by Joanna Wiebe
“Why didn’t you come to me sooner?” She gets to her knees and peers down at me. “What do you want to do about all this?”
“I want to help my mom.”
“What if your mom came down from Heaven, sat here, and said for you to do whatever makes you happy? To forget Teddy?”
I think about it. “I’d want Ben to have a new life. And then, well, I guess I’d want us all to have one. And for my dad to be free. And for Dr. Zin to be free. And for you to have your island back.”
She sighs.
“It’s a lot, right?” I say.
“Yeah, but let’s look for a theme. What do all of those things have in common?”
“Well, they’re all connected to Dia and Mephisto.”
“So. . .?”
“So I guess I’d get everything I want if Dia and Mephisto were out of the way.”
“If you want to do it, that’s one thing. But don’t do this because you gave Teddy your word. And definitely don’t do it for your mom.”
“She’s the reason to do it, Mol. She wants me to.”
“I don’t think your mom would put you in that kind of danger.”
“You don’t know my mom.”
She flinches. “You think she’d try to hurt you? Is this because of how you got in your coma? Anne, I’m sure she’s incredibly sorry for hurting you that day.”
I shrug. “It’s not that. I just want to do right by her.”
“Then do right by yourself.” She smiles, lightening the life-lesson vibe in the room. “So, you need to get those devils out of the way to save Ben and, like, the world. That’s the plan?”
I nod. But then something occurs to me. “I don’t remember telling you about what my mom did to me.”
Her smile falters. “You talk in your sleep, girl.”
“I do?”
“A lot. But it’s not all sad. Sometimes you mention someone named Dr. Jones.”
“That’s the name of my doctor back in Atherton.”
“See? How else could I know about Dr. Jones? So, back on topic: if you’re going to take down Mephisto and Dia, you should start with the easier of the two. Got a sense for which one might be easier to off?”
We lock eyes. In unison: “Dia.”
“Then we’ve got work to do. But not because of Teddy or your mom,” Molly says. “We’re going to have to think of something a lot better, and a lot less violent, than simply, like, battling Dia.”
“Did you have something in mind?”
She bounds to her feet, rummages through her backpack, and holds up a book.
“Dorian Gray?” I ask her. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You’re a painter, Anne. Paint.”
twenty-five
THE PICTURE
ALTHOUGH BEN’S FUTURE ALWAYS SITS IN THE BACK OF MY mind, and although my demon fellowship continues to grow even without Gia appearing or torturing anyone, regular life must go on. My plan—my real plan, the one Molly helped me work out—must go on.
And so it has.
For weeks, I’ve patiently executed each step Molly and I laid out. And now that it’s May and there’s less than a week until graduation day, I’m closing in on the end. Our plan to destroy Dia depends on two things: my painting of him and Gia’s ability to cast souls. Dia’s agreed not to look at the portrait until I say so, which is why I’ve been dragging it back and forth from my dorm to his office. The closer we get to the unveiling of the portrait, the more frequent our sessions have become. The energy my followers lend me has kept me up night after night; Molly’s kindly started sleeping with a mask over her eyes to let me work on Dia’s painting from dusk till dawn.
“Let me see it!” Dia commands as he playfully but weakly tries to dart around the side of the canvas.
“You know you can’t.” I slap him away.
“I’ll see it in a week anyway.”
“And not a moment sooner.”
“I must see it, Anne!”
“You’ve been mentoring me for nearly eight months,” I remind him. “Don’t you trust your own instruction?”
He flings himself back on the chaise. “Then distract me. Occupy my mind. I’d ask you to occupy my body, but I’ve been feeling so weak lately.”
“Why don’t you talk to me about beauty? What’s the most beautiful thing you saw today?”
“I’d like it to be my painting!”
I calmly dip a thin brush in violet.
“You are quite maddening, Anne, do you know that?”
I dab the canvas with the brush.
“All right, fine. Have it your way,” he says.
“Why don’t you tell me why Saligia was so angry at you?”
“Are you still angry, sweetheart?”
“Is it because you cheated on her with Invidia?”
He turns to face me. “I always loved you. It’s why I’m here. For you. To protect you.”
“I don’t need protection.”
“Everyone needs protection from Mephisto and his scheming little men.”
“Face sideways, please. I’m working on your profile.”
“I can’t take this! You must let me see it.”
“Sideways.” When he hesitates, I add, “Do you want this painting to be your most beautiful self, or would you rather waste time on tiny tantrums?”
He lies back again. I blow on the last strokes of paint to dry them.
“When I’m done with this,” I say, “it will be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”
“I can hope, but I know that’s not true.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have seen pure beauty. I’ve beheld it. And I’ve loved it so deeply, I’ve decided to make it the one and only form of tuition for Cania College.”
“What is it?” I ask him.
“It looks like light.”
“Tuition fees are going to be light?”
“Not any light. A soul’s light. A clean soul’s light.”
The brush falls from my hand. He looks at me, and I scramble to pick it up again, to act natural.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Fine,” I lie. “Our time is just coming to a close.”
He glances at the clock. “So it is.”
