. I always knew you were special, Gia.”

  “I’m Anne.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  I back toward another station and stand behind it, shifting ever closer to the far edge of the room, to the empty aisle that will lead me straight to the door in six, maybe seven strides. The station protects me from Hiltop, although, without question, she could reach me before I’m halfway out the door. She doesn’t have to touch me to seize me. And the bitch can fly.

  She observes me like I’m a lab rat acting most peculiarly.

  “You are free to run away,” she says.

  Holding my breath, certain she’s lying and about to pounce, I inch into the aisle and creep forward, my eyes on her.

  “But don’t think you can run from who you really are and who I am to you. You will come back to me. All roads lead to me.”

  “Dream on.”

  “Why do you thin
k you left the underworld?” she asks. “Your lover had scorned you, making love to Invidia behind your back. You rushed to me when you learned of his betrayal, and you begged me to help you through it. I found a solution for you: this girl you pretend to be. And you loved me even more for it.”

  “I could never love you.” I turn away, dead-set on the door now. “I love my parents—my real parents, no matter who ‘created’ me.”

  “You love them?” she shouts. “Perhaps you think you do now… but that wasn’t always the case.”

  I’ve always loved them.

  “After all, Gia, you were the one who condemned Nicolette to die.”

  twenty-three

  OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES

  “NICOLETTE MERCHANT WAS THE FIRST WOMAN IN HER right mind to ask me for a child,” Hiltop says.

  Her voice nears, making my skin itch like it’s shrinking, like I might burst out of it. The hallway begins to pulse with shades of red.

  “I was floored. And little surprises me, so that’s saying something,” she continues. “I needed time to think through exactly how it would work and what to request in exchange. You, Miss Saligia, helped me make sense of what to do and what to demand.”

  “I did not.”

  “You jumped at the chance to toy with a silly woman who needed to be taught a lesson.”

  “My mother was a saint. She was just desperate.”

  I hear the soles of her boots squeal against the tile behind me.

  “Aren’t they all? But, my, how you and I laughed to think what it would be like for these humans—Nic and Stan, high school sweethearts—to discover their miracle baby, spawned nearly thirty years after our lovebirds first met, was not so much an angel as a demon.”

  “Stop it.”

  My shoulders are tensing, my hands cramping, my calves tightening. My beating heart pummels my ribcage. I know what that means, but if Gia appears now, will she be able to stand up to Hiltop?

  “A witch’s baby,” Hiltop pushes.

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “And when it came time for me to go to The Land Above,” she says, “and settle the terms with Nicolette, you said—why, Gia, perhaps you recall what you said to me?”