Hurriedly, I throw a sheet over the canvas. I’m coated in a cold sweat. I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming. I can’t believe it’s taken so long for the underworld to get what it really wants from mankind. Mephisto has been so in love with our world that he’s taken our possessions as tuition for his school; but Dia Voletto is infatuated with beauty—he would only take the very source of beauty as tuition for his school. He’s come for our souls.
I’ll have to take his first.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
“And every day this week. Until Saturday’s reveal.”
That night, for the first time in weeks, I fall into a deep enough sleep that I actually dream on and off. I catch glimpses of Ben in my dreams—small glimpses packed with me running toward him and telling him I love him, telling him to wait for me—but, more clearly than anything, I see Teddy. He comes through so vividly, I realize it’s not a dream but rather that Teddy is entering my mind, like an incubus might. Thankfully, though, he doesn’t try anything funky with me. He just wants to talk.
“Why didn’t you try this earlier?” I ask him. “I could have used a little coaching along the way.”
“Are you ready to destroy Dia?”
Typical Teddy, skipping the niceties. “Everything’s in place, yes.” I don’t mention that I’m not doing it entirely for him and my mom anymore; I’m doing it for a greater purpose, one I’ve worked out with Molly.
“Excellent. This weekend, I’ll be there. For graduation day. And I’ll support you in bringing down Dia—and then we’ll work on Mephisto.”
He’s about to leave my dream when I stop him.
“My mom,” I say. “What did she tell you?”
“That you should help me.”
“No, I mean when you told her I was sorry for my involvement in her mental illness.”
“Oh, that. Yes, she said you’re forgiven.”
“She did?”
“Anne, I’ve got to go.”
“Did you tell her she shouldn’t feel bad for hurting me when she was sick?”
But instead of answering me, he’s gone.
THE LAST WEEK before grad has turned the entire Cania Christy campus into Death Row, with slightly more room and moderately better amenities. The graduating class is now facing the last days of their death sentence. All but one as-yet-undetermined senior have mere days to live, with graduation this Saturday. If they’d been given a week anywhere else, they might indulge in being alive: swim with manta rays, fly a helicopter, have a massive party with their family and friends, eat anything they’d like, apologize to those they’ve hurt, forgive those who’ve hurt them, tell the guy they’ve crushed on exactly how they’ve felt—and go in for the kiss. But landlocked here, their options are limited.
It’s Thursday now. Just two days until graduation.
I’m awkwardly carrying Dia’s painting, wrapped in a bedsheet, from my dorm to his office, and I can’t help but pause every so often to listen to seniors softly crying or violently raging in the quad, or to see them attempting death-defying stunts, which they could have done all this time but were too focused on being graded well to bother with. A girl named Verily is trying parkour against the wall of Valedictorian Hall and slamming her body into the ground on repeat, as a boy named Justin watches her, clapping at her attempts, laughing off her failures, and obviously waiting for the right moment to confess to Verily that he loves her dark brown hair and her deep brown eyes and that he wishes they could have met under better circumstances. Maybe by the time the Graduation Eve party rolls around tomorrow night—hosted by Dia at his mansion—Justin will have worked up the courage to hold Verily’s hand. Only to die.
I hoist the painting up again—its width and height are uncooperative—and silently curse Molly for not helping me with this. But she’s been working overtime with seniors trying to record final good-bye videos for their friends and family, which Mr. Watso will mail away after graduation. The girl is seriously racking up karma points.
“Need a hand?” someone asks from the other side of the painting.
My heart thumps to hear the voice I’d recognize whispering in a thunderstorm. But it’s not until I see Ben peer around the canvas and take one end, freeing me to focus on the other, that I think I might go into cardiac arrest.
“Thanks,” I say. You shouldn’t be around me, I think.
“I’ve got selfish reasons for helping you.”
In silence, we pass Valedictorian Hall and approach Goethe Hall. But even as I try to steer toward the back entrance, Ben keeps moving to the empty parking lot. I glare at him, but he mouths, “We need to talk.”
In the quiet of the parking lot, Ben takes the painting from me, leans it against the Rex Paimonde building, and gestures for me to come closer, to a spot where we’ll see onlookers before they see us. It is a very good thing that, during our three and a half months together, I became an expert at keeping my cool when in close proximity to Ben; even now, even with five months of heartache under my belt and with the panicked mood on campus, I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and twist my hands in his hair. If anything, my feelings for him are stronger than ever.
But I can’t let him know that.
“Why were you with my sister?” he asks. His gaze is piercing.
“It was a random accident. It just…happened.”
“An accident? You transported your spirit—or whatever you were doing—to an Ivy League library where my sister, who should be in the ground, just happened to be standing?”
I’m at a loss for words. I can’t even dream up a lie. Yes, I knew Ben would have to come after me at some point to ask about Jeannie, but whatever lies I cooked up in my head to feed him have abandoned me now, leaving me only with a truth I have to hide.
“I hate you,” he says. Not to hurt me. Just to tell me.
“I know you do.”
“But I have dreams of you. Why?”
“I didn’t know you did.” It could be because I have legions of succubae serving me.
“You hurt teachers and cafeteria ladies all the time. I’ve seen you do it. They’re saying you’re some sort of devil.”
“I am. In a human body.”
A laughing stampede of seniors charges across the parking lot and to the hillside, to the cliff, where they’ll jump, splash into the water, disappear, and reappear on top of the cliff, to start all over again. We lean out of their view as they go by.
“Do I hate you because you’re a devil?”
“You just…hate me,” I tell him.
“But why? You must know why.”
He’s not supposed to ask why. He’s not supposed to look closer. That’s my job, not his.
“Why do I hate you,” he continues, “when until now I didn’t know you were a devil? And why do I hate you when you never do anything but look at me as if you love me?” I step away but he grabs my arm. “And why do I hate you when you sat with me and my sister, and you looked so happy to see us together?” He presses on as my throat tightens. “And why do I hate you, Anne, when standing here with you now makes me feel, somehow, full and complete?”
“Ben…”
“And why do I hate you when every time you visit my dreams, you wrap your arms around me, and I wrap mine around you, and you tell me you love me?”
I’m stricken. “That’s what happens when I visit you?”
“Every. Single. Time.”
“You mean…it’s not some sort of naughty, dirty dream?”
“No, of course not.”
Ben’s dreams are not induced by Gia’s history as a succubus. They’ve got nothing to do with the underworld. I’m in Ben’s dreams because he dreams of me. Because no spell could undo the truth of how he feels about me.
I look at him now, so close to his freedom, so close to being the older brother to a sister who needs him.
“Tell me why, Anne.”
This is no time to slip up. We’re too close to success.
“I don’t know,” I say flatly. “But I hate you. I hate you. So stop bothering me, got it?”
I pick up the canvas and, without glancing back, head to Goethe Hall. My hands are shaking hard enough that the canvas might fall. I just make it to Dia’s office without dropping it.
Dia and Hiltop are waiting for me.
I’ve just leapt from the frying pan into the fire.
I SET THE canvas down and adjust the sheet over it. I know what’s going on. I know why Dia and Hiltop are both here. It’s the moment I’ve been dreading since half the school staff started wearing my locket and bowing to me when I walk by.
“This is about Saligia?” I ask as I take a seat.
Their arms are crossed over their chests. They are standing on either side of the fireplace and leaning against the pale marble surround. Dia coughs; he looks feeble enough to blow over. Hiltop, of course, is her typical nothing-looking self.
“Why are you rebuilding your legions?” Dia asks me. “Is it to destroy us?”
“Is that even a possibility?”
“Don’t be smart with us,” Hiltop snaps. “You’ve been running around here all semester getting so-and-so to succumb to your will. They’re talking about it in the underworld. So it stops now. I’m not about to let you tarnish my reputation again.”
“I thought you loved me, G,” Dia says. “You’ve taken four of my Seven Sinning Sisters.”
Four? Three more, and I could give new life to everyone on this godforsaken island. Without a thought, I leap to my feet and bolt to the door. I just need to get the other three on my side, and this whole thing will be over!
But Hiltop flies to the door. She throws her body against it, blocking me. I
shove her with all my might, and she budges, but not enough. Not even close to enough.
“Why haven’t you stopped me before now?” I ask her.
Hiltop smirks. “It’s been mildly entertaining to watch you return, Saligia, but the fun has been had. Surrender your legions.”
“Surrender them?”
That’s not how this is supposed to go. I’m not done! I need the remaining three sisters to help me give Harper and Pilot the lives I promised.
“Surrender them to us. Today.” Hiltop glowers. She pushes me back toward the fireplace. “Now.”
If I lose my followers now, I lose everything. I break every promise. And everyone I know and love suffers, fails, even dies.
I can’t stop now.
I can’t surrender now. Not yet. Not when everything is so close!
“We’ll remove Ben from the running for the Big V if you don’t,” Hiltop threatens.
I could break into Valedictorian Hall tonight. Get Ben’s vials. But then what? I’d need the Seven Sinning Sisters to help me give Ben a new life off the island. But they’re not all mine yet.
Hiltop and Dia are watching my wheels spin.
Dia coughs. He looks like he has the flu. Good.
“And then there’s the matter of Jeannie Zin,” Hiltop adds. She paces before the fire. “She’s alive, you know. Thanks to me. It’s always a good idea to have a little leverage—a card up your sleeve.”
“What’s your point?”
“I will kill her,” Hiltop says matter-of-factly.
“You can’t kill humans,” I remind her. “It’s against the rules.”
Dia and Hiltop snicker.
“The only clearly drawn lines run across the center of this island, Miss Merchant,” Hiltop says. “In matters of spirits, demons, and divine beings, lines blur. I will, quite easily, remove Jeannie Zin from this life. After all, I gave her life to her, much like I gave yours to you, much like I give life to one student every year. I can take that life away. Perhaps not directly. But never question, when Jeannie is gone—locked away in a nuthouse or after succumbing to the inner voices that tell her to cut herself until the pain goes away—that it will be your doing. I’ll be sure to let Dr. Zin and Ebenezer know she died because a girl who fancies herself the great Saligia chose her demon followers over pure, innocent Jeannie.”